Julia Mainx takes over Eisenstadt agricultural school

Julia Mainx has been appointed director of the Agricultural Vocational School in Eisenstadt, ORF reports. She is an experienced educator with many years of practical experience in agriculture, according to a statement from the office of Burgenland Deputy Governor Anja Haider-Wallner of the Greens.

Mainx has worked as a teacher and educator at the school since 2010. Before that, she gained experience in areas including fruit and vegetable production, agricultural machinery, nature and environmental protection, and wildlife and forest education. She has lived in Burgenland for 25 years and runs a small organic hobby farm.

Haider-Wallner said agricultural work was a profession with a future and required training that was both practical and forward-looking. Mainx, she said, was rooted in agriculture and had known the school for many years.

Mainx said she wanted to prepare students, with sound specialist knowledge and practical training, for major changes ahead in agriculture. This included understanding production and farm management as well as soil, nature, resources and the economics of running a farm. She said new demands were also creating career opportunities in areas such as climate and nature protection, landscape management, and nature and national parks. Agriculture and nature protection, she added, could complement one another.

The state is also launching AgriNEXT, a roughly year-long process to plan the future of agricultural vocational schools. It will examine how agricultural education in Burgenland can best respond to future challenges, including climate change, sustainability, digitalisation, innovative production methods and the needs of agricultural practice. The University College for Agrarian and Environmental Pedagogy in Vienna will provide scientific support for the project.