QRC students place second at NASEF Farmcraft 2025

Trinidad and To­ba­go se­cured 2nd place in the Se­nior Di­vi­sion of the in­ter­na­tion­al NASEF Farm­craft 2025 Glob­al Com­pe­ti­tion, mark­ing the coun­try’s high­est fin­ish in the event. The com­pe­ti­tion was host­ed by the Net­work of Aca­d­e­m­ic and Scholas­tic Es­ports Fed­er­a­tions and used the Minecraft Ed­u­ca­tion plat­form to in­te­grate agri­cul­ture, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.

Rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go were two Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege stu­dents, Saleem De­venish, 14, and Shiloh Atwell, 13. The pair com­pet­ed against more than 25,000 stu­dents from 73 coun­tries. The re­sult was an­nounced on De­cem­ber 10.

Prepa­ra­tion for the com­pe­ti­tion be­gan in April, when the stu­dents en­tered the Pre-Farm­craft Chal­lenge. They were re­quired to de­sign a sus­tain­able farm and forestry sys­tem based on en­vi­ron­ments found in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Their prepa­ra­tion in­clud­ed on­line col­lab­o­ra­tion through What­sApp, re­search on the agri­cul­tur­al theme “Land De­mand”, and test­ing lay­outs with­in Minecraft Ed­u­ca­tion.

Guid­ance was pro­vid­ed by NASEF Af­fil­i­ate Di­rec­tor for Trinidad and To­ba­go and SEs­port Di­rec­tor Ak­il O’Con­nor. He of­fered tech­ni­cal sup­port, ed­u­ca­tion­al co­or­di­na­tion, and as­sis­tance with com­pe­ti­tion re­quire­ments.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Farm­craft com­pe­ti­tion for three con­sec­u­tive years. In 2023, the coun­try placed 25th out of 8,500 par­tic­i­pants from 59 coun­tries. In 2024, the coun­try placed 68th and 77th out of 12,000 par­tic­i­pants from 62 coun­tries. The 2025 re­sult marks a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment.

Favourites to win this year’s event in­clud­ed teams from Chile and South Ko­rea. Japan placed 1st, Trinidad and To­ba­go placed 2nd, and South Ko­rea placed 3rd.

In a state­ment, Af­fil­i­ate Di­rec­tor O’Con­nor said the re­sult was a pos­i­tive mo­ment for the stu­dents and for the coun­try. He not­ed the val­ue of tech­nol­o­gy-based learn­ing and en­cour­aged greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in Farm­craft 2026 from lo­cal schools and stu­dents.