The Future of Farming?

[British Red]

I recently read a fantastic brief paper by a chap called Ben Williams who is the head of Redbourne School Farm.

Now you all know how passionate I am about farming, sustainability and learning new skills. Well, I learned a few things from Mr Williams that troubled me

Let me quote you the salient points from his excellent paper

Currently in the UK there are roughly 110 School farms offering a range of qualifications to students in Agriculture, Horticulture and Environmental Land-Based Science, plus countless science departments.

The Environmental Land-Based Sector in schools accounts for 2500 entries every single year and Vocational qualifications are also significant with some schools entering 20% of each cohort for examination

As of 2015 all vocational qualifications in Agriculture and Horticulture were removed by the DfE from league tables. Despite this being 2 years ago not a single approved alternative exists. This year we were also notified that the last year entrants can be entered for examinations in GCSE Environmental Land Based Science was 2017. Currently there is not a single DfE recognised qualification in Agriculture or Horticulture in the UK.

It has been estimated that Agriculture may require 60,000 new entrants to the industry over the next 10 years and according to the Future of Farming Review ‘…the positive message about a farming career is failing to reach sufficient school children.’ It also states that ‘Industry and educational institutions need to work closely together to develop highly regarded vocational qualifications that are understood and designed by the industry and appealing to young people

These qualifications already exist and are utilised at Further Education facilities and approved in DfE League Tables for post 16 qualifications. The fact they are not included in pre 16 tables is poorly understood and possibly due to the narrow focus of Education Secretaries with no background in education. Support for vocational qualifications is still strong and many leading educationalists recognise their importance for students at 14 – 16 including the head of Ofsted Sir Michael Wilshaw.

‘I can think of youngsters, even at the highest-performing schools, who will find it a problem and who would have been better suited to do English, maths and science and a range of vocational subjects’ Sir Michael Wilshaw, September 2015

Many of us here I think would love outdoor jobs working in the more natural world. Farming needs these people - it also needs to improve many of its practices, and live in the modern world.

To recognise no vocational or academic qualifications for under 16s in an industry that needs a huge influx of people (whilst appearing to believe a GCSE in, for example, media studies is a higher priority) seems absurd to me...what do you think?

(BTW I have absolutely no interest in this being discussed in a party political way - this is about the future of farming and education for it)

 

[sandbender]

"...(whilst appearing to believe a GCSE in, for example, media studies is a higher priority) seems absurd to me...what do you think?.."

It is absurd.

I've always thought that if I won the lottery (Id have to do it though) or invented the next must have doo-dad and became a multimillionaire that I'd stock libraries private/public and school with something similar to the 'Little Blue Books' packing those books with as much of the collected wisdom of farmers and crop growers past and present that I could acquire the rights to.

It only takes a generation for a lot of this stuff to vanish.

On a slightly brighter note I spent part of the summer on an estate in the Scottish Borders, the land owners farm manager bunks eight or ten 'wwoofers'. He doesn't do it for cheap labor but because he feels he has knowledge that folks can learn, his place is up the road from where I was lodged and I nipped in one evening to say hello, the wwoofers all looked happy but exhausted, they'd all be abed by eight at the latest for a four o'clock start.

Only one couple being hosted there were from the UK, the rest were Spanish, German and I think Polish.

 

[feralpig]

As you say, Agriculture needs to improve it's practises, and live in the modern world. Until it does, I don't see any positive message to send to school children, or anyone else. The only positive about Farming right now is the slight glimmer of hope that things may change, and I don't mean getting more money into the industry.

Why bother teaching for a qualification in an industry which is dying on it's feet?

 

[British Red]

That would be a wonderful plan!

There are as you say people passing on what they know, but for so many its just not accessible

 

[petrochemicals]

Low cost, higher yeild, mad practices, poor taste quantity not quality, gm, higher yeild, lower care, starched countryside, loss of wildlife and habitat, bigger farms, bigger fields, bigger machines, more isolated, more factory, less caring, more market forces, lower wages, more tennants, higher land prices, more pressures, more market forces, investment buyouts.

Hello americana!

 

[Bowlander]

Now kids need to stay in full time education until 18, the ag colleges are getting busier, our local one is doing well with a big intake.

