THERE may be many farm-bred youth who leave home for other careers and never return to the farm, but not Emily Mosely.
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She has her eyes squarely set on returning home to the farm after gaining tertiary and industry experience.
The eldest of Andrew and Megan Mosely's two daughters, Emily finished Year 12 at Kinross Wolaroi School, Orange, last year and is working a gap year at home on the family's 26,500 hectare Etiwanda Station, 85 kilometres south of Cobar.
While growing up, seeing and experiencing the on-farm work with her parents, Emily watched and learnt from their work on genetic improvement of their Etiwanda White Dorper stud and commercial flock using computer technology, breeding values, electronic identification, scanning and in recent times genomic and DNA testing.
It's all led Emily to an Agricultural Business Management degree next year at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga.
"My long-term goal after completing my degree is to possibly take up work in corporate ag, or within an agribusiness for a few years. Beyond that, my aspiration is to return home and eventually take over the operation of Etiwanda," she said.
"I'm always looking for opportunities as to where I may end up after uni, and recognise the shortage of skilled people in agriculture, which to me presents a big opportunity to leave a mark." She had always felt involved with the family business.
"I try to give things as much of a go as I can, mum and dad have always encouraged that."
Mid-year, Emily completed a seven day Grazing and Farming for Profit course with Resource Consulting Service, which she said, was an intensive course on grazing and farm management tailored toward business management within the agricultural industry.
"This really honed my key values and goals for the future and definitely cemented my passion for agriculture and my goal to end up back on the farm. I think most importantly it called attention to the ways I can be profitable while doing the job that I love."
During the September/October stud sheep and cattle selling season, Emily gained a month's casual work with the Dubbo Landmark stud stock team.
"John Settree, Brad Wilson and their team took me on board and I filled some of the stock work associated with major stud sales, which was a tremendous experience," she said.
Etiwanda Station normally runs a 10-16,000 dry sheep equivalent (DSE), however, the drought has cut that back to about 9000 DSE as the family runs their 1000 Etiwanda stud ewes and 1500 ewe commercial flock, plus a 200 head Red Angus-cross beef herd, along with a bush goat enterprise.
