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Efforts by the dairy industry to attract urgently-needed farm workers may have to include ways to give young people a "positive rural experience" says an industry manager, Irene Nolan.
Research she carried out on people who changed careers to take up dairy farming revealed that in many cases a childhood memory
from a farm belonging to their grandparents or another relative led them to consider dairying.
But Ms Nolan -- a Wellington-based staff member on the industry-good body Dairy Insight -- said the industry faced challenges in attracting future workers and farmers because of the increasing urbanisation of New Zealand.
"Most young people no longer have the opportunity to experience life on a dairy farm to recall at a later stage, and the lifestyle attraction may be lost as farms get larger," she said.
"This may impact on the industry's ability to attract people in the future".
A key to continuing to attract "career-change people" would be the ability to give the general public a chance to have a positive rural experience.
Dairy Insight was investing in programmes aimed at helping dairy farming attract quality recruits, she told the South Island Dairy Event in Invercargill yesterday. These programmes were to attract new recruits into the industry, both young people leaving school and more mature people considering a career change.
"Perceptions of the industry will be positively reinforced when dairy farming is highlighted as the attractive career option it really is," Ms Nolan said.
Her own research into what attracted people to the dairy industry and what the future drivers might be showed that in general, people looked to change careers. They looked to dairying to overcome problems with their work affecting their family lifestyle, problems with bad debtors, or with long work hours, Ms Nolan said.
They all had common attributes of being successful in their previous career, motivated, focused, open to adapt to new experiences, active, keen on the outdoors, being their own boss and working with livestock, and they were keen to learn.
She said 90 per cent of the dairy farm workers she interviewed during the research had the goal of owning their own farm within the next five years.
- NZPA
