Contact: Fr. John Campion S.D.B.,
What Vision Of The Future ?
The Agri food 2010 Report envisages that in the future about 80,000 farmers will be operating either full time or on a substantial part time basis.
Allowing for a generation interval of 40 years, this would indicate that up to 2000 people per year will need to receive some form of systematic agricultural education and training. At the present time, there are about 600 students doing the Certificate in Agriculture in the colleges. There are perhaps a couple of hundred others in the local centres.
These figures indicate that if a present continue, a high proportion of the above mentioned 80,000 farmers will probably not participate in any meaningful agricultural education and training.
We live in an area of consumer concerns relating to quality assurance, traceability, food safety, animal welfare and the environment. How can Ireland possibly build an internationally competitive agricultural industry on the backs of such a potentially large cohort of untrained primary producers. This is a national policy issue of considerable importance.
Are the next generation of farmers to be trained or not ?
The report correctly points out that the increased availability of employment has made farming less attractive as a career option for young people. Nonetheless, in due course many of these people will take over farms from their parents and will go onto farm at some level, even though they may have little or no farm training.
They are choosing to bypass or defer their farm training at this point, in order to take up employment.
If we wished to have a trained farming population, we must increase the incentives to participate in training and also the penalties for not so participating. The report adverts to "strengthening the training conditionally for development and other grants". This would be a positive development.
If we want to have a trained farming population, we must have an overwhelming case for participation in training. Stamp duty relief, installation aid, grants, stock relief etc. should be conditional on having the Certificate in Farming, by either Option 1 or Option 2 routes.
The report states that there should be no distinction made between full and part time farmers in terms of eligibility for schemes. This is as it should be. However, a distinction must be made between trained and untrained farmers. Otherwise we will not have an internationally competitive farming industry in the future.
Ireland has failed to train a significant number of previous farming generations. In an age where "addressing consumer needs and concerns must be an absolute priority", the penalties will be much higher if we are unable to ensure that the participation of the next generation of farmers in agricultural education and training.