So the University Farm has been developed as a practical demonstration of best practice peri-urban agriculture.
The farm in collaboration with New South Wales
Local Land Services provides excellent opportunities for students.
We have a number of living lab initiatives across all our campuses.
Which is all about using the assets for teaching and research.
One of the key initiatives here is looking at appropriate sensor technology
For improving our activities on The Farm and as examples of precision agriculture for the students.
So our approach is very much one of mainstream agriculture. Where we tend to use minimum tillage
where we don’t disturb the soil.
And of course using our recycled water for irrigation.
You see behind us that one of our centre pivot irrigators which is central to our management of this.
Student participation in live industry projects around The Farm
They enable the students to develop scientific and professional skills.
Our goal is to continue to develop The Farm with best practice using new and emerging technologies.
This $7,000,000 glasshouse facility was officially launched in 2017.
As Australia's first national vegetable protected cropping centre.
And of course this has positioned Western Sydney University to conduct the much needed research,
education and training which will help drive Australia’s future horticultural industry.
Productivity inside protected cropping protected cropping facilities like this is much higher than you can do on farm.
In large part because pest control is much better and the environment can be controlled
so there's very little wastage and spoilage in a facility like this.
We can grow food here under controlled environmental conditions
particularly given the way the climate is changing.
So we can control the temperature, we can control the humidity,
we control water and nutrient delivery and we control C02 concentration.
And what it means is, under these controlled environments we can mitigate heat waves and droughts and floods which are common in farms in this area now.
Also the quality of the crop is immensely high
because we don’t have the same sort of pest load that you normally get.
So really the idea is to have a smaller footprint
less energy use, better use of resources and the capacity to get vegetables and fruits to market quickly.
So we save cost on transportation and on C02 emissions and things like that.
One of the problems with harvesting capsicums if you have a look
there’s this enlarged part of the stem and if we can we cut right through the middle of that.
And if we don’t do that theres a rot that sends the run right back up the stem.
This program is looking for students
they can have both scientific and academic skills
and also have hands on practical skills.
We’re going to able to take a lot of undergraduate students and graduate students into this facility.
We’ll be able to train them in plant physiology and plant chemistry, plant molecular biology.
In essence what we’re doing is applying really top level physics
photovoltaics, chemistry and plant biology to secure our food production for the future.
Now we already have industry presence
but of course my role here is to expand this facility to be fully representative of industry.
I think what we would like to do is to have multiple crops
each of them with their own research question.
And this will actually provide them much needed training needed to build a national workforce
and carry out the critical research that is needed in this area.