Opinion piece - John Scott

Fearn Farm at Tain pre­pares to take part in Open Farm Sun­day on 12 June 2022, John writes:

Agri­cul­ture is fac­ing an employ­ment cri­sis, and yet I can’t help won­der­ing if the sec­tor is too reliant on oth­ers to resolve it, rather than doing some­thing direct.

At Fearn Farm, we have a strong team of young and expe­ri­enced peo­ple, span­ning many gen­er­a­tions. We val­ue their skills, ideas and enthu­si­asm, and see them very much help­ing shape the future of our busi­ness, not just work­ing in it. We pay fair­ly, pro­vide accom­mo­da­tion, encour­age train­ing and men­tor­ing and sup­port them to par­tic­i­pate in com­pe­ti­tions and writ­ing fea­tures to raise their own pro­file. In fact, just a few months ago, our Farm Admin­is­tra­tor, Emi­ly Mosley won the AgriScot Busi­ness Skills com­pe­ti­tion and a cash prize of £1000.

So, I am start­ing to won­der why we cur­rent­ly have vacan­cies that we are strug­gling to fill, and after speak­ing to some fel­low farm­ers, I am real­is­ing I am not the only one. Busi­ness­es across the UK are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to recruit new staff, despite offer­ing an excit­ing pack­age and career devel­op­ment prospects.

Many of our agri­cul­tur­al bod­ies and media have run very suc­cess­ful cam­paigns pro­mot­ing the wide range of careers avail­able, and that you don’t need to be from a farm­ing back­ground to enjoy the sec­tor. But we are speak­ing in our own echo cham­ber, tar­get­ing the same peo­ple that are already work­ing or liv­ing in farming.

We need to talk more out­side of the sec­tor, and we need to start doing it our­selves which also means push­ing our­selves out of our com­fort zone. Ini­tia­tives such as school vis­its and wel­com­ing organ­ised groups to the farm are excel­lent, and cer­tain­ly should be encour­aged, but if we want to change the per­cep­tion and attract new blood, we need to encour­age chil­dren and their par­ents to vis­it our farms, togeth­er. They need to see and hear what hap­pens on-farm, ask their ques­tions and fun­da­men­tal­ly go away inspired, and as excit­ed as we are by our indus­try, know­ing that their par­ents will then be con­tin­u­ing those con­ver­sa­tions with them at home.

After open­ing our hol­i­day cot­tage diver­si­fi­ca­tion busi­ness, I have recent­ly realised how var­ied the per­cep­tion is about farm­ing, and that we must be bold to change this. We need to work togeth­er, and we need to be more open and trans­par­ent. Events such as Open Farm Sun­day, where there is real­ly good prac­ti­cal sup­port from the ini­tia­tive organ­is­ers LEAF (Link­ing Envi­ron­ment and Farm­ing), have got to be the future way we inspire our new work­force. If just one child from every farm open­ing this year across Britain takes up a career in agri­cul­ture in 10 years’ time, that is hun­dreds of new recruits.

We will be host­ing LEAF Open Farm Sun­day this year because it helps us to share our sto­ry with con­fi­dence and reminds us why we do what we do. LEAF makes it easy with free mate­ri­als to share with vis­i­tors, guid­ance on how to run the event and the flex­i­bil­i­ty to run it in a way we feel com­fort­able with, and for, the num­ber of vis­i­tors we want to welcome.

We must do more; we can’t rely on oth­ers to tell our farm­ing sto­ry and we need to do it together.

John Scott, Fearn Farm, Tain