It doesn’t take a genius to work out why the horticulture industry is failing to attract young people. Just ask any commercial horticulturalist what troubles them these days and labour is likely to be near the top of the list. However, the age-old problem of the industry’s collective aging is approaching crisis point and the time for woeful conjecture has passed.
According to the NFU’s calculations, in 2003, more than half of the UK’s farm holders were over 55 (57 percent), having steadily increased from 48 percent a decade earlier. Meanwhile, the under-35 percentile fell from seven to three percent in the same time. The era of natural succession is well and truly over.
With many business owners unable to disguise from their offspring the reality of tightening margins, unpredictable markets, and long hours for no guaranteed reward, the bright lights and bigger paychecks offered by urban industries are clearly too hard to resist. An obvious solution might seem to be to glean the cream of the horticultural graduates although word on the proverbial street is these are in short supply too, as colleges struggle to keep courses open, with fewer students showing interest in the field.
Guy Moreton, director of recruitment specialist MorePeople, has long been concerned about the situation. While of course having a vested interest in wanting to see more talent coming into the sector, his background as a trained horticulturist mean that he has first hand knowledge of the market.
Moreton says that traditionally salaries in horticulture have not been attractive enough to draw the brightest talent to the industry. “The image of horticulture is that it is low paid, full of family businesses, with no career progression, and long, unsociable hours,” he explains.
However that situation is no longer the case, he stresses, with the edible side of the sector in particular more than competitive with management salaries. This reflects the general trend of increased profitability and professionalism that has come with the expansion of the multiples’ role in the last 20 years.
MorePeople recently recruited former Tesco head of produce, Peter Durose, in a bid to bring further market understanding and consumer knowledge to his firm. In a similar way, Moreton believes that growers need to be more marketing and consumer focused, and not merely focused on growing and the trade.
Moreton is convinced that most firms nowadays are trying to improve and develop their businesses, but he warns that this must encompass labour as much as any other area. “We as an industry are sometimes guilty of not recognising value. Sometimes if you employ someone better, in the long-term you will get your money back and more.”
For some years Moreton has tried to convince horticultural companies to adopt a local school as a way of breaking down the barriers between young people and the industry and getting them tuned in to the possibilities the sector has to offer. “Most bright young people don’t know a thing about horticulture. When I was at school the only people studying horticulture were the ones who weren’t doing well in other subjects. But we can now demonstrate that there are some staggering salaries in produce. There are salaries to match the best in FMCG,” he maintains.
But he adds: “If every grower went to their local school and did something positive. It would revolutionise the perception of the industry. Remember that children love gardening and plants - but what happens between the ages of 12 and 19 to mean that 99.9 percent are not looking at horticulture as a career?”
Moreton is keen to stress that horticulture is not unique in its labour sourcing problems, with the building, engineering and chemical industries all sharing similar concerns. He lays the blame squarely at today’s ‘get rich quick’ culture of trying to achieve everything overnight.
Despite the potential drawbacks, many others also concur that the horticultural industry could readily compete with apparently more attractive industries at the graduate fairs, if it strived to overcome some critical problems. “MDS (Management Development Services) is always very successful and some individual businesses have great graduate programmes but there isn’t a uniform identity that is actively recruiting people into this sector,” says David Macaulay of Redfox Executive Selection. “People look to us to recruit graduates on their behalf, which obviously we are more than happy to do, but in essence it says something about the lack of awareness of the industry within the graduate market if the only way people are going to be coming in is through recruitment consultants.”
Another widely acknowledged obstacle is the negative image of horticulture, and farming in general, perpetuated by the media. “I think the outside perception is that farmers are a bunch of moaners who occasionally get pulled up in front of a judge for putting up plastic tunnels or burning piles of sheep in the foot and mouth crisis,” says James Smith, a Kent-based top-fruit grower. “We haven’t got a very good reputation and that has got to change.”
