Posts Tagged: innovation

Feeding grazing cattle seaweed cuts methane emissions by almost 40%

Findings offer solution for more climate-friendly cattle farming

Seaweed is once again showing promise for making cattle farming more sustainable. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that feeding grazing beef cattle a seaweed supplement in pellet form reduced their methane emissions by almost 40% without affecting their health or weight. The study was published Dec. 2 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This is the first study to test seaweed on grazing beef cattle in the world. It follows previous studies that showed seaweed cut methane emissions 82% in feedlot cattle and over 50% in dairy cows.

How much methane do cattle produce?

Livestock account for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest portion coming from methane that cattle release when they burp. Grazing cattle also produce more methane than feedlot cattle or dairy cows because they eat more fiber from grass. In the U.S., there are 9 million dairy cows and over 64 million beef cattle.

“Beef cattle spend only about three months in feedlots and spend most of their lives grazing on pasture and producing methane,” said senior author Ermias Kebreab, professor in the Department of Animal Science. “We need to make this seaweed additive or any feed additive more accessible to grazing cattle to make cattle farming more sustainable while meeting the global demand for meat.”

Difficulty in reducing methane emissions from cattle

Kebreab said that daily feeding of pasture-based cattle is more difficult than feedlot or dairy cows because they often graze far from ranches for long periods. However, during the winter or when grass is scarce, ranchers often supplement their diet.

For this study, researchers divided 24 beef steers (a mix of Angus and Wagyu breeds) into two groups: one received the seaweed supplement, and the other did not. Researchers conducted the 10-week experiment at a ranch in Dillon, Montana. Since these were grazing cattle, they ate the supplement voluntarily, which still resulted in a nearly 40% cut in emissions.

Most research studies to reduce methane emissions using feed additives have taken place in controlled environments with daily supplements. But Kebreab noted in the study that fewer than half of those methods are effective for grazing cattle.

“This method paves the way to make a seaweed supplement easily available to grazing animals,” said Kebreab. “Ranchers could even introduce the seaweed through a lick block for their cattle.”

Kebreab said pastoral farming, which includes large grazing systems, supports millions of people around the world, often in areas vulnerable to climate change. This study suggests a way to make cattle grazing better for the environment, while playing a role in fighting climate change.

A related article in the same PNAS issue highlights the need to improve the efficiency of livestock production in low- and middle-income countries using better genetics, feeding and health practices. UC Davis Professor and Cooperative Extension Specialist Alison Van Eenennaam, the article's author, said it is the most promising approach to meet the global demand for meat while limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Other authors of the seaweed study include UC Davis postdoctoral researchers Paulo de Méo Filho and John-Fredy Ramirez-Agudelo.

The research was supported by Matador Ranch in Dillon, Montana.

This article was first published on the UC Davis news site.

Virtual fencing ‘game-changer’ for ranchers grazing cattle

Tech can save ranchers time and benefit animals and land, becoming more viable

After the Caldor Fire destroyed seven miles of fencing on their cattle ranch in 2021, Leisel Finley and her family needed to replace the fence.

Finley, a sixth-generation rancher at Mount Echo Ranch in Amador County, said reconstruction costs were bid at $300,000 and would take at least a year to build, leaving the family without summer pasture and a herd of hungry cows to feed. Additionally, the U.S. Forest Service mandates that grazing be withheld for two years in postfire landscapes. This put the family in a difficult position.

While watching a recording of a California Cattlemen's Association meeting, Finley learned about a pilot program for virtual fencing. Desperate to find an alternative solution, she registered to try the livestock containment technology, which uses GPS enabled collars to monitor each animal's location in near real time.

Livestock producers can draw a perimeter on a map of their pasture using a laptop or smartphone application and send those instructions to the collar. The collar then uses audio and tactile cues to contain the animal in the area.

Eager to discover the short- and long-term benefits of virtual fencing, Finley turned to Scott Oneto, farm advisor, and Brian Allen, assistant specialist, from the University of California Cooperative Extension office in the Central Sierra. Since partnering with Oneto and Allen, Finley said she has come to understand and uncover more of the technology's potential.

The team has consistently observed the technology's value in integrating with and enhancing traditional livestock production systems across California. Though still in its early stages of development, the location tracking and containment system appears to provide time- and cost-savings that make it a game-changer for ranchers.

