Careers Promotion and Guidance

The issue of attracting the right number and quality of entrants to work in the land based industry has been an important and much discussed topic for many years…

There are some people within land based industries who frequently bemoan the quantity and quality of talent joining our industry and there have been a significant number of different careers initiatives over the years to try and address this.

There are a number of excellent careers initiatives and information sources around specific sectors of land based. In addition to Grow Careers, there is, for example, Bright Crop, the IoG Young Board of Directors, Royal Forestry Society, Edge Careers and the soon to be launched Go Landscape. All these sector-specific initiatives have a crucial place in inspiring and informing people towards careers and add huge value to the whole careers support for our sector. We advocate for stronger links between all these initiatives, and the creation of an overarching land based programme and toolkit. Such an umbrella initiative would connect better with a wider audience. By inspiring young people in the many wonderful careers around land, food, greenspace, wildlife, countryside, conservation and the environment, our belief is that we would ultimately end up with more entrants into all the sectors of our industry.

There are some strong strategic drivers for promoting wider land based careers to young people:

  • The Government’s Post-16 Skills Plan identifies the need to attract talent and clearly identifies the combined vocational route of Agriculture, Environmental and Animal Care (i.e. land based).
  • Our colleges deliver across the full spectrum of land based vocations and would, we believe, value an initiative that attracted students across their whole curriculum range.
  • BBC Countryfile continues to increase in popularity and the programme covers the whole spectrum of land based careers.
  • Importantly, a land based initiative would widen the horizons and opportunities for young people and ‘career changers’.

The NLBC ambition is to see overarching careers information and guidance, which would link to all the existing sector specific programmes. These sector initiatives are still very much required, but we believe we need something wider to inspire a larger audience to initially engage. In the last week we’ve attended and presented at two land based careers events; the inaugural Farmer’s Weekly Ag Careers Live at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry on 10th November and then two days later at the Grow Careers afternoon at Askham Bryan College, York. We had some great conversations with a number of enthusiastic young people at both events, which all reaffirmed our thinking that careers promotion, information and guidance is certainly valued and also that a wider land based careers initiative could pay dividends for all.

We absolutely need to inspire people about land based careers, however, we need trained people to guide young people, strong links to careers advisors and schools, toolkits for them to use, and clear careers frameworks that show progression and how to get there.

There are wonderful careers within the land based sector, including many that are not only well paid, but also offer a wonderful quality of life and an opportunity to do something positive for our planet. Careers promotion and guidance is an important strand within the wider skills agenda and our ambition is that a more joined up approach will be supported, established and deliver a far greater impact.

 

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