Green Limerick: Students to win €1k in agri-food competition

THE LIMERICK chairman of Agri Aware, has launched the environmentally focused transition year (TY) programme for secondary school students.

Croom's Shay Galvin has served as chairman of Agri Aware since May 2023.

This past week, Agri Aware and BiOrbic, a national bioeconomy research centre, have teamed up to launch their TY programme, Environmental Innovators, now in its third year.

The programme has been hugely successful since piloting in 2022, with over 9,000 students partaking in 2023.

Environmental Innovators gives students various challenges faced by global food systems and invites students to develop innovative solutions to tackle these challenges.

Students who register and submit a project are in with a chance of being crowned national champion and winning €1,000.

Speaking at the launch of the programme for the 2024-2025 academic year, Mr Galvin said: “The growth of the programme from students partaking, to the brilliant ideas students have delivered to meet the challenges this programme presents in the last two years has been nothing short of exceptional.

“With over 9,000 students registered to the programme in 2023, up on the 7,500 in its pilot year, we are really looking forward to growing it further.”

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This year’s programme sees a number of developments based on feedback from teachers and participants.

This includes the extension of the programme from 12 weeks to 24 weeks, which will give teachers and students more flexibility in terms of engaging in the programme throughout the course of the academic year.

Content from the programme will now also be available in presentation style format on the Agri Aware and BiOrbic websites and will be supported by the existing e-book, which has served as the main learning material for the programme since 2022.

“The changes to the programme in terms of the length of time it will be run over the academic year and altering the format the content is delivered aims to continue the growth of the programme and to bring to life even more amazing innovative solutions to problems that our global food system faces,” Mr Galvin concluded.

Echoing the comments of Mr Galvin was BiOrbic’s executive director, Derek O’Brien, who said: “The impressive growth in student participation demonstrates the commitment of the next generation to tackling the pressing environmental and food system related challenges.

“We look forward to seeing the transformative ideas that will emerge from this year’s participants.

“The future is in their hands, and we’re excited to support their journey towards a greener, more resilient future,” said Mr O'Brien,

Agri Aware is a charitable trust, whose mission is to enhance agricultural literacy amongst the general public, tasked with bridging the gap between producer and consumer

This is achieved through delivering high-impact educational and public awareness initiatives and projects for school students nationwide.

Across the globe, human consumption of natural resources has increased, with the demand for food. This means that the way our food gets from farm to fork must evolve to meet sustainability objectives.