Ability to monitor location of animals in real time

Virtual fencing really stands out in its ability to monitor each animal's location in real time. During roundups, ranchers can use their smartphones to see their own location relative to their herd. The system can also send alerts if an animal crosses the virtual boundary or if a collar remains stationary for an extended period, potentially indicating that the animal is sick or that the collar has fallen off.

Rounding up cattle on large, forested grazing allotments can be challenging, as the process generally requires a group of people and many return trips to find every animal. Prior to virtual fencing, Finley and her father could gather about 85% to 90% of the herd in a week. Since using virtual fencing, Finley said one of their most recent roundups lasted three days, and they located every single cow.

Something that every livestock producer dreads is the notorious call from a neighbor or California Highway Patrol alerting them that one of their cows is out in the middle of the road. It always seems to happen at midnight or while they are out with friends or family. This scenario changes with virtual fencing.

Containment based on animal behavior

The containment system that virtual fencing is built on is based on animal behavior. When the animal crosses an invisible boundary, the collar emits an audio warning, prompting most animals to instinctively turn back into the desired area. If the animal doesn't respond, the collar delivers a mild electric pulse as a secondary deterrent.

Field trials by Oneto and Allen demonstrated the system's success. Recently, the team trained a herd of 37 cattle of mixed ages that had no previous exposure to virtual fencing. During the initial six-day training period, the cattle responded to the audio warning alone about 75% of the time when they approached a virtual fence boundary, with the remaining 25% of cases requiring an electric pulse.

After about three weeks, the herd was responding to audio cues alone about 95% of the time. The field trials also showed that the collars contain the livestock within the desired areas 90% to 99% of the time when the entire herd wears virtual fence collars and their basic needs for safety, connection to the rest of the herd, water, forage, shade, etc. are met.

Opportunities for improvement

While the technology is effective in its current capacity, there are notable areas where it can improve. One limitation to the system is the current reliance on cellular networks to operate. If an animal wanders into an area outside of coverage, the collar will continue to operate based on the last instructions but won't receive updates or report locations. This is especially a concern in many areas of California with poor cell reception, including the steep forested rangelands where many livestock producers have summer grazing allotments.

Another limitation is that some companies require a solar-powered base station with radio and cellular antennas to be placed on the pasture. These facilitate the transfer of animal locations and updates to the virtual fences. A base station going offline would create the same conditions as a drop in cell signal until the base station is repaired. Some companies are currently developing collars that bypass the need for these base stations.

The other major concern for ranchers is the cost for a virtual fencing system. The average rancher can expect to pay an estimated $20,000 to $30,000 in upfront costs. The cost to set up a base station alone is $5,000 to $10,000. However, this cost is highly dependent on several factors, including the manufacturer, the number of livestock to be collared, if the livestock are large or small ruminants, and the number of GPS base stations to cover the range.

According to Allen and Finley, the high cost of virtual fencing can be offset by the unique animal and land management benefits it can provide. “While physical perimeter fencing remains essential, VF is rapidly emerging as an innovative tool to control livestock with ease, precision, and flexibility in ways that were not previously feasible with traditional fencing,” Allen said.

Finley described the technology as a “game-changer” for her family.

Virtual fencing helps control invasive grasses, installing fuel breaks

While virtual fencing is designed to contain livestock without physical fencing, it is not intended to outright replace secure perimeter fencing. Instead, it operates best as a highly dynamic and adaptable cross-fence, allowing for more intentional grazing on the landscape to meet livestock production and natural resource conservation objectives within a secure physical perimeter.

With grant funding from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the UCCE team continues to work with Finley and other livestock producers to test these applications on California's diverse rangelands.

Within the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges foothills, these trials include using virtual fencing on cattle for targeted grazing of invasive grasses to support the recovery of native forage and installing fuel breaks within the wildland-urban interface to remove vegetation where the edge of a pasture meets urban housing.

Using virtual fencing, 25 cattle were successfully concentrated on a field of Medusahead (Elymus caput-medusae), an invasive annual grass. The herd respected the virtual fencing boundary 99% of the time despite nearby preferable forage. Grazing reduced medusahead seed heads from 2,072 per square meter in the ungrazed control area to just 68 per square meter in the grazed section.

