[caption id="attachment_4559" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
Alun Edwards[/caption]
County delegates to the Farmers' Union of Wales agricultural education and training committee have visited the Glynllifon campus of Coleg Meirion Dwyfor, near Caernarfon, as part of the committee's remit to maintain links with agricultural and land-based colleges across Wales.
Earlier, they re-elected Meirionnydd delegate Alun Edwards, who runs a mountain beef and sheep farm at Rhydymain, near Dolgellau, as committee chairman and were then taken on a tour of the facilities by Caernarfon delegate and Glynllifon campus development director Eurwyn Edwards.
The campus has recently secured £10.3m of funding to improve the facilities available to students. Some £2.3m of this money has been spent on refurbishing the Glanarfon building - where the meeting was held - and the student hostel.
The tour included a visit to the newly-built £8m "Learning Village" which houses a range of modern and up-to-date teaching facilities, classrooms, computer rooms and a library.
The new eco-friendly building has been designed to comply with the BREEAM Excellent standard (BREEAM sets the standard for best practice in sustainable building design, construction and operation) and makes use of solar voltaic panels, is heated using a biomass boiler and uses rainwater collection. This is all topped off with a roof covered in vegetation.
Great care was needed during the construction of the building to prevent the disturbance of a nearby roost of lesser horseshoe bats thought to be one of the largest in Europe.
While some minor completion works are still needed, mainly to the information technology and interactive teaching equipment, the building was open to students and was equipped with the latest technology and facilities.
The tour of the campus was concluded with a trip around the college farm including visits to the dairy farm, woodland areas, grazing fields and the site were the Urdd National Eisteddfod will be held in 2012.
FUW president Emyr Jones, who joined the delegates on the tour, said: "I was very much impressed by what I saw and heard.
"Thanks to this multi-million pound investment the campus now features a wide range of modern teaching aids designed to provide the next generation of young farmers with the vital skills they need to join our industry which must encourage new blood at every opportunity."
Gwent delegate Jenny Cockitt, of Duffryn, Llanellen, Abergavenny, was elected vice chairman of the committee.