Filling the rural skills gap with the young

Deborah Butterworth has had two false starts. Now she's about to start the second year of a foundation degree in plant production horticulture.

She used to dig in a different sort of way. "I started off in archaeology first, but I couldn't find any employment in that," she says. "So I then re-trained as a countryside ranger and then again it's very difficult to get into, it's six month contracts usually. So I decided to specialise in horticulture."

Deborah is studying at Askham Bryan near York, a college which in the last three years has grown rapidly by 47 per cent. Liz Philip, the principal, says more youngsters are now opting to train in agriculture when they leave school than at any time since the late 1980s.

She puts the surge in more mature students like Deborah Butterworth down to the recession. "Particularly because we're so close to Leeds and Bradford, we have either suffered or benefited depending on which way you look at things from the financial services industry.

"Between five and 10 per cent of the adults we take are career-changers who have been through some kind of redundancy or restructuring programme at work."

Unlike financial services and the general economic gloom, there's a feel-good aspect about agriculture. "Land-based industries, and farming in particular appears to be on a different economic cycle to the rest of the country," says Liz Philip. "Young people are not stupid, they do know where a good career lies. The wheat price is going up, that is so fundamental to the industry and that breeds confidence."

She says numbers of students this year are substantially up and the college will welcome 340 new arrivals on this year's degree courses. She would like to take more, but can't afford to give any leeway to the 17 per cent of applicants who failed to get the required A-level grades.

"One of the problems about higher education is that we are fined if we take too many full-time first-year students, so we daren't take more than we are funded for because we are fined at about 3,700 per student."

Because of the shortages of cash for courses, and to boost income, the college has for the first time cast the recruitment net further and will admit students from Nepal, Russia, Sweden, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Brazil. International students pay 7,500 a year for a degree course, and 6,000 for a further education course. This is the first year the college has actively targeted students from abroad.

Yorkshire's other main land-based college, Bishop Burton near Beverley, also reports that recruitment for the new academic year is extremely healthy. It has been inundated throughout the year particularly with first choice applications for specialist land-based degrees.

Not only does it seem there's no shortage of demand from those who want to study, there are also plenty queuing up to employ them. The food and farming industry is crying out for skilled workers. Liz Philip believes that the solution lies partly in the hands of the industry itself.

"Employers can't find enough of the right quality of staff. So what they are very prepared to do is put in a scholarship or a bursary and to identify their future employees, down the pipeline. For instance, McCains Foods have been looking at potato fieldsmen. We also have the Ulster Cattlemen's Academy because they feel that they need to invest in young people."

The skills council LANTRA sets the standards for much of training in food and farming. Next year it will hand out 1m for training in Yorkshire. The regional manager Jacqui Bruce says that often what is lacking isn't so much skilled workers entering the industry so much as a shortage of skills among the workers already on farms where new methods are being used.

"We get hi-jacked into the fact that a lot of farmers use machinery, and they only want their 'ticket' for safe operation. If you actually look at using precision farming techniques, it's about using the computer in your tractor, or in your sprayer. Making sure that you are putting the fertiliser or the chemicals in the right place."

LANTRA runs a demonstration site for arable growers at Marr in South Yorkshire where farmers can get together to work on improving their crops. Much of the cost for the training which LANTRA funds is borne by the taxpayer – about 75 per cent. But with cuts and austerity on the agenda could that training be threatened?

Jacqui Bruce says she's optimistic the budget will be safe for the medium term, as long as farmers take up what's on offer.

"At the moment, because the programme has been agreed at European level – it's been agreed to 2013 – the Treasury has had to agree to match-fund it. However, the rumour is that if the money is not committed, the Treasury will potentially take it back."

Any cuts would worry the Country Land and Business Association. Dorothy Fairburn, its Yorkshire regional director, said: "We are all aware of the current need for budgetary restraint but investment in training is absolutely critical to the future success of any industry.

"The technology behind modern farming machinery has developed at an incredible rate in recent years. Today's farm machines are highly expensive and automated pieces of equipment, often costing six figure sums. It is crucial for tomorrow's farmers to have the knowledge that will allow them to keep pace."

CW 4/9/10