Robert Kinnear, HND Agriculture, Greenmount Campus

Robert Kinnear from Ballinamallard, County Fermanagh, is a first year student on the Higher National Diploma (HND) in Agriculture course at Greenmount Campus. Robert explains his background in agriculture education and IT:

“I have been at CAFRE for a few years now and I have already completed my National Diploma in Agriculture. I spent a year working and travelling in New Zealand and Australia to see a bit more of the world and how they farm down there before returning to start my HND.

Computers and IT have always been a part of my school and college life, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert user. I have never really been into Play Stations or Xboxes like some of my class mates though I would use the internet and email.

When I’m at home I work on my uncle’s 60 cow dairy farm. Three or four years ago we were introduced to APHIS Online. I was a student at CAFRE at the time and I had heard about APHIS Online in one of my classes although hadn’t followed it up. Our local CAFRE Dairy Development Adviser spoke to our farmers group and told us the benefits of using the internet instead of DARD paper forms; less paperwork, reduced errors and quicker registrations.

He told us that APHIS Online is DARD’s animal registration and information portal, giving farmers secure access to their herd information and allowing them to register changes to their herd without having to visit or post paperwork to the local Divisional Veterinary Office (DVO).

This sounded like a great idea. Anything that saves time and effort must be a good thing. We now register births and deaths, look at our herd list and even move cattle in and out of our herd using the online system. The PC that we use for it only has a dial-up internet connection which is fine for now, but we hope to upgrade to broadband in the near future.

We have recently had another APHIS Online class at Greenmount to show us some improvements to the system, to encourage more students to apply the practical IT training from CAFRE at home on the farm.”

CAFRE HND Agriculture student Robert Kinnear using APHIS Online at Greenmount Campus

HND Agriculture students being shown the benefits of APHIS Online by IT lecturer Aidan Shore during an IT class at Greenmount Campus