Rockhampton schools donates 600kg of oranges to Foodbank

Agricultural pupils from Rockhampton Grammar School are involved in all manner of land use studies from beef and sheep production to raising rare chickens.

Most of the produce is used in the school dining hall but any excess is donated rather than wasted and Foodbank was recently given 600 kilograms of oranges picked from the school farm at Port Curtis.

RELATED READING

RGS spokesman, Hardy Manser, said the gift was an easy as the choice of Foodbank as the recipient.

"Rocky Grammar is a very charitable school and we have a very integrated paddock-to-plate policy within our farm production in terms of what we use," Mr Manser said.

"The citrus we harvested was surplus to our needs and the students were very keen to donate to Foodbank, which helps over 100 families every week."

Mr Manser said RGS has put a greater focus on agricultural studies in the past five years and than 80 percent of its Year 8 cohort undertake the subject.

"Rocky Grammar has a proud history with agricultural education and it has gone from being a subject under science to where it is a stand alone subject and we have approximately 11 staff members between ag studies and home economics that work on fit and fibre education," he said.

"We also have 36 students enrolled in Cert III Agricultural Studies and we are very proud that we are helping produce the next generation of agricultural industry participants."

Besides the Port Curtis farm, RGS also has access to the Belmont Research Station on Rockhampton's northside outskirts.