Near here we have Smedley Station, which has a two-year cadet training programme and has 13 cadets graduate from the course each year.
Up in Gisborne is the Waipaoa Station Farm Cadet Training Trust, which sees five young people graduate from their course annually. And there are other worthy cadet courses scattered around the country too.
They offer high-quality accredited farming courses and provide hands-on agricultural skills training for these young farmers.
The demand to get into these well-regarded institutions far exceeds the number of places available.
But combined, they are not able to train enough young sheep and beef shepherds to meet the need that is out there.
Tam and Dan Jex-Blake in Gisborne have been training young folk for many years and developed a model based on the training institutions mentioned above, but where the students live out on-farm.
This model has grown into what is now called Growing Future Farmers (GFF).
Last year, GFF ran a pilot programme with a small number of students and then later in the year went live, looking to build a good intