A Japanese agricultural student exchange program is looking for farmstay hosts in Eastern Australia for two young students for a month from late August this year.

For the past few years (suspended during COVID, but re-activated last year) two young Japanese university students studying agricultural science at the Meiji University have visited Australia for a month-long farm visit under the program (See Beef Central’s earlier report in this People on the Move column).

The purpose is to provide students from the university’s Department of Agriculture with the opportunity to learn about and experience Australian livestock production, lifestyle and other aspects through a homestay at an Australian livestock farm.

This year’s scheduled dates are around August 20 to Sept 18. For convenience of domestic travel purposes, locations on Queensland’s Darling Downs or northern NSW are preferred. The program could be broken into two, two-week blocks.

This year’s prospective students are Mei Negata (female) studying agricultural economics and Hiroaki Miyahara (male) studying biology and agricultural science. Neither have been to Australia previously, but have reasonable conversational English language. Ideally, the pair would stay at the same farm.

Under the program, the students bear the cost of travel to and from Australia, as well as transportation by bus, train or other means to a pick-up point for collection near the farm destination.

The idea is to give the students some exposure to day-to-day property operations, excluding dangerous work. The trainees report back on their experiences every three days to the program’s Japanese liaison officer, who will also liaise with the hosts.

The Japanese organisers stress that no ‘lavish hospitality’ for the trainees is necessary, but simply a chance to experience day-to-day Australian livestock production, and farm ‘way of life.’

Livestock property owners or managers interested in hosting one or both students should contact coordinator Taduharu (Bully) Khono via this email address:  aust_bull_kohno@kyj.biglobe.ne.jp