City slickers are driving an agricultural studies boom, as high schools and universities spruik growing career opportunities

CITY slickers are driving a boom in agricultural studies, but that doesn’t mean they all want to be farmers.

CITY slickers are driving a boom in agricultural studies, as both high school and university students take stock of the broad range of jobs on offer beyond traditional farming.

At Westminster School, where students are preparing to show livestock raised on their campus farm at the Royal Adelaide Show, there are now more city-based day students than boarders enrolled in agriculture subjects.

City students have more than compensated for a decline in kids from the country attending Urrbrae Agricultural High School, where aquaculture enrolments have doubled in the past two years.

And Adelaide University is seeing strong growth in its undergraduate agricultural science course and huge demand for limited animal and vet science places.

Westminster has 187 students taking agriculture courses, up from 157 last year, and close to 70 per cent are from the city.

The Marion school’s agriculture co-ordinator Sarah Truran said the broadening of the industry was behind the rise in student interest.

“Gone are the days where students are taking up the subject simply to become a farmer,” she said.

“Agriculture teaches important technological skills and gives students an understanding of finance and agribusiness.”

Urrbrae High assistant principal in agriculture Peter Smith said aquaculture and other agricultural courses were booming because more city and Adelaide Hills students had replaced those from the country, whose traditional enrolments for Years 11 and 12 had steadily declined.

“There really is an enthusiasm from metropolitan students to take up agriculture,” he said.

“Certainly the message is out about opportunities in agriculture and the job ads are there.”

Adelaide University has 153 undergraduate agricultural science students — 50 per cent more than in 2012 — on the back of an unusually large intake last year and strong enrolments again this year.

More than 450 people applied for 111 animal science places this year and 465 applicants vied for just 52 Veterinary Bioscience places. In response to demand a new Bachelor of Applied Biology, with a practical bent toward agriculture, will be launched next year.

Executive dean of the Faculty of Sciences, Professor Bob Hill, said there was endless variety in agriculture-related careers from research to testing laboratories, government agencies, quarantine and even zoology.

Westminster Year 9 student Rosie Williamson, 14, enjoyed feeding, weighing and measuring cows as part of a dairy farming course called Cows Create Careers.

She said she had learned that agricultural studies could lead to “so many careers” and wants to work with animals.

The State Government this week launched a strategy to promote agricultural career paths for women.