Putri Shafira
We last spoke with Bachelor of Agriculture alumni, Putri Shafira, in May of 2020 after she had completed a semester at Dookie Campus. Read more here. She recently visited Melbourne from Indonesia where she’s been working as a junior sourcing specialist (agriculture) with climate action company South Pole.
After graduating in mid 2021 and living in Indonesia, Putri applied for a job with South Pole, because they were looking for a person who is used to working in diverse environments, with an agriculture degree or another related science being required.
"My job is about sourcing agriculture projects that could generate carbon credits,” said Putri.
“They’re quite big scale projects where we can generate the credits and then we sell those credits in the international market and get funding to support the community with various developments.”
When asked about how her degree prepared her for her job, she explained that the kind of fundamental understanding obtained in the Bachelor of Agriculture has better enabled her to relate to the people she’s working with.
“It's not something that everyone can do. The general concepts in agriculture are useful and my friends that were doing economics or environmental engineering don't really understand the agriculture concepts. So when they talk to project partners, they can't relate to what's happening, that's the difference,” she said.
“At first I thought the only jobs I would be able to do were just going to be working on a farm or if we wanted to do an office job then it's just going to be working for fertilizer or agriculture equipment companies, but apparently no, we can actually go to into an agribusiness and environmental work, like me.
“I guess it's pretty diverse.
“Two of my friends from the course are working for Cann group, which manages cannabis plantations for research purposes and another friend is working for Cassinia, which is quite similar to my job being environmental related and using carbon credits. Three friends are working for Gallagher, the agriculture equipment company.
“And I know two of my friends are working for wineries, one in Yarra Valley and one in South Australia.”
Petri feels like the future of agriculture is sustainable agriculture.
“The agriculture sector in the environmental world is growing pretty fast. The international carbon standards have been really looking into agriculture methodologies, like stubble burning, methane avoidance in rice, or feed additives in cattle.”
Now seeing her future in the environmental sector, Petri wants to help reduce emissions from agriculture and plans on doing a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne.
Story by Ben Keirnan.