I guess the gcse in agriculture will be costly to run. Kids are probably better off with maths and it skills, modern tractors have more screens than Dixons!







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[British Red]

Why bother teaching for a qualification in an industry which is dying on it's feet?

If farming dies there are going to be a lot of hungry people around!

 

[British Red]

I guess the gcse in agriculture will be costly to run. Kids are probably better off with maths and it skills, modern tractors have more screens than Dixons!

Maths and IT everyone needs. But is farming less relevant than Ancient Greek and Philosophy?

 

[dewi]

I worked on farms growing up and I lived on one when I wasn't away at school. I learned to drive tractors at an early age, could help animals give birth, could stack a trailer with bales in record time... learned so much that it should have been a career path, but it wasn't... farms were not expanding, they were receding in the area I lived.

Without going into the politics of it, years were dedicated to telling kids to go to university to study subjects that most of them knew would never lead to a job, and these kids were given unrealistic ideas of what the world of work would offer... and from what I've seen first hand over the past 15 years, kids almost look down on manual labour or the trades... which doesn't bode well for the next generation of farmers, let alone the next generation of plumbers and electricians.

From the farm side, the supermarkets have done an impress hatchet job on the farmers when it comes to pricing and the growth of certain supermarkets in the past 20 years has led to a skewed market place. Profit comes before sustaining the farms, no matter how short sighted that is.

Again, not party political, but the governments of the day do not help... you only have to look at the steel industry. The government has arranged to give a billionaire millions of pounds of taxpayers money to develop steel elsewhere in the world, whilst allowing the major steel producers in this country to close. In Redcar alone 1700 families have an uncertain future due to the short sightedness, and then there is the knock on to every business in the area and their families.

Until big business and the governments of the day start to understand the long term damage their money grabbing is doing to the industries of this country and the people who are trying to live their lives, we'll see more kids ending up working in call centres of debt collectors than we will see young farmers.

 

[Bowlander]

Maths and IT everyone needs. But is farming less relevant than Ancient Greek and Philosophy?

Not at all, but I guess it's based on the number of pupils taking it?

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[British Red]

I rather fear that not the problem here Bowlander. The DfS has withdrawn or is withdrawing recognition of existing qualifications, meaning that, from league table (and hence status, funding etc) perspective, the qualifications are worthless and schools should not provide them. Yet they have recognised the exact same ones for 16-18 year olds. ???

 

[feralpig]

If you really want to teach kids about farming, teach them about massive environmental destruction, soil erosion, polluted water ways, habitat and wildlife loss. Mental illness, alcoholism, suicide, the effects of isolation. Industrial injury, and chemical poisoning. Teach them how farming practises laid waste to once thriving communities. Teach them that if nothing changes, then the country side they see in story books will be history, and most the food they eat will be imported.
Now that really would be worth teaching, and having a qualification in.

Teaching what has already been taught for so long is worthless. The trend is for less farmers, farming greater areas. There is no point in getting young kids involved in farming, it's futile. May as well teach them how to be a wheelwright, or to use a horse and plough. Those days are gone.

 

[mrcharly]

I think dewi is correct.

Farming is ignored, despite it being very efficient and a major part of our economy.

Australia is known as a significant producer of grain; yet it is not usually known that England grows as much wheat as Western Australia! Vast areas of Western Australia are given over to grain.

Increasing animal welfare regulations in the UK but freely importing, for example, pork, from countries with poor animal welfare has killed the UK pork industry. People want their cheap bacon.

 

[feralpig]

Farming is ignored, despite it being very efficient and a major part of our economy.

Efficient? Can you demonstrate that, in some way? (You won't be able to)
That kind of view of agriculture is precisely why, in not so many generations to come, school kids will look on in wonder, and sheer amazement, when their teachers tell them, that for thousands of years, there used to be something called the countryside, where things called wild animals, and trees, grew and thrived. Where the air was clean, and fish lived in streams. It was pleasant to walk in such places, indeed, people actually chose to live there.
And now, it's all gone, polluted beyond hosting any significant life, unproductive, a barren wasteland. And it all happened in the space of a generation or two, coz people just couldn't give a stuff about it........

