While agriculture is the biggest employer in rural and regional Australia, employing around 300,000 people directly and more than 1.6 million people across the supply chain; workforce capacity looms as the sector’s most significant issue.

For the past 10 years, there have consistently been many more jobs available in agriculture than there are qualified candidates. University graduates finishing agriculture-related degrees can expect to have full-time employment secured before they’ve completed their degree.

Indeed, according to the latest research from Charles Sturt University’s Professor Jim Pratley there are upwards of five jobs for each graduate in the current market. It needs to be said that most of these graduates are not farmers. You don’t have to be a farmer to work in agriculture, you don’t have to have an agricultural background or qualification to work in agriculture, and you don’t necessarily have to live in a rural area to be part of the sector.

Really, it’s any job that is involved in the production of food. It’s everything from a graphic designer working on packaging concepts for supermarket rice cakes to engineers building robots to monitor fruit trees to the train driver delivering wheat to port and much more. We must not only retain our young farmers but attract people from other industries and other backgrounds. 

The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation’s (RIRDC) own Horizon Scholarship program, which supports young people passionate about agriculture and helps them become part of the sector’s next generation of leaders, has been awarded to more women than men again this year. And even more significantly it’s no longer a scholarship for rural university students but for all who are passionate about agriculture despite not being from a farming background.