Home > Student activities > National Maths Day > National Maths Day 2013 > Junior secondary activities > Your place in the world: Australia’s agriculture
Your place in the world: Australia’s agriculture
Did you know that Australia’s cows produce about 9 billion litres of milk each year, worth $4 billion? And that there are about 68 million sheep in Australia but only 22.3 million people?
What are the eight main 'commodities' (agricultural products) that Australia produces?
Begin with a class brainstorm on the sorts of agricultural products Australia produces. Which ones do students think would belong in the top eight?
Look at the entries for wheat on the Australia's agriculture: Student worksheet. What do you notice?
How can there be more exports of wheat in 2011 than wheat produced?
Challenge students to think about the actual process. Much of any annual wheat harvest goes into storage, and is used, or exported, in later years. Discuss the role of wheat silos in this. The assumption that everything produced in 2011 is either used in Australia or exported in 2011 is not justified.
What percentage of the total of each of the eight main commodities is used in Australia?
Students could work in groups to complete the percentage table on the worksheet. You may find it necessary to discuss the procedure for finding 100% from a given percentage (such as the case with dairy). A good way to start this is to use the lamb meat data as a teaching example.
50% of lamb meat is exported. So 50% is used in Australia. What is the total?
We need to multiply the $513 million by 2, which is the same as dividing by 50%.
Extension
Students can construct a 100% stacked bar graph to compare Australian use with exports. Here is an example created on Excel for the beef data.
The data used come from the booklet Farm Facts 2012 (5.5 MB PDF).
You can download the Australia's agriculture: Teacher notes which also include the solutions to the percentage table.
Australian Curriculum links
Year 6
Make connections between equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages (ACMNA131)
Interpret and compare a range of data displays, including side-by-side column graphs for two categorical variables (ACMSP147)
Interpret secondary data presented in digital media and elsewhere (ACMSP148)
Construct and compare a range of data displays including stem-and-leaf plots and dot plots (ACMSP170)
Year 7
Connect fractions, decimals and percentages and carry out simple conversions (ACMNA157)
Find percentages of quantities and express one quantity as a percentage of another, with and without digital technologies (ACMNA158)
Solve problems involving the use of percentages, including percentage increases and decreases, with and without digital technologies (ACMNA187)
