Under the spotlight this week is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #4 – Quality Education. This goal has its foundations in being all about the people, by building knowledge, skills and capability across all life stages, and for all demographics of people. We take a look at what SDG #4 is about, how it connects to other SDGs, why it is important for agriculture, and highlight some great learning tools for farmers in New Zealand.
What is SDG #4 about?
Sustainable Development Goal #4 seeks to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Targets under SDG #4 are focused on many areas including:
- ensuring that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education,
- ensuring equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university,
- substantially increasing the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship,
- eliminating gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations,
- ensuring that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.
It is clear that SDG #4 is people-centric in its approach, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills that further set them up for a successful life. With a core foundation of quality education, this can feed into success in other areas of sustainability including planet and profit, as people have the skills and knowledge to positively contribute to these areas.
Quality education has strong linkages to other SDG’s such as:
- #1 No Poverty – through providing skills and knowledge that can help break the cycle of poverty,
- #5 Gender Equality – through ensuring that there is equal access to education for men and women,
- #8 Decent Work and Economic Growth – through education being a foundation to acquiring decent work opportunities, and promoting economic growth through productivity,
- #12 Responsible Consumption and Production – through knowledge helping to promote sustainable development.
Why is SDG #4 important for agriculture?
Quality education is important for agriculture in many different ways, from ensuring that people have access to vocational and tertiary education, to skill development, to being able to contribute to the productivity of the sector, and so on.
Of the targets under SDG #4, one target that stood out to me as being of key importance for agriculture was ‘ensuring that all learners can acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development’.
Sustainable development is all about meeting the needs of today without compromising the needs of the future. It is about balancing the needs of people, planet and profit, also known as social, environmental and economic factors. Farming businesses are deeply connected to the intersections of social, environmental and economic, meaning that acquiring the knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development is an important part of running a farm business, as well as being important for the wider sector itself. Lifelong learning provides a way for farmers to continue to strive to promote sustainable development in the way that they approach their farming operations, both in the business and when working on the business.
At the core of education and lifelong learning is curiosity – something which farmers have plenty of. Being curious and gaining quality education for sustainable development is therefore really important for the future of our farming systems and for the people that run them.
Learning Tools for farmers
The Beef and Lamb Knowledge Hub is full of a wealth of information that can help farmers in all facets of their farming businesses, from people, to economics, to environment. Accessing this information has been made even easier with the launch of Bella – an AI (artificial intelligence) assistant that can help you to get the most out of the knowledge hub resources.
Bella works off questions that you ask and rounds up all the relevant information for you into an easy to access format, as well as providing links to furthers resources.
Bella can:
- summarise articles or resources
- find guides, factsheets and tools for your situation
- provide step-by-step help on common topics
- help create plans
- find local benchmarks from B+LNZ’s Farm Survey
Give Bella a go at https://beeflambnz.com/knowledge-hub/bella
There are many ways that farmers can learn from each other and one way that is increasingly used are online platforms. Quorum Sense have a dedicated community to sharing with, and learning from, other farmers when it comes to all things regenerative and biological farming. ‘The Dig’ is a space to share knowledge, skills and experiences, as well as ask and answer questions.
As well as ‘The Dig’, Quorum Sense has a toolbox of lots of resources and knowledge that farmers can access.
For more on ‘The Dig’ head to https://www.quorumsense.org.nz/the-dig-online-community
Sustainability is everything that enables your farm to be successful long-term. This course walks you through building that ‘stuff’ into a plan.
Sustainability and Your Farm provides a great opportunity to clarify sustainability for farmers, and give back autonomy, in a self-paced approach. Not only is this course great education and insight into sustainable development, but it is practical and made by farmers for farmers.
From this course you will get:
- Clarity about what sustainability means on your farm,
- Confidence that foundation business plans are in place,
- Insights into your very own farm business values,
- A Sustainability Stocktake for the farm,
- The opportunity to celebrate success, and
- A tailor made plan to achieve your goals for the next 6-12 months.
For more on this course and to sign up, head to https://mailchi.mp/6cfbfd2bcf31/sustainability-your-farm-online-course
Podcasts provide a great way for farmers to learn, particularly from other people in the industry. The Whole Story podcast is all about sustainable development, and with three seasons worth of content, there are plenty of learnings, insights, and shared knowledge for people to get their ears around.
There have been so many incredible guests so far, such as Myfanwy Alexander, Kane Brisco, Mavis Mullins, Resolution, Bridget Williams, Nick Gill, Sam the Trap Man, Julia Jones, and so many more!
These episodes are well worth a listen, whether you’re listening for the first time or going back for more!