The rural women blazing new trails in education for Australia’s agricultural future

“It’s a real passion of mine, connecting students to industry experiences, supporting teachers to foster careers in agriculture through knowledge sharing and connecting industry to the future workforce.”

Blackburn is working to bridge the gap between education and agriculture through her business, Ag Journey Australia. She believes that rural and regional schools are hubs for community, and that they’re key to a thriving town.

“They’re so much more than just a space for education,” she says about these schools.

“Connecting schools to local industry is so important to make sure that our kids can see broader opportunities than what they might just see in their everyday life.”

Having entered into the world of agriculture through a non-traditional path herself, Blackburn appreciates that it’s not always simple for young people to become part of this thriving agricultural industry without initial connections.

Born in Sydney, Blackburn says that she grew up visiting farms on the weekend and was “really lucky that my dad had a good connection with rural communities”.

“We had some really close family friends that had a farm that I’m actually leasing off my dad and running today, which is very exciting.”

Alongside her husband and children, Blackburn manages this commercial mixed farming enterprise, but it was when she was on her second maternity leave when the idea for her business Ag Journey’s began forming.

“We actually went to the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award announcement event and that was when I learned about AgriFutures and the grants and opportunities that they have available for women.”

With her business idea firmly in the back of her head, Blackburn took the leap to apply for AgriFutures Rural Women’s Acceleration Grant– a decision that gave her the push and support network that’s been essential for entrepreneurial growth.

“It’s quite an incredible body of rural leaders who are women, and it’s so important that we have the opportunity to connect with people,” she says. “Because without that connection, the confidence and the ideas, they all kind of just stay in your head rather than coming to fruition.”

Within her passion for education and agriculture, Blackburn is specifically interested in fostering special education to make learning more inclusive in rural Australia.

“We can’t forget about them, and we really need to harness their strengths and foster their confidence as active citizens,” she says. “I’m really excited to provide a connection for students to meaningful experiences.”

“I feel like agriculture has this real niche of being able to provide really hands-on experiences and connect students to really meaningful work.”

Bee School
Another rural woman who’s blazing new trails in education is Belinda Pooley, a dedicated beekeeper in Southeast Queensland.

Over the past five years, inspired by her father’s legacy as a South African beekeeper, Pooley’s journey has evolved into a mission to educate young minds about the indispensable role of honeybees in our ecosystem.

“My earliest memory of being involved with bees was when I was five years old and helping my dad harvest tons of honey in his big farm kitchen in South Africa. And so it’s always been something that’s been part of my life,” says Pooley, who moved to Australia 20 years ago.

During the Covid pandemic in 2020, Pooley began homeschooling her eldest daughter, who was five at the time. That’s when she started connecting with homeschooling groups on the Sunshine Coast and got the idea to run workshops for kids on beekeeping.

“I could see how engaged they were and how curious they were and interested, and then all the questions that followed on from the workshop,” says Pooley. “So, then the following year, in 2021 when a lot of schools were back up and running, I got approached by my first school on the Sunshine Coast, and they asked me to go and run [a workshop] for one of the classes, and then it grew.”

Bees pollinate at least two thirds of our food supply, which is why Pooley says their impact is so critical to our ecosystem and are “one of the best pollinators that we have”.

“My bigger vision is to take bee education to, or make it accessible in schools across Australia,” she says. “There’s so many skilled beekeepers in Australia, and I know that I’m one of many thousands of hobbyists and commercial beekeepers, but a lot of schools don’t offer bee education.”

“They might offer a gardening program, or they might offer a kitchen garden program where kids are cooking. But for me, the missing link is bee education, because those gardens wouldn’t exist without bees pollinating.”

To aid her vision for expanding bee education, Pooley applied for AgriFutures Rural Women’s Acceleration Grant and was successful in being chosen within the 2024 cohort of women.

Under the umbrella of ‘Bee School,’ Pooley has been able to use the grant to develop a whole range of DIY beeswax craft kits, and through her workshops, children learn that beekeeping is far more than just honey production.

“Bees produce a lot of beeswax, and beeswax is used to make medicines, household products, beauty products, cosmetics, crayons, furniture polish, etc,” says Pooley. “So a lot of schools now are looking at the value of those kits to be used in business studies and entrepreneurial studies programs that high schools are offering.”

For example, Pooley says students will learn financial literacy, product development, marketing, sales and going through the process of making something useful that they can then sell at a market day at their school.

The grant has also allowed her to attend other support programs, such as the prestigious Wheen Bee Ambassador training program, and been invaluable when it comes to professional development and networking opportunities, she says.

And when it comes to the power of education within Australia’s agricultural system, Pooley says beekeeping can’t be overlooked.

“The beekeeping industry in Australia as a whole is trying to attract more younger people to the industry.

“Now, the average age of a beekeeper is in the 60s, and whilst there’s lots of mentoring opportunities that those older beekeepers [have], we need the next generation, [the younger beekeepers] to help us with innovative ideas and ways of thinking, to address some of the challenges that the beekeeping industry in Australia is facing.”

Applications for the 2025 AgriFutures Rural Women’s Acceleration Grant are open.

Find out more information about eligibility criteria and timelines

This article was written by Brianna Boecker and originally published by Women’s Agenda.