Vegetable grower

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Name: Dave Graham

Age: 19

Job title: Vegetable grower

Working hours: 7am to 3pm five to six days a week
Employer: Capsicum grower Gordon Meads; vegetable growers around the country


Pay: Starting apprentice around $19,000, rising to $31,000 with experience and around $40,000 for a management or supervisory role


Qualifications needed: Apprenticeships and a wide range of polytechnic and university courses are available


Career prospects: Horticulture business management, self-employed grower of vegetables or flowers. Tertiary qualifications can lead to management, research, marketing and advisory roles

Q. What do you do?

A. I've just finished my apprenticeship as a vegetable grower and been awarded a $500 scholarship from VegFed, the Vegetable and Potato Growers Federation. I've finished my units early, so getting the scholarship now is like getting it backpaid.

We grow green and red capsicum in greenhouses. On Monday, Wednesday and Thursdays we do crop management - pruning and what we call twisting, which is tying them to the wire to train and support the plants. On Tuesday and Fridays we harvest.

You're always monitoring, looking for signs of pests and insects. We buy in plants in May. They grow through the winter and the peak of the season is over summer.

That's the worst bit of the job - no summer holidays. An employer would laugh if you wanted time off now, but you do get the odd day here and there.

As repetitious as the work can be, you're always learning new things about growing and the industry. Not having to deal with the public is good and so is working with a small number of people.

Q. Why did you choose this job?

A. I'm not academic. I wouldn't like office work, but I enjoy the outdoors and working with plants. The physical, hands-on stuff is right up my alley.

I studied horticulture at school for 1 1/2 years. I was halfway into the second term of the seventh form when a friend's mum, who worked for a recruitment agency, told me about this job. I wanted to try it out.

I'd never worked in greenhouses at school, but I was into growing and plants and how they develop in different environments. It's a buzz when you see the plants starting to stick out of the soil.

Q. What sort of training do you get?

A. My boss, Gordon Meads, is an apprentice assessor so I pretty much worked through the units on the job.

I did a couple of courses at polytech - a Growsafe chemical-handling course and a weather unit. I had to do an enterprise report.

You go into every minor and major detail about the business from soil types to the way the land lies. That taught me a lot. Now I plan to do a management course.

Q. Why is this job important?

A. The country's got to be fed. Also the age of the average growers is about 55. I like to think I'll be among the next generation of growers and new industry leaders.

Q. What's been the oddest thing about the job?

A. I didn't know about integrated pest management, where you use one bug to kill off others on your crop. It wasn't as mainstream when I started two years ago as it is now. Back then I thought, wow, we're buying in minute bugs.

Q. What strengths do you bring to the job?

A. I've got youth on my side and I have a good eye for insect spotting and identifying various viruses, pests and diseases, but I'm still getting in practice with sprays. I'm good at finding efficient and fast ways to do jobs, and I can look after the place unsupervised.

Q. What could you do better?

A. I could work on the economics of the business - find out about the prices per kilogram. But a lot of that comes with experience. In five years I will be more qualified, maybe have a diploma, and I'd like to move into management.

Q. What are your goals?

A. In 10 years I'd like to start my own growing operation. It could be capsicum but maybe tomatoes or cucumbers or something else.

Q. What would you tell others?

A. I would recommend the job because it has a lot of good aspects. My advice would be to contact the Horticulture Industry Training Organisation and get an apprenticeship. You wouldn't want to be just a labourer. There's a lot to being a good vegetable grower. It needs a lot of experience and knowledge, particularly of the environment. And all growers rely on technology like computers.