Dairy apprenticeship scheme aims to attract best and brightest to industry

Federated Farmers and Primary ITO's new dairy apprenticeship scheme will help fill the shortage of good dairy staff that exists. By: ANDREW MCGIVEN Source: Stuff
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OPINION: It is heartening to see the positive reaction to the new dairy apprenticeship initiated by Federated Farmers and the Primary ITO.
From my point of view, the launch of such a programme has been a long time coming.
Specifically designed to help school leavers and career changers into a farming career, this is the holistic training programme that the dairy sector has been asking for.
There are big numbers around our dairy industry – the $7.8 billion it contributes to the nation’s GDP; the nearly 12,000 farms, jobs and incomes for more than 40,000 New Zealanders. But as with just about any enterprise – big or small – ongoing success to a large degree rides on the people involved, and their talent.
There’s a fight on to attract workers into the primary industry with the right skill set, attitude and motivation as there is an ageing population and relatively low unemployment, especially in the South Island.
The dairy industry wants a good share of the best and brightest and that’s why we launched the apprenticeship pilot.
That fact is the dairy sector – despite its huge importance to our economy – is operating at a workforce deficit. Too many farmers,business owners and employees are working long hours, or are having to rely on migrant labour to cover staff gaps.
Talks on this apprenticeship started more than 18 months ago, long before the war of words heated up between the political parties over high levels of immigration.
The fact is Federated Farmers and the dairy sector have a ‘New Zealanders first’ workforce preference, and the reliance on migrants in some districts is because we simply can’t find enough Kiwis to fill all the jobs going. That’s what we’re working to turn around.
Kudos to Waikato Federated Farmers past president Chris Lewis and now national dairy chairman for his drive and commitment in getting this properly set up with government funding and industry buy-in.
The scheme will provide a complete wrap-around training programme for participants as well as assisting them where necessary with home economics, life skills and social interaction with their peers and colleagues so that we aren’t just mass-producing milk harvesters or tractor drivers with very little awareness of the nuances of dairy farming.
In essence, at the end of the programme we should have developed a solid herd manager with good all-round practical knowledge and holding an industry qualification that potential future employers can trust.
Some will excel and go straight into a farm manager role after their three-year apprenticeship finishes. The outcomes are unlimited for the ones who work hard, learn hard and enjoy hard work – all the time earning while they learn.
This has been something that perhaps has been lacking in our industry for years, with training standards that have been at times variable to say the least. With larger farms that hire only for specific roles, the opportunities for an employee to develop a complete farming knowledge base have been limited.
People should be the number one asset in a farming business but this isn’t always the case. It is my hope that when these graduates move their way through our industry, furthering their careers and adding immense value to the quality of our products and better standards of care to our environment and animal welfare, these graduates will be highly sought after and remunerated accordingly.
New Zealand’s primary industries need at least another 50,000 skilled workers by 2025 if we are to maintain our competitive advantage, so we must invest in people and programmes to keep the next generation skilled and enthusiastic because the average age of farmers isn’t coming down any time soon.
Despite what the naysayers claim, farming and the wider primary sector is what this country is built on and what it still needs in the foreseeable future. So it is great to see something positive being driven by the industry for the industry.
Andrew McGiven is president of Waikato Federated Farmers.
 
 
Link: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/97759694/dairy-apprenticeship-scheme-aims-to-attract-best-and-brightest-to-industry

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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