In a different trial, 37 cattle with virtual fencing collars were contained within 120-feet-wide fuel breaks along the boundary of an annual rangeland and residential area. Cattle stayed within the boundaries 99% of the time, leading to an 81% reduction in fine fuel biomass and lowering wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface.

Within rangelands on conifer forests, these UCCE trials concentrate cattle on brush to reduce the flammable plants and vegetation that competes with desirable timber species. It also can prevent livestock from entering sites that are sensitive to livestock presence.

Upcoming grazing trials will focus on how virtual fencing works with goats and sheep. In addition to Oneto and Allen, UCCE's contribution to virtual fencing research is in large part due to Leslie Roche, UCCE specialist and associate professor at UC Davis, Dan Macon and Jeff Stackhouse, UCCE livestock and natural resources advisors, Kristina Horback, associate professor at UC Davis and Lone Star Ranch in Humboldt County.

To learn more about the trials led by the UCCE team,visit https://cecentralsierra.ucanr.edu/Virtual_Fencing/ 

Students design high-tech solutions through Farm Robotics Challenge

Award-winning teams announced at FIRA USA robotics conference

A robot that navigates and weeds row-crop fields – and its design team from Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts – have garnered the grand prize in the second annual Farm Robotics Challenge. Five winning teams, representing various universities and colleges across the U.S., were announced on Oct. 24 during a ceremony at the FIRA USA robotics conference in Woodland (watch recording).

A total of nine teams competed in the Farm Robotics Challenge, organized by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources and the AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems (AIFS), with support from technology partner farm-ng.

During the yearlong contest, the students engaged with growers about their pain points and challenges and then developed creative solutions using the farm-ng Amiga robot platform.

“It's inspiring to see the creativity and dedication of these students, who put in a lot of hard work and long hours to pull together some truly remarkable projects for this competition,” said Gabriel Youtsey, chief innovation officer at UC ANR. “We hope the challenge attracts more students to consider careers in agriculture; we're here to help build a supportive community to grow that pipeline to the workforce.”

Providing a platform for students to demonstrate innovative design, field testing and evaluation, and real-world problem solving, the Farm Robotics Challenge is sponsored by F3 Innovate, Beck's Hybrids, California Tomato Research Institute and the United Soybean Board.

“It's a great day when engineers, marketing and technology folks understand there are great opportunities to create products for American farmers,” said Brad Fruth, director of innovation at Beck's Hybrids. “It has been exciting for Beck's Hybrids to participate in this challenge and see the bleeding edge of where technology and agriculture converge.” 

The student teams leveraged AI, machine learning, automation, coding and fabrication to advance innovation in agriculture.

“Not only does the challenge demonstrate the future of farming with robotics, but it's also encouraging the next generation of engineers to focus their talents on the challenges that exist in growing our food,” said Brendan Dowdle, CEO of farm-ng. “The students who participate have a unique mix of skills in robotics, software and a passion for the future of agriculture.”

Grand Prize Winner: PhoenixBot, Olin College of Engineering, an autonomous mechanical weeding systembuilt to navigate through row-based crop fields of seedling to early-stage crops to effectively remove weeds from the beds

Team Advisor: Kenechukwu Mbanisi

Students:

Summer Crew/Leads: Jeffrey Woodyard, Dokyun Kim, AJ Evans, Toby Mallon, Brooke Moss

Subteam Leads: Dexter Friis-Hecht, Joe Leedy, Maya Adelman, Dominic Salmieri, Chang Jun Park, Akshat Jain

Team Members: Bill Le, Dongim Lee, Felix Halaska, Bhargavi Deshpande, Elisa Camacho, Cooper Penkava, Marcellus Smith, Rohan Bendapudi, Darian Jiminez, Ivy Mahncke, Quinn Verrill, Sam Wisnoski, Oscar Bao, Mia Chevere, Shauna Sperou

Excellence in Productivity: Florabot, Auburn University, a robot designed to autonomously navigate through nursery plant beds collecting imagery data for plant counting and quality assessment

Team Advisor: Tanzeel Rehman

Students: Hamid Syed, Faraz Ahmad, Mesbahul Maruf, Mohtasim Hadi, Carter Freeman

Excellence in Small Farms Technology: Bin Haulers, Washington State University & Heritage University, a precision agricultural robotic system designed for efficient bin-picking and placement in apple orchards

