increase font size
Feds dairy chairman Chris Lewis and Primary ITO chief executive Linda Sissons at the launch.
The dairy industry has launched an ambitious scheme to encourage young New Zealanders to make careers on farms.
Spearheaded by Federated Farmers and the Primary ITO, with support from DairyNZ, iwi entities, dairy companies and others, the scheme will provide for dairy farming apprenticeships open only to New Zealanders.
The scheme is designed to achieve better working conditions than many young trainees have endured in the past, and to provide structured training and mentoring leading to a good qualification and excellent prospects.
A pilot programme launched online last week had within hours attracted expressions of interest from dozens of young people.
According to the head of Federated Farmers dairy section, Chris Lewis, the Dairy Apprenticeship Scheme is similar in many ways to the dairy farm cadet scheme that launched his dairy farming career 25 years ago.
He and others recalled similar experience and began discussions with the Primary ITO; so the new dairy apprenticeship scheme was conceived, Lewis says.
“When I went farming 25 years ago I lived in an outside room beside the boss’s house and I was very lucky that my boss’s wife was an ex chef so I was fed well and got other help. I was living with a family and being mentored by the farmer and eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with them.”
Lewis says a key to the success of the scheme will be a series of documents, including a charter, produced by Federated Farmers with DairyNZ which set out obligations for both employees and employers.
“It’s about getting better employment conditions onfarm and so the farm charter is recognising that the employer has a big part to play in the future success of the employee,” he says.
The guarantees in the charter and apprenticeship documents are intended to assure parents of youngsters considering the scheme that they will be well cared for and treated properly. He says in his own case the guarantees in the cadet scheme 25 years ago helped him get his parents’ support for his start in the industry.
The scheme is in response to calls to get more ‘Kiwi kids’ into farming and hire fewer migrant workers, Lewis says.
“The minister of immigration has said to us many times that you can’t keep relying on immigrants to fill the roles and so this is aimed at a local pool of Kiwi talent and making sure they are looked after and well trained and then, if need be, filling the gaps with migrants,” he says.
Lewis says the scheme will show the public that farmers are serious about treating staff well and will help them retain their social licence to farm.
And he says while young people today don’t expect to find a McDonalds or Burger King outlet in the middle of rural NZ, they do want to keep in touch with their friends via social media, hence the importance of fast rural broadband for recruiting youngsters.
The Government has announced it will pause key parts of Waikato Plan Change 1 (PC1) in a decision that is set to give Waikato farmers a reprieve from new consenting and farm-planning requirements while the wider resource management system is overhauled.
OPINION: In the 1980s, concern was expressed in West Germany about the falling birth rate. Some simple analysis was performed by Professor Helmut Sies, physician and biochemist at Dusseldorf University. His letter ‘A new parameter for sex education’ was published in Nature in 1988:
OPINION: Dairy farmers know better than anyone that change is constant.
OPINION: As the general election approaches, political parties are churning out policies in the hope of attracting more votes.
A four year trial has reaffirmed that mixing plantain into dairy pastures can help reduce nitrogen losses to freshwater while maintaining milk production and profitability, say researchers.
New Zealand consumers are paying more for beef mince than ever before, with the average retail price now sitting above $24 per kilogram, according to Rabobank.
State farmer Pamu has delivered its strongest operating result on record.
Four years since it was first detected in New Zealand, researchers and growers now know much more about management of maize pest fall armyworm (FAW).
The Government has announced it will pause key parts of Waikato Plan Change 1 (PC1) in a decision that is set to give Waikato farmers a reprieve from new consenting and farm-planning requirements while the wider resource management system is overhauled.
OPINION: The time has come for the Government to back the organic sector.
Celebrating 50 years in the rural landscape of Central Canterbury and beyond, Ashburton-based Carrfields, has been the exemplar for all aspects of modern agriculture via its extensive range of services including supply, growing, agronomic advice and marketing.
OPINION: After hogging the media limelight for telling a NZ Chinese MP to "go back home", Winston Peters has decided…
OPINION: With fuel prices soaring, one would have expected most farmers to be reclaiming excise duty on petrol.
