Narelle Zanker Wins National Award for Rural Women in Australia

South Australian dairy farmer and former educator Narelle Zanker has been named the national winner of the prestigious AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award at an event held at Parliament House in Canberra. She received the honor for her innovative leadership through Dairy Adventures, an agri-tourism and agricultural education initiative based on her family’s commercial farm near Mannum.

Dairy Adventures uses the farm’s working dairy sheds and calf paddocks as interactive learning spaces, helping visitors better understand modern farming, food production and animal welfare. The initiative also aims to bridge the growing gap between urban communities and rural industries by offering direct insight into agricultural practices.

The venture operates across the family’s 4,000-acre mixed farming and dairy property, where around 300 cows are milked through year-round calving. Visitors can observe mechanized milking and calf rearing while learning about the farm’s biosecurity measures and day-to-day operations.

Key Highlights:

• Narelle has won the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Award for her Dairy Adventures initiative
• The initiative brings urban communities closer to dairy farming through hands-on educational experiences
• A $35,000 grant will support accessible farm facilities and new digital learning resources

Following four years of classroom teaching, Narelle combined both pedagogical approaches with farm activities, allowing groups from the cities, early childhood programs, and retirees to experience commercial milk production on site. In its first year, the enterprise engaged more than 1,200 consumers, demonstrating strong consumer interest in learning experiences that are transparent from paddock to plate.

The national award offers essential funding for expanding educational outreach beyond the farm-gate tour model by leveraging specialized digital tools and design and enabling educators of all backgrounds. The project will use a $35,000 cumulative Westpac development grant to increase the physical access of the working farm pathways to make it accessible for all physical capabilities.

Further, development plans involve the delivery of a virtual classroom curriculum with industry groups such as Dairy Australia and the publication of educational children's literature to help spread operational dairy knowledge into metropolitan classrooms across the country.

The need to restore consumer confidence via on-farm engagement in a transparent manner is becoming a critical strategic weapon for primary dairy farmers under increased public pressure. In these models, animal welfare and "parlor hygiene" and environmental management are also highlighted, making commercial dairying understandable to younger generations who are not directly connected to the farm's food source.

Positive and tangible relationships between urban consumers and primary milk producers can enhance social license, and support tourism in the rural dairy catchments.

Promoting women's entrepreneurial leadership in commercial farming highlights the modernization of farming enterprises. Multi-enterprise farm configurations improve overall enterprise resilience and offer potential succession plans for new generations.

Supporting grassroots projects that demonstrate the science, investment and discipline that supports dairy production will help the broader dairy industry remain well supported in the domestic market moving forward.