MONTHLY LUNCHEON

THE GRADUATE UNION

presents

Speaker: Dr David Smith AM.

Topic: Green Myths About Australian

Farming

Dr David F Smith AM, FAIAST and Medal of Australian Agriculture

Dr David Smith has filled just about every conceivable role in rural life, across sectors, at all levels, locally and internationally. His consuming passion is agriculture and the needs of the people working in it as land managers. Thus he is well placed to comment on the realities of Australian agriculture, from a very wide range of viewing points.

A dairy farm boy, David attended a small one-teacher school of 10 students and a high school of 100 and then studied agricultural science at the University of Adelaide.  He has taught agriculture on the remote Eyre Peninsula, been a district agronomist in the south-east of South Australia., and joined the Agriculture School of the University of Melbourne.

He left Melbourne in the 1970s and established a CAE, later a university campus, in Launceston, Tasmania.  He returned again to Victoria as Director-General of Agriculture and, in due course, was a key player in the national Rural R&D schemes, chairing the Cotton R&D Body, introducing genetically modified cotton.

He has owned farms, been a rural Shire councillor, and a member of Landcare and the Farmers Federation.

David has travelled and worked widely in developing countries, represented Australia at The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and been involved in rural development projects in Africa.