Passion ignited in hort’s next generation

The spin-offs created for both the industry and the students have been a great success.

Ten “fantastic” young people – all students involved in horticulture related courses – came to this year’s conference in Rotorua, says HortNZ senior business manager Sue Pickering. 

“They started to develop big picture thinking and they are just firing. Their enthusiasm amazes me.”

HortNZ administers several tertiary scholarship packages and attending the conference has been part of that for the last three to four years, led by HortNZ in partnership with the Horticentre Trust and Massey University, although students from a number of tertiary institutions attend.

“We provide funding for the students for their studies but an add-on is we get them to the conference. The idea is to connect them with industry. 

“It has been a really good idea, firstly for their degrees, and to promote getting young fresh people into the industry.

“It is part of a bigger picture of not only supporting young people through their studies -- that’s the supply end -- but also retaining them and their interest in the industry. It makes sure they have the opportunity to find their fit because the hort industry is so diverse and one strength is there are a lot of pathways. One difficulty is figuring out where they want to go.”

The initiative started quite small, but is developing. Some of the presentations and sessions this year got the students seeing what an exciting industry it was to be part of, but also thinking about ideas to plan for the future workforce.

“One idea was they could connect between universities to build an alumni. What intrigues me is Massey had a built a hort society and a catalyst for that is they came to the hort conference a few years ago and recognised the benefit of a community.  Horticulture is now embedded in bachelor of agricultural science, bachelor of agricultural commerce – they are quite spread out.”

Massey, Lincoln, Auckland and Waikato students at the conference realised they had a community outside their university so they are talking about interconnection between them.

“So that’s one of the ideas…. It’s quite small but quite exciting. I am always amazed at how these small ideas grow.” 

Pickering says it is a privilege to be involved with the student interaction and “it is one of those little gems that is starting to get some traction”.