Comment: Real farming value from investing in our youth

When I was at school, I had an image of myself walking through London wearing a smart suit, heading to work in a glitzy office with a water dispenser. I would write to stock brokers and commercial property agents, desperate to do work experience in my holidays. I got to go to a few, but more often, I got knocked back or never heard back, so since then, I’ve always said that, where I can, I’ll offer work experience because I know how hard it was.

I’m now a land agent and married to a dairy farmer. I’m also a member of the Future Farmers of Yorkshire group. There are no glitzy offices and sharp suits in my life but my opinions on work experience and helping the next generation haven’t changed.

Farming can be a difficult industry to get into, but farming has a lot to offer young people. Farmers know how to work hard, how to problem solve, negotiate, budget and manage staff - the list goes on. The skills that farmers have are immensely adaptable in many other industries.

We took a school pupil on for a week last year, known to us as Tony. He was extremely green, fresh from a school on the outskirts of Leeds, but he was keen. He helped milk the cows, he helped lay some concrete for a new shed and took part in feeding and bedding up the livestock. It was a very welcome extra pair of hands.

There was a point at the end of the week when I was milking with him and I watched him take the milk off one cow and put it into the unit so that it didn’t go into the tank. It wasn’t a cow that we had marked, so I asked him what he was doing. Tony had noticed that the cow was fellen - had a bit of infection in its udder - and knew not to let its milk go into the tank. This was a rewarding moment; he’d made an important and correct judgement.

The work experience didn’t end after one week. Tony comes back to the farm most weekends now and is paid for the work he does. It’s a help for us and means that, occasionally, we have an afternoon off.

Tony knows that dairy farming isn’t for him, he doesn’t know what he wants to do, other than work in agriculture, and he now needs to find experience in another sector.

I’m hopeful that others might be able to offer work experience in the future knowing that it can be worthwhile and knowing that they have much to offer younger people.

Sally is a member of the Future Farmers of Yorkshire group, set up by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society to bring together younger farmers, vets and industry supporters. For more details, email [email protected]