Attracting new entrants into agriculture will require the roll-out of further apprenticeships to boost medium- to long-term employment levels according to the president of the Farm Tractor And Machinery Trade Association (FTMTA).
Speaking ahead of this year’s FTMTA Farm Machinery Show, which takes place at Punchestown Racecourse on Wednesday and Thursday, July 5 and 6, Karol Duigenan said the association intends to take this message directly into secondary school classrooms from September.
“It’s vital to get career guidance teachers across the country on board to assist us with this push,” he said.
“When it comes to the typical careers day in most schools, you’ll tend to hear the drum being beaten for, say, the medical, legal, tech and financial professions, while apprenticeships on the whole, including the agricultural sector, haven’t been so readily promoted.
“It’s high time that changed given the demands of the modern farm machinery trade, for example.”
Apprenticeships
The FTMTA stressed that it is not just agricultural mechanics that are needed but that new entrants are required across every level of the business, citing I.T as an example of a standalone job within dealerships.
Other areas to consider within major Irish farm machinery manufacturers are engineering, design and production.
“Then you have the adjacent trades in electrical engineering, welding and fabrication along with non-workshop-based but equally significant roles in sales, accounts, marketing and communications to account for,” Duigenan continued.
“It’s a wide sweep of competencies which needs to be promoted and sold in a revitalised and relevant way to those Leaving Certificate candidates who are considering career paths outside of the traditional third level framework.”
The need for increased apprenticeship levels across the agricultural and horticultural sectors has been the subject of recent government attention.
Independent TD, Carol Nolan told the Dáil this week that there are 670 vacant positions for agricultural mechanics across the industry.
Five new apprenticeship programmes, described by Minister for Further Education Simon Harris as “really exciting” – in Sportsturf Management, Farm Management, Stud Farm Management, Horticulture and a new scheme for Farm Technicians – were announced on May 24.
“The minister’s announcement was clearly a step in the right direction – but as an industry we also need to play our own part in selling this message given how multi-disciplined our industry has become,” Duigenan concluded.