Agricultural Tours Riverina Coronavirus Preparedness

03/08/2020

Agricultural Tours Riverina remains active during the COVID 19 hiatus and looks forward to helping you design educational tours ready to be conducted as soon as circumstances permit.

Schools Newsletter July 2020

BE PREPARED

Ensure your students can begin visits to farms, factories and infrastructure sites as soon as public health directives and school policies allow.  Agricultural Tours Riverina is in the process of designing tours for three NSW schools, to be conducted at the earliest possible time.  We can negotiate terms of business to protect your school in the event of renewed local or wider lockdowns.  Our website has a tour request form or you can contact us directly at riverineagtours@gmail.com or on 0419 407 804.

AGRICULTURAL TOURS RIVERINA IS A COVID19 – PREPARED TOURS BUSINESS

This document describes our COVID19 preparedness.  If you see difficulties or gaps in our Plan relating to your school’s special requirements please let us know and we’ll make every attempt to conform to your circumstances.

ACTIONS

  1. Ask managers of all sites to be visited and all services to be used as part of each itinerary to outline what measures they have taken to minimize the spread of COVID 19 and assess responses.
  2. Take note of directives and advice from appropriate health authorities about local lockdowns and other matters.
  3. Ensure a central list is kept of names and addresses of all participants on a tour.
  4. Provide sufficient quantities of hand sanitizer/sanitized wipes and face masks, appropriate to each tour group and itinerary.
  5. Maintain social distancing of 1.5 metres wherever possible.  Where social distancing cannot be maintained, ensure its lack for the shortest duration necessary.
  6. Where groups must assemble at any site being visited ensure where possible they assemble in the open air or in covered but not enclosed spaces.
  7. Exclude from tours clients who are unwell and avoid visits to sites where managers or staff are unwell.
  8. When catering is provided by ATR, avoid self service or buffet style meals.
  9. Ensure regular sanitization of shared equipment – eg hand-held UHF radios – and shared hard surfaces.

Agricultural Tours Riverina has always been conscious of hygiene and safety.  Our awareness is a requirement of site managers for reasons of biosecurity, animal (and staff) welfare and food safety.  Well before COVID 19 we kept a store of face masks, ear plugs, hair nets and gloves and had ready access to overshoes and overgowns for our client groups visiting food processing sites, for instance.  Extending our efforts to cover extra precautions required by the pandemic is consistent with our ongoing culture of care.

VIDEOS ARE GOOD.  VIRTUAL REALITY IS BETTER.  PHYSICAL VISITS ARE BEST.

There’s nothing like the experience of real sounds, sights, smells and different surfaces to make learning stick in the minds of students.  Screens are good – but reality is so much better.   Seeing actual farming and processing allows for much greater retention of information and appreciation of the wider context by your students.   And there is nothing like an overnight excursion, and the prospect of it, to improve classroom dynamics.