New blood: what are your views on recruiting young people for agriculture?

Producing more food as well as some of our fuel and continuing to improve our landscapes, soils and wildlife are a huge challenge for the agricultural industry. The industry will have to achieve these goals for increasingly discriminating consumers in volatile world markets and against a background of, often unpredictable, climate change. We can do this only by recruiting the very best young people who can tackle the future with knowledge and imagination. This discussion starts with views from inside and outside the industry. We hope you will add your ideas to the discussion by emailing your views to membership@rase.org.uk

The aim of his project is to create a publication which stimulates debate on the issue of recruiting young people into the industry. For example, are we doing enough? Are we conveying an accurate image of modern agriculture? Does the message reach the audiences it needs to?

The project starts with two keynote articles, one from outside and one from inside the industry. Your comments are invited.

A view from outside

Alan Spedding met Sir Mike Tomlinson who was Chief Inspector of Schools and is currently Chief Adviser of London Challenge which aims to raise the standard of secondary education in London. He was also instrumental in devising and implementing the Year of Food and Farming. These notes summarise Sir Mike’s views about how farming can attract the very best people to face the challenge of the future.

Farming is complex, technical, challenging and satisfying

Agriculture is widely seen from outside as strong in problem-solving and the application of science and technology but weak in public relations and communication skills. It needs to fix its public face.

To attract recruits, the industry needs to get across a more comprehensive picture which covers its opportunities and problems in detail rather than simply focussing on the areas it is proud of. It needs to foster intelligent and informed discussion and not shy away from areas which are difficult to describe.

Intensive farming, in particular, needs explaining. Crop production can produce high yields using chemical fertilisers and pesticides without harming wildlife and polluting water but it needs careful handling of powerful products.... Most of our eggs and poultry meat come from housed systems which use precious grain very efficiently and work at high standards of hygiene and animal welfare... Outdoor poultry are difficult to manage, are costly to keep and also need careful management to ensure high standards of hygiene and welfare... and so on.

There is scope for discussion among students about what constitutes good animal welfare here and how it all fits in the world’s demand for food. It’s a discussion which is a bit more subtle than the anthropomorphic simplicities put forward by many animal welfare organisations.

The industry needs one respected channel to pass this information through to ensure that information is up to date, accurate and concise. This should be a role for FACE.

With the Year of Food and Farming putting the agriculture under the spotlight it is a good time to move the image of the industry forward.

Meeting society’s needs

The industry must show how it meets society’s needs – essential food, fuel, leisure, wildlife, landscape etc. People do not understand how technical farming is nowadays. Its people must be well qualified in knowledge and problem-solving skills to cope with important new challenges. Agriculture is not currently being put across like this.

Case studies are a good way of getting the complexities of real situations across.

Encourage school visits to farms and ongoing and deeper relationship between farms and schools. Some farms could almost become school farms.

Use the internet to get lots of information across and change and update it often.

Agriculture needs to counter limited-issue pressure groups better. They have an easier job seeming clear and decisive with only a few issues to talk about. Farming needs to cope with the challenge of being more holistic, bringing out more complex arguments and explain it all in the context of global issues.

Information needs to be targeted at three audiences, teachers, pupils, families (and friends) and they need to get information in different ways.

Understand new patterns of work

Young people going into work nowadays are not looking for a single career and pension. It has been said that the average twenty year old will change jobs six times. Agriculture needs to be able to offer jobs which fit in with these realities, by giving shorter term opportunities and by encouraging people to progress by developing the challenge in their jobs and through lifelong learning backed up by quality-assured records which can be recognised on their CVs.

Conditions of employment, especially housing, are very important. Pay often needs to be better, more in keeping with the responsibilities given and the skills needed. Involvement in business decision making also helps.

More focus should be on 11-14 year-olds – that is the stage at which they begin to think about what jobs they might want. After 14 years old information needs to get more specific as they focus in on the details. It’s important to get across the point that not just farmers’ kids become farmers.

A land-based and environmental Diploma for 14 and 16 year olds will be available from September 2009. It is vital that the industry plays a key role in determining the content and the land-based colleges lead on the plans for delivery in schools and colleges.

A farmer’s view

Guy Smith is an Essex farmer and journalist and was awarded the Society’s Outstanding Communicator Award in 2007. He has been a consistent and eloquent voice in putting forward a better image of farming and persuading his colleagues in the industry to do likewise. He is responsible for the Food, Farm and Countryside booklet project which provides positive literature to anyone in a position to hand it out to the non-farming public (300,000 have been distributed since 2006). He has also been instrumental in the FACE/NFU school packs that have gone out to 15,000 schools since its launch in autumn 2007 and the Essex Food and Farm schools day which seeks to give 3000 primary school children a day out to learn about food and farming.

