Formed nine years ago to help bridge the city–country divide, the Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia is now a free, one-stop shop for teachers needing resources to teach about food and fibre production.
Story Ken Eastwood
In 2010, a new curriculum was being written for Australian schools. Members of the recently formed Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia (PIEFA) asked to see how much curriculum content concerned food and fibre production. Although being assured there was plenty, they found only two examples across the entire school curriculum, says PIEFA CEO and former school principal Ben Stockwin. “One of the examples was medieval crop rotation in Europe and the other was about deforestation overseas,” he says.
PIEFA – a non-profit organisation comprising government, education and primary industry representatives – got to work with groups like the National Farmers’ Federation and NSW Farmers, and today the Australian school curriculum contains 168 compulsory examples of food and fibre production.
PIEFA now runs several websites, including www.primezone.edu.au.
This story excerpt is from Issue #122
Outback Magazine: December/January 2019