Team Advisors: Manoj Karkee, Safal Kshetri

Students: Dawood Ahmed, Syed Usama Bin Sabir, Divyanth L.G., Priyanka Upadhyaya, Achyut Paudel, Robert Barragan, Apol Medrano, Osmar Alvarez, Bethany Navaroo, Salvador Ayala

Excellence in Sustainability: TAMU-NCSU Robotics Team, Texas A&M University & North Carolina State University, a multi-modal proximal data collection system utilizing artificial intelligence to generate height maps for semi-structured row crop fields to aid in effective application of post-emergence herbicide

Team Advisors: Steven Brian Mirsky, Chris Reberg-Horton, Muthu Bagavathiannan

Students: Joe Johnson, Matthew Kutugata, Ruthvik Kanumuri, Wesley Hawkes, Jonathan Herrera, Luke Conran, Sebastian Chu

Excellence in Safety: University of California Santa Cruz, an application that allows a user to view the camera, as well as operate the Amiga robot, without a physical connection

Team Advisors: Dejan Milutinovic, Darryl Wong

Students: Katherine Rogacheva, Milos Suvakovic, Oliver Fuchs, Sam Leveau, Mauricio Chavez

In addition to recognition for their efforts, the Grand Prize Winner was awarded $10,000, and the Excellence in Productivity and Small Farms Technology winners won $5,000 each, while the Excellence in Sustainability and Safety winners won $2,500 each.

Other competitors in the challenge included teams from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, California State University Fresno, Hartnell College and The Pennsylvania State University. 

For more information about the Farm Robotics Challenge, including details on how to participate, visit https://farmroboticschallenge.ai.

Partners unveil first on-farm robotics incubators

Opening in Salinas and Merced in 2025, Reservoir Farms will drive ag innovations in automation robotics

The Reservoir, a nonprofit building tech incubators across California, and partners Western Growers Association, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Merced College, Hartnell College and venture capital firm HawkTower have announced the creation of the first-ever on-farm robotics incubators, Reservoir Farms.

Unveiled during a press conference at the FIRA USA 2024 robotics conference in Woodland, Reservoir Farms are set to open in the Central and Salinas Valleys in early 2025. This pioneering initiative significantly shifts how agricultural technology innovates through real-world testing environments, world-class resources and critical industry partnerships.

California agriculture faces critical challenges, including labor availability and cost, import competition, increased regulation, water scarcity, and climate-related challenges, including extreme weather. These challenges have spurred significant advancements in agricultural precision, automation, mechanization, and robotics in recent years.

Despite advancements, early-stage agtech projects lack critical ecosystem support, like connecting directly with growers, testing and validating their solutions, and accessing dedicated shop space and farmland. These gaps hinder capital efficiency and the development of critical solutions that meet the agricultural sector's needs.

Initial projects at the incubators will focus on early-stage agricultural innovations in automation and robotics, including rovers and drones, that accelerate the development of breakthrough solutions to the opportunities and imperatives faced by California farms producing high-value specialty crops, such as labor shortages, profitability, and adopting climate-smart technologies.

Western Growers Association, a key advocate for advancing agricultural innovation, will provide financial and operational support as an anchor partner.

Anchor educational partners like UC ANR, Hartnell College, and Merced College will play a crucial role in innovation and workforce development, preparing the next generation of agricultural researchers, professionals, and innovators to drive the future of farming in California.

HawkTower, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups developing breakthrough innovations for California's environmental and industrial imperatives, is also an anchor partner.

“The launch of Reservoir Farms is a critical step forward in ensuring the future resilience of California's agriculture and across the Central Coast and Central Valley,” said Danny Bernstein, CEO of the Reservoir and managing partner of HawkTower. “By placing incubators directly on the farm, we enable innovators to test, iterate, and scale solutions in real-world conditions as a more immediate path to advance farming communities.”

A new model to incubate agtech innovation

The idea for Reservoir Farms emerged from extensive industry research and consultations with over 50 organizations in the specialty crop sector. Key insights uncovered critical gaps in startups' access to real-world testing environments, shop space, and direct relationships with growers – factors severely hindered capital efficiency and posed a formidable barrier to innovation.