 

[mick91]

Think it's wrong that they don't recognise the qualifications, I suppose I was very lucky in the fact a lot of my family are farmers so did manage to get a bit of hands on and learn the skills young. I'm as comfortable changing the head of a combine, or in fact driving one, as I am giving sutures or having you say ahh. Personally I think some kind of vocational study should be mandatory, saves people growing up useless. Be it farming, mechanics, home maintenance whatever. Some of the people I went to uni with couldn't boil an egg let alone birth a calf or plough a field. At least give them the opportunity to learn. In time the ankle biter will be on a tractor and help with lambing, not only did it do me no harm but they're some of my favourite memories from being a nipper!

 

[sandbender]

"...May as well teach them how to be a wheelwright, or to use a horse and plough. Those days are gone..."

I don't know, I know folks in Europe who are still using a horse drawn plough.

 

[dewi]

Efficient? Can you demonstrate that, in some way? (You won't be able to)
That kind of view of agriculture is precisely why, in not so many generations to come, school kids will look on in wonder, and sheer amazement, when their teachers tell them, that for thousands of years, there used to be something called the countryside, where things called wild animals, and trees, grew and thrived. Where the air was clean, and fish lived in streams. It was pleasant to walk in such places, indeed, people actually chose to live there.
And now, it's all gone, polluted beyond hosting any significant life, unproductive, a barren wasteland. And it all happened in the space of a generation or two, coz people just couldn't give a stuff about it........

I think you might have gone a bit far there with the whole pollution thing.

As for efficiency, demonstrated by the fruit and vegetables produced every year in Norfolk alone, not to mention the billions of gallons of milk produced around the UK. Farming is efficient, so much so that numerous farms now only employ their family members. The large fruit and veg farmers bring in vast numbers of seasonal workers to get their work done, but if you don't think they're efficient, you may want to visit one and see first hand.

 

[mrcharly]

feralpig, I'm not sure which countryside you are looking at. Maybe your comments are true for the particular area you are in.

Around her, and in the midlands where my cousins farm, things are much better than they were 30 years ago. Farmers are seeing the value in beetle banks, hedges, trees, etc.

 

[falcon]

It's sad to think that the importance and processes involved with growing food are maybe taking on reduced importance within the education system and I can't help but wonder if there are links with other trends in society as well as some of the practices of farming. Just as technology has changed the baseline for most things in society so it has in farming too. While measures to improve efficiency, make operations safer and more cost effective are to be welcomed the means by which rural youngsters were actually engaged in the countryside has changed dramatically since the early 80's though many changes had begun post-war. Since that time the scales of business operations has had to increase and larger scale equipment and technology has removed much of the help that we, as young lads, we were capable of and needed for. Certainly in large scale arable areas and dairy farms mass production has taken over actually driven by computer technology within the dairy units and through GPS systems on tractors. Through the 60's and 70's (from youth to adulthood before family life took over) a pair of hands was always useful carting bales, tedding hay, bagging and shifting corn, feeding calves and bullocks, helping with calving. Certainly on the large scales enterprises we couldn't do this even if we wanted as many tasks have been taken over by large scale machinery...you can't chuck half a dozen bales of barley straw on a trailer any more to taz off with the Fergie to feed the outliers. I'm sure some of the smaller scales operations around the country still somehow manage without some of this gadgetry but the forces of economics are waged against them....and as we see, even the large scale dairy farms are struggling with a surplus of milk supply available on the continent.

My fundamental point is that communities are increasingly detached from the links with nature they gained through involvement with their local farm. Agri-business is now pursued though college courses by the few who may be destined to play a part in their family business or as a specialist mechanic etc. And all that is before we even comment of health and safety issues, chemicals etc. My relationship with an "industry" I adored has changed....now I'm interested in what I can do in the garden for myself, relate to nature in a wider context than farming and pursue knowledge and the skills which may have been a part of a self sufficiency of 70 years ago. And that's where study of bushcraft over the last 10 to 15 years has enhanced my understanding of the wider countryside. It's pleasing to see that there are still youngsters who want this spark to be lit but their route is certainly different...Sorry for such a long winded ramble

 

[British Red]

At least give them the opportunity to learn.

Thats it Mick exactly - thank you!