MAXINE SCOTT

At this busy time of year, many bemoan the lack of availability of willing and trained, or at least trainable, staff. Most businesses can cope with the day-to-day, but there’s not much of Moray’s land-based sector – which contributes £67million to our local economy and employs 3.22% of our labour force – that doesn’t need some additional help from time to time.

So what does the industry do to encourage young people to pursue careers in the sector?

Initiatives like the Royal Northern Countryside Initiative (RNCI) and the Royal Highland Educational Trust (RHET) supported by Young Farmers and NFU Scotland do much good work across the country, but can they really put across the exciting, ever-changing technical world that agriculture and other land-based careers offer?

Education is often blamed for the lack of interest and opening opportunities, but through initiatives like the Moray Skills Pathway, Moray Council is opening the doors for industry to engage and support our young people.

Initiatives and strategy can sound pretty dry but this is a great initiative to give our youngsters the opportunity to have a minimum of four experiences in Moray’s eight key sectors – including the land-based industries. These can take place at any point between the ages of three and 15 – at which point pupils can then engage in relevant qualifications in the pursuit of their careers.

There’s a great opportunity to show agriculture and the wider land-based sector as the vibrant, challenging and rewarding career, and way of life we know it to be.

We need land-based careers to be a go-to choice for our upcoming workforce – can you rely on being able to breed all of our own replacements? To thrive, the land-based sector needs to be leading the way and not dwarfed by the other sectors like engineering and construction.

I can hear what you’re thinking – a council strategy that will solve our labour problems – yeah, right. It’s highly likely that strategy will do nothing on its own.

Many of you will be sitting reading this thinking of previous youth training and employment strategies from the past that met with varied success, but this has the opportunity to be different – industry has the opportunity to lead this and to shape it to meet the needs of our local economy.

Just as you can’t rely on producing all your own labour, we can’t then expect other people to be able to do it all either. Just how would someone who might be interested in rural industries, but has no family or friends involved, get to see what you do? And how can I, albeit with a strong farming and educational background, write a strategy that predicts the need of your industry?

In terms of “selling” the agricultural and rural industries, research suggests we need to have captured the imaginations of the next generation before they’re eight years old.

So what do you need to do? We need to enable you to excite (possibly lots) of really young children about your businesses, captivating them and then giving them opportunities to come back as they, and your businesses, change. We need to engage and inspire a future generation and show them the range of skills needed – it’s been a long time since agriculture could rely on labour with no maths, engineering, science or IT skills. And for those in Moray who are interested in the future of agriculture and the rural sector – you could do worse than get in touch, workexperience@ moray.gov.uk

■ Maxine Scott is an education support officer at Moray Council