“Our goal is to eliminate the friction points that have historically slowed down the development of new agtech solutions,” said Walt Duflock, senior vice president of innovation at Western Growers Association. “Reservoir Farms offers a new model, where startups can work side-by-side with growers to test their technologies, iterate in a low-stakes environment, and build scalable solutions to improve agriculture's operations.”

Initiative to support thriving agtech ecosystem and job creation

The Reservoir Farms initiative also reflects a broad-based collaboration between key educational institutions, industry players, and local communities to ensure the next generation of agricultural professionals is equipped with the skills needed to support the region's growing agtech sector.

Supporting partners include Central Coast Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action (COPA), Digital NEST, Farmhand Ventures, Merced County Farm Bureau, Milano Technical Group, Monterey Bay DART (Drone Automation & Robotics Technology), Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, Monterey County Farm Bureau, Tesserakt Ventures, and The VINE.

“As robotics and automation become more integral to California agriculture, it's essential to have facilities like Reservoir Farms embedded within the farming community,” said Gabriel Youtsey, chief innovation officer at UC ANR. “By bridging the gap between lab-based research and real-world application and accelerating tech transfer, Reservoir Farms can help build the workforce and technology needed to address the critical challenges on the farm, from labor shortages to climate change.”

Focus on specialized services and real-world testing in California's agricultural heartland

Reservoir Farms will open its first two locations in Salinas Valley and Merced in the first quarter of 2025. Participants can lease testing fields and shop space without the burden of multi-year leases, giving them the flexibility needed to scale. The incubators will offer fully equipped R&D workshops, secure storage for expensive equipment, and customized, pre-planted specialty crop fields for testing.

These facilities will be complemented by Reservoir Farms' co-working spaces, meeting rooms, and a robust demo day schedule designed to connect startups with growers, investors, and other key stakeholders.

In addition, the Western Growers Association's validation process will provide startups with a quantitative “scorecard” that offers crucial metrics on scalability, efficacy, and financial viability. This validation, combined with UC ANR's field testing, will help startups refine their products and receive a critical stamp of approval that builds trust with growers and ensures a smoother path to commercialization.

Media Contact:

Jennifer Goldston
AgTech PR for the Reservoir
816-260-0040
jennifer@agtechpr.com

New 4-H director to youth: ‘You are worthy and you are valuable’

Holmes brings a lifetime of service, mentorship to California 4-H program

Growing up in rural Alabama, Kimberly Sinclair Holmes – the new statewide director of California 4-H – experienced firsthand the enduring value of youth development programs in a limited-resource environment.

From first grade through seventh, Holmes participated in a summer program hosted by nearby Tuskegee University, a historically Black land-grant university. Every day, Holmes would play sports like kickball and softball, enjoy craft projects, and strengthen the English and math skills she learned in school.

“We didn't necessarily have all the amenities you might have in a more urban setting, so the program allowed us to socialize with friends and keep relatively up-to-date on our skills,” Holmes explained. “We learned something new each week, too.”

In her new role overseeing 4-H across the most populous state in the U.S., Holmes said she aims to ensure that those types of invaluable opportunities are available to all young people. Affiliated with the nationwide youth development program, 4-H in California engages approximately 58,000 youth each year and is administered by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“My emphasis is – and will be – on ensuring that every youth in the state of California knows what 4-H is – and how to connect in whatever way is meaningful for them, whether in the traditional club setting, an expanded learning or after-school program, one-day events or online activities,” said Holmes, who started in her director position in July.

Holmes' past shapes her path

As a child, Holmes, whose paternal grandfather was a sharecropper in the Deep South, helped her family grow fruits and vegetables in their garden – that is, when she and her siblings weren't romping through the countryside on the outskirts of Tuskegee, a small town near Montgomery, the capital of Alabama.

“We were either chasing the chickens and turkeys, or the chickens and turkeys were chasing us, depending on the day,” she laughed.

The youngest of eight children, Holmes said she was very much a “daddy's girl” who loved to watch her father tinker with the family automobiles, in the shade of a leafy tree on sweltering 100-degree days.

Holmes' early interest in mechanics and her fix-it mentality shaped her initial academic and career pursuits. After graduating from Tuskegee University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, she worked as a product systems engineer in the auto industry for about seven years.

