The Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has appointed Tess Howe to its newly created post of external skills project manager.
Howe will lead on developing an AHDB-wide skills strategy that dovetails with other industry initiatives and co-ordinates external skills development across all the board’s six divisions, including horticulture and potatoes.
Generating and managing funding for both formal and informal external skills development, she will lead on skills recognition; driving up levels of business management and leadership; building partnerships with training providers; promoting career opportunities in the sector; and championing the value of lifelong learning.
Howe has worked for the past five years in AHDB’s pig division, where she delivered a skills strategy for the pig industry and supported the division’s knowledge-transfer team. She also represented AHDB on the AgriSkills Forum, asked by government to develop an AgriSkills Strategy to equip farmers and growers with the right skills for the 21st century.
She introduced the 16-month Professional Manager Development Scheme (PMDS) which took pig-industry managers to an Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) Certificate in First Line Management and now plans to take the PMDS cross-sector to include horticulture too.
Howe said: “I’m thrilled to be taking up this new, exciting, whole-industry focused role to help further develop a profession of highly skilled and technically knowledgeable farmers and growers in a vital industry which, for all our sakes, needs to be recognised and seen as a top career choice. A profitable, sustainable and valued agriculture and horticulture industry will have to have good skills and good quality people moving it forward. This new role clearly demonstrates AHDB’s passion to attract new talent to the industry and encourage those who are working in it to have the confidence, pride and motivation to perform at the best possible level for the future health of their industry and their profession.”
No comments yet