National Ploughing Championships - Angus calves
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What is the Certified Irish Angus Schools competition and how are the calves awarded?
Uh we're gonna stay actually with the ploughing now because uh there are um lots of young farmers there of course and we heard earlier from the young companies, but this week five secondary schools from Donegal to Cork were given an Aberdeen Angus calf to bring home and to rear. It's all part of the Certified Irish Angus Schools competition, which asks students to do a research project on farming. Well, a hundred and eighty schools entered this year, and the finalists collected their calves at the ploughing. Suzanne Campbell met some of them in Screggan.
My name is Katie FitzImonds.
I'm Fionn Brady. I'm Lewis
Faulkner. I'm Casey Johnston. We're from School Virginia College in County Calvin. Our project is trying to improve water quality. We focused really on the slurry ban, trying to make it more weather dependent. So we did a lot of surveys and field research when talking to farmers and it's just a lot of pollution is being caused by what Lewis said about the slurry ban and so we're trying to replace the slurry ban with a more effective approach. Further on now in our project we're going to do some experiments to prove that grass growth is going to be better in the winter time. So instead of calendar farming we can try and farm, as Louis said, weather dependent and that's what we're going to be doing now over the next few months to see if we can prove that it works.
What
has this week been like at the ploughing and receiving your calves?
How did the Virginia College team design their water‑quality project around the slurry ban?
Oh, it's just been terrific. Like the first moment we seen our calves it was just a shock, like, oh my god, like we own them now. It's great to actually have got them now and been able to go home and like feed them and watch them grow and see how much weight they gain and hopefully we'll get on all the best with them.
Unrelated, but both from farming backgrounds, Rachel Walsh and Keelan Walsh from Loreto in Kilkenny won their calves on the basis of their project about consumer and in particular young people's awareness of where food comes from.
So our project is titled Exploring Teenagers Perceptions on Food Origin. So basically we're just trying to educate teenagers about where their food comes from. Why did you settle on this as a theme for your project? So food origin is definitely very important and we want to shorten the bridge between farmers and consumers. We've done surveys in our school and our school is an all-girls school in Kilkenny City so there wouldn't be many from farm but we done a survey and eighty percent of the girls in our school didn't know where their food comes from. Like they didn't have any idea of the origin of their food or the cut of the beef or anything like that. Is there an appetite with young people to find out more or not?
What do you think? Um, I think definitely people who are studying home ec and agriculture science are more connected to it but within our school there's not a huge demand in agriculture science subjects. So we want to definitely uplift that and genuinely people they think when they go to a restaurant, you know, the food comes from the chefs to their plates. So we definitely need to show people the importance of Irish agriculture in everyday life and how important it is to read your food labels overall
What motivated the Kilkenny students to explore teenagers' perceptions of food origin?
Reducing food miles if you're buying locally.
This year is the twelfth year of the certified Irish Angus Schools competition. For founder and general manager Charles Smith, the scheme for rewarding farmers with smaller, more sustainable Aberdeen Angus stock has also created young people with confidence, leadership skills, and who are ultimately the ones who will be most affected by how Irish and European agriculture develops.
Last year we had approximately a hundred and eighty applications in October, which whittle down to the five that you you meet here today. We're hoping to exceed that. This year we recently won an education award that will help encourage more schools and teachers to encourage students to come along and participate, particularly those from non-farming backgrounds.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the Certified Irish Angus Schools competition and how are the calves awarded?
0:00–1:17
2
How did the Virginia College team design their water‑quality project around the slurry ban?
1:17–2:52
3
What motivated the Kilkenny students to explore teenagers' perceptions of food origin?
2:52–4:36
4
How does the competition help develop leadership and public‑speaking skills in students?
4:36–6:04
5
Why did the Killybegs team enter the contest and how are they linking fishing and farming?
6:04–7:26
6
What impact has the program had on encouraging more girls to pursue agriculture?
7:26–7:34