As a young professional in Kokomo, Indiana, Holmes got involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters. She was paired with a “little sister” – appropriately named Destiny – and Holmes' experiences helping Destiny navigate the challenges in her life demonstrated the impact that mentorship can have on young people.

“Growing up in a limited-resource rural environment, I was always aware of and tuned into whether the young people coming behind me would have the same opportunities, and the extent to which I might be able to help them,” Holmes said. “The more I received mentoring from professionals who were helping to shape my career, the more compelled I felt to pass that along – to help other young people figure it out.”

After conversations with colleagues and self-reflection on how to make a difference in society, Holmes pivoted from engineering car parts to engineering programs in higher education. She took an administrative job at the University of Texas, Dallas, where she would serve as assistant dean in the School of Engineering and Computer Science, as well as an advisor to five different student organizations on campus.

For that service, Holmes received an award for mentoring from the National GEM Consortium, whose mission is to provide financial support to persons from underrepresented groups who pursue graduate degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-related fields.

Holmes was on her way to a new career in guiding young people through school and life.

Continuing a family legacy of youth service, mentorship

Looking back, Holmes said it was influential elementary school teachers and her own parents who showed her the immense value of a career helping and serving others. Holmes' parents were involved in several ministries and managed a gospel singing group that traveled all over the South.

Following her parents' example, Holmes joined a youth ministry as an undergraduate in college, where she first began talking with local youth about their challenges, frustrations, aspirations and dreams.

“I saw so many young people struggling with their identity and what they could do as a career.  It really troubled me that they were struggling as much as they were,” Holmes said. “I asked myself, ‘What are you doing to help them figure it out?' That's really where it started.”

All along her professional and academic path, Holmes continued to serve as a mentor and guide by having difficult conversations about setting and realizing life goals. After attaining her Ph.D. in public policy/administration from UT Dallas, she progressed through a series of administration roles at higher-education institutions throughout the South.

Holmes eventually landed at Alabama A&M University, where she was serving as assistant Extension director and a 4-H state program leader in the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, prior to joining UC ANR.

A vision for the future of youth development

Like her “shade-tree mechanic” father, Holmes still enjoys tinkering in her free time. She will also apply her engineer's perspective to optimizing 4-H programs in California, which offer young people hands-on experiences on everything from animal sciences to robotics, and from fine arts to programming languages.

While praising the “phenomenal team” of UC Cooperative Extension advisors and educators and 4-H support staff, Holmes will also be looking to build on their innovations.

“There are several strategies you would use to improve, measure and improve efficiencies in an engineering system; but there are also several strategies and processes you would use to measure and improve systems in an organization,” Holmes said. “I think what I bring uniquely to this role is the ability to see and integrate those strategies for even greater organizational effectiveness and growth.”

After listening to and learning from her team across the state, Holmes is eager to develop and calibrate new ways to reach more young people – as the benefits of 4-H are needed more than ever. The concerns of youth she has heard throughout her career are even more pronounced and pressing now.

“It's something I worry about constantly, especially post-pandemic – the data about how our young people are struggling with having positive images of themselves and hope for the future,” Holmes said. “There's a lot of despondency; there's a lot of anxiety; there's the issue of chronic absenteeism; and the number of youth who have now reported a diagnosed mental health disorder is alarmingly high.”

Aside from the myriad life and work skills that 4-H activities can teach young people, participation in 4-H also helps them see, for themselves, their intrinsic worth as a person – outside of external influences such as social media. A sense of belonging within a supportive community, like the one that 4-H cultivates, can guide young people to that truth.

“I want to be absolutely certain you know that you are worthy and you are valuable – you have something to offer, and there's something unique and special about you,” Holmes said. “You have unique gifts and talents that only you can exercise in the world. Because only you can exercise them in the world, it's critically important that – before you give up, give in or give out when the pressures of life weigh on you – you have people around you who will help you through those difficult moments.”

Holmes believes that when communities create spaces in which all youth feel a sense of belonging and are able to connect their interests and abilities with possible careers, young people will make significant progress towards reaching their full potential.

“This achievement will then contribute to a greater quality of life for the youth, as well as communities statewide,” she said.

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