The NFU keenly agrees with Smith and to this end, launched an initiative at the start of July to raise the profile of rural industry and encourage school leavers to consider the bright prospects offered by careers in agri-businesses. The new report, ‘A Life on the Land’, is the latest instalment in the wider Why Farming Matters campaign. Spearheaded by NFU vice chairman Paul Temperley, the report aims to dispel the myths surrounding land-based industries, such as the inevitability of being isolated in the back of beyond, when in fact 93 percent of rural businesses are within 13 minutes’ walk of public transport facilities. Hoping to maximise its appeal across the social spectrum, the report showcases numerous young people who are forging successful careers in diverse fields, from growing flowers and rearing cattle to engineering and working for the NFU. “We want to appeal to everyone and anyone,” says Temperley. “The beauty of people coming from a non-farming background is that they bring a different perspective and challenge conventions which is really important.”
According to Temperley, the message to potential recruits is simple: the industry has an exciting and vital future and you can be part of it. And, while the report may still be hot off the presses, the NFU is already receiving positive responses from various colleges about its usefulness in highlighting the range of opportunities on offer. One of the key aspects of the campaign is to emphasise the technical skills involved in working for this ever-advancing sector. “A life on the land in the 21st century is not just about muddy wellies and dirty finger nails - it’s about adapting new technology, selling to your strengths and listening to your customer,” says Temperley.
Farm manager Matt Spanton readily agrees that the general public’s perception of the industry is wildly old-fashioned. “Some of the kit we’ve now got is very technical and you’ve got to be bright to operate it at any level, from growing and storing and marketing produce to general husbandry,” he explains. Like many others, Spanton suggests the best way to curb this misconception is to expose children to the reality of the industry at a very young age. Having visited schools in London as part of the British Potato Council’s Potatoes For Schools campaign, which encourages children to participate in growing their own crop, he has witnessed the benefit of giving young children - many of whom lack any real awareness of food origins - a more hands-on experience of horticulture.
This kind of interaction with schools has been widely supported by a number of field trip and ‘open farm’ initiatives across the country. However, such productive activity is unfortunately being curtailed by a bucket load of red tape. According to NFU horticulture board chairman Richard Hirst, the government has become so wary of anything that could be misconstrued as child labour abuse that, despite the Department of Health’s advocacy of exercise and outdoor living, health and safety regulations prohibit children from getting their hands dirty at all, let alone trying to earn some pocket money from rural businesses. “It’s virtually impossible to get people under 16 involved,” Hirst says. “If there’s a potential shortage of [foreign] students coming in, there are children in this country who might be looking for summer work. There’s paid work to be had that gets them in the fresh air, what better way is there to get people interested? It’s far better to start people at 13 or 14 than 17, 18 because by then you’ve got into other habits. My son is nearly 16 and we’ve had to get a work permit to allow him to work on our family farm; and in theory, 14-16 year-olds are only allowed to do four hours a day, 6 days a week, which is just ridiculous; if people want to work, why should we stop them?”
Despite the benefits inherent in industry members forging links with the very young, according to Martyn Davy, head of horticulture at Easton College, any positive influence will only really take effect if efforts are sustained from primary to secondary school level. Contrary to popular belief, Easton has actually seen its horticultural applicant numbers rise in the last six or seven years, with national diploma students rising from three per year to 15-20 in that time.
The college also has 450 pupils in year 10 and 11 (Key stage 4, aged 14-16) enrolled on Increased Flexibility Programmes, doing NVQ level one certificates in land-based industries, which requires an attendance of one day a week for two years. And, according to Davey, this system is extremely effective in enticing pupils into the sector long-term. “They’ve seen the college and what we do, and a lot of them - about 65 percent - come onto further education courses,” he says. However, Davey is conscious of a discrepancy in ability between the pupils geared towards these practical NVQs and those steered towards more academic institutions. “It would be nice to see rural science featured on the national curriculum and to see careers advisors having more knowledge of the subject area and seeing it as a career for highly qualified people as well as the less abled because management material is sadly lacking,” he says. “Foundation degrees are helping with A-level-educated people coming through to degree level but they then don’t have the practical experience.”
According to Davey, the department is well populated with mature students, especially career changers enrolled on Train Again programmes. Yet, while the first level of the GNVQ work-based course is free, the second is not and the fact that government-funded grants or higher education loans are not yet available for such students prohibits some from realising their true potential. Davey’s top priority, however, is boosting numbers among the younger demographic. “I’m concerned that we don’t get enough under 19-year olds because we are paid to deliver to the 19-16-year olds on full-time programmes and funding is a big issue for over-19s. We have college bursaries but they only stretch so far.”
