Tia Magner

2023

Horticulture and Agriculture

Sponsored by Neutrog

This scholarship will be more than an amazing experience for me, the opportunities to travel, learn sustainable and productive practices of nursery and farming industries in other countries, meet people and experience different cultures beyond my current life.

I am keen to investigate both horticulture and agriculture, and I believe that we need better methods to create a sustainable future in both horticulture and agriculture.

I am interested in practices that avoid man-made fertilizers on crops for the health of the soil and sustainable irrigation systems. I would also like to learn alternative propagation techniques, particularly orchid propagation and grafting of fruit trees.

The different structure of how employees are retained and paid in the horticulture and farming industry, and the different machinery and new technology being used could also give me a new outlook and tools to bring home.

For the past three years I have worked at Mole Station Native Nursery. I am proud of how I have gained a lot of knowledge between work and studying with my Certificate 3 in Horticulture. I could now manage a nursery, including the stages of growing the plant up from propagation to a retail product. I monitor pests and diseases of plants and have an increased confidence in plant identification.

With my advantage of growing up on a farm I feel increasingly confident with my livestock and general agricultural practices, and I am also studying a Certificate 4 in wool classing.

Our farm breeds merinos, and I intend to improve our wool into the future and hopefully manufacture our wool locally. I’d love to see how wool is manufactured in Europe and the different ways the fibre is being used.

At work I grow native Australian plants and sell thousands of trays of shrubs and trees for revegetation, which farmers, Landcare and large projects buy.

It is important because trees provide habitat to a lot of living creatures, including birds, koalas and micro-organisms. Trees also reduce air pollution and reduce carbon dioxide. Growing native plants endemic to the area gives the plant a better chance of survival.

My hope is to learn more about how to change practices so that instead of using man-made fertilizers, I can use plants and animals to fertilize the soil and keep it healthy for future generations, while still having successful and healthy crops.

My family have been a major inspiration for my lifelong goals, using regenerative practices on our property such as green manure crops and nitrogen fixing methods to ensure the land will be healthy for many generations to come.

I am inspired by the people I work with; teachers and older friends who have encouraged me to look beyond my immediate region for other practices in sustainable agriculture.

With my Global Footprints Scholarship I would like to travel to Europe, Ireland, UK, Canada, Japan and Scotland because of their advanced agricultural, horticultural and sustainable practices that I intend to put into practice in Australia.