Firstly we need to look at what we are trying to achieve. We need to have the young people of New Zealand believing that farming is the attractive career option it truly is. We also need to put our money where our mouth is by investing in education, science, research and innovation.
There are great stories of highly skilled people who have worked through the agricultural industry who now run multimillion dollar businesses on attractive salaries. These opportunities are available to anyone with the enthusiasm, intellect and discipline required to make it in the dairy industry, but we need sound education to get the right people into the industry. To do this we need to align the requirements and standards to fulfil job roles with the qualifications offered by primary industry training/education institutes.
Dairying offers a structured career path with clearly defined job descriptions and titles – farm assistant, herd manager and farm manager, to name a few. Few other industries are set up as well as dairying to offer support and salary packages for its workers to get ahead. Under the old cadet scheme we had the benefit of supporting the employers and employees onfarm through their first three years in the workforce. We need training organisations to be able to hand-pick suitable candidates through an interview process so that we get people with the right motivation from the start.
Primary ITO offers courses that need to be taught by qualified instructors and be matched to the levels of job descriptions as defined by Federated Farmers, Beef + Lamb NZ and DairyNZ. For example, levels 1, 2 and 3 could signal competence to farm assistant level, then level 4 could match basic herd manager and level 5 farm manager.
Forecasts are that by 2020 two-thirds of primary industry roles will demand a tertiary qualification. The challenge the figures throw up is how?
Right now there is a fundamental misalignment between where opportunity is and the courses we are graduating. Last year we graduated 20 more people with degrees in music than people with degrees in a primary industry discipline. Primary industry courses need to culminate in a more attractive and respected qualification to attract students as well as employers. The courses need to have a definitive pass/fail so that employers have confidence in the qualification, and the pass/fail must be made on the basis of a test rather than an open book assessment.
As a final check, the farm employer can sign off the student/employee on practical aspects relating to their farm work/skills. Achieving this will restore faith to farm employers in the training delivered and will bring integrity back to the system.
Dairy farms are multi-million dollar enterprises and cannot be a dumping ground for those who cannot find employment elsewhere. While dairying offers a structured career path to become your own boss, not everyone will achieve or want to achieve this, so dairying also needs to be an attractive career for those who don’t want to be their own boss.
The right people trained the right way is what the dairy and other primary industries need.
• Craig Littin is Federated Farmers Waikato Sharemilker chairman.