Writtle College reports a stable intake during the last decade of some 75-80 students a year onto its three and four-year HND courses in commercial and amenity horticulture and its BSc horticulture scheme. However, its number of part-time students has steadily risen and fewer students are opting for a designated commercial crop production route, favouring more broad-based degrees, although interest from such students in commercial production and crop technology modules is reportedly still strong.
Mike Hall, Writtle’s director of knowledge transfer, and president elect of the Institute of Horticulture, says the issue of engaging with future horticulturalists has taken centre stage at the institute, which organised a think tank to discuss potential solutions in January. The meeting illuminated various possible strategies, including boosting involvement with schools and college heads, using the NFU’s recent publicity drive to generate further interest and introducing a mentoring scheme for existing horticulture students to aid their transition from student to employee status.
Mentoring is one of the key aspects of the Fresh Start initiative, established in 2004 to improve training opportunities for newcomers to the agricultural industry. From there, a group of stakeholders in Sussex launched a Fresh Start Academy to consolidate the training with mentoring, providing practically able people with the possibility of identifying business opportunities via a matchmaking network. Douglas Jackson, rural business consultant at Laurence Gould Partnership Limited, one of the founding stakeholders, has been co-ordinating the pilot Fresh Start Academies in the south east - in Sussex, Kent and Hampshire - since December 2005.
The scheme, which consists of 12 meetings over 15 months, is open to any industry novice, with a minimum of two years out of school, and while horticulture has not yet been included, Jackson claims the model would be readily transferable. “From what I know of the horticultural industry, all the issues are the same, in that there is an aging generation of people making all the management decisions, while there are a lot of enthusiastic new entrants that would be an asset to the industry. One of the biggest barriers to starting is the cost of land and access to it and that’s where we come in by trying to match young people with appropriate business opportunities. The partnerships are based on the needs of the individuals involved and so far no two have been the same.”
And the benefits work both ways, Jackson suggests. “The challenge is getting the established parties to want to try something different and finding the right people. It’s not an easy process because, understandably, people have an emotional attachment to their businesses and you have to ease them through it but it’s definitely been a positive experience so far.”
Hall says the IoH is very keen to replicate the Fresh Start model for young horticulturalists and anticipates that the initiative may well be launched at Writtle College, pioneered by its new head of horticulture, Martin Stimson. Meanwhile, Hall and his colleagues have orchestrated the relaunch of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Master of Horticulture qualification to include a mentoring package. The Institute’s think-tank is also considering raising the profile of the Young Horticulturalist of the Year (YHOH) status, to retain the winner as a salaried ‘ambassador’ for the industry, in forging stronger partnerships with schools.
Another suggested initiative was an educative programme, again aimed at schools, with the strapline ‘Grow It, Eat It, Cook It’, which might give rise to an even younger YHOH, and generate some good media coverage. Hall says plans have unfortunately reached something of a standstill on the TV front but he is still keen to engage some interest therein. “Some attempts have been made to register the name, but we were slightly thrown back by a Channel 4 programme that identified a title of ‘Kill It, Cook It and Eat It’ and, therefore, we are trying to rethink our strategy,” he says. “I am in discussions with a couple of film companies with a view of trying to get some promotional material made available, and we have also made contact with Country File.”
Despite such concerted efforts, some suggest a rejuvenated air is already pervading the industry, and in accordance with the cyclical nature of everything in life, the renewed interest in local sourcing may yet bring the whole sector into the spotlight, making it more attractive to young people.
Macaulay, however, is not convinced that ‘nature’ will be able to offset market forces. “If there is a move to local sourcing, that’s great but it won’t affect anything unless the retail price goes up and horticultural production once again looks like a viable business because no-one in their twenties is going to want to sign on the dotted line into a farming partnership if they’re about to inherit a load of debt,” he surmises. “There are fantastic opportunities for people within the sector who have got the specialist skillset and entrepreneurial flair to keep growing their businesses, and take on new people. But that is only going to happen if these businesses are of a sufficient size or the market changes and retailers are able to offer producers better prices.”
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