Guy Smith writes...

There was a striking headline on a BBC web-site last summer. It went something like – “First low prices, then floods and now Foot and Mouth Disease. Is this the worst job in the world?” Of course the job in question was farming. My mental reaction was “Farming the worst job in the world? Don’t be ridiculous.”

I wouldn’t deny for a minute that farming as a job is not without its frustrations and its difficulties. The two things that largely dictate our fortunes, farm gate prices and the weather, are largely out of our hands. The other problem is that because over the last century we have got so clever and efficient at what we do then the corollary to that is that our industry is always losing farmers. In 1900 we were a profession of 400,000 and now some estimate we are well below 100,000 (although admittedly the figure is confused by part-time and hobby farmers). That means many of us work under the sword of Damocles thinking that this year may be our last. Also there is the knowledge that many of our neighbours have thrown in the towel.

Nonetheless, farming remains a great job that many outside the industry would love to have. As farmers we often get too wrapped up in our lives. We forget to count our blessings. I am sure that for most of us a month working in an inner city school or on a production line would do much to remind ourselves how lucky we are.

Of course the propensity of farmers to moan about their lot is as old as the hills themselves. It is part of our stereo-type. In one analysis this miserable reputation doesn’t do us any harm. Communal whingeing can be a good way to share one’s problems and thus cope with the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that farming sometimes hurls in our direction.

But in another analysis I think this nauseating tendency to self-pitying is deeply, deeply damaging to our industry. Not just because of the negative impact it has on ourselves but primarily it must do much to put off young blood from considering a career in agriculture.

When I see headlines like the one I mentioned at the outset of this piece or when I see farmers bemoaning their lot in the media I always think to myself: “What would the average seventeen to eighteen year old A level student make of this?” Would it encourage them to consider a career in agriculture? One suspects not. While it may be honest of farmers to flag up their troubles in public I would much rather be part of an industry known for its success stories rather than one that seems to be in permanent crisis.

If we present ourselves as a failing, basket-case, problematic industry then we should not be surprised then that in twenty years time we are peopled accordingly. If on the other hand we want to be staffed by dynamic, go-ahead, positive, can-do people then we would do well to suggest that today and tomorrow we are the sort of industry that can will make dynamic, go-ahead, positive, can-do youngsters feel they have found their calling.

When I am sometimes asked why I went into farming I always like to answer that I met a farmer who knew cheap family labour when he saw it. It’s not really true but I recognise that farming is dominated by the tradition of family succession and I am one such example. Despite this, the simple fact is that our industry also needs injections of blood from outside to keep it healthy. My father was of the view that one reason why farming was so successful in the post-war period was that the shake up of the war had meant that many from non-farming backgrounds chose to come into the industry. Suddenly people with backgrounds in engineering or surveying were found running farms. Even more disturbing, women from urban back-grounds, who had arrived on farms through the WLA, were having an impact on the management of farming. I am sure it was all very discomforting for the existing incumbents but I am also sure it was a very beneficial influx of new thinking and new influences.

And so I come to the crux of this piece (thank the lord for that I hear you cry). As farmers we must always try to see ourselves as other see us and not just as we would like to be seen. There are a number of good reasons for this but probably most important is the realisation that the way we project ourselves is key to attracting the brightest young boys and girls who are considering now what their chosen profession might be.

Finally I will leave you with one last anecdote which also illustrates this point. A couple of years ago I wandered into a tent at a county show. One half was run by the young farmers and the other half by a well know farming organisation. The latter dominated their area with large posters illustrating how many farmers had been lost to the industry in the previous decade. It was a fair point but, by golly, was it in the wrong place. It made me think of a parallel scenario. The British army suffers casualties every year. These losses are very serious affairs and should be the concern of many of us and those that govern us. But the point is that when I see British army recruitment posters I never see mention of the casualty lists, all I see are images of the army being a rewarding, exciting profession that recruits the most able. Although we don’t realise it, British farming has its own recruiting sergeants – it is the farmers themselves. It really is time we took this job a bit more seriously and thought about the image we project to the next generation. Farming has its problems but probably no more than other industries. Why then do we allow ourselves to be portrayed as a problematic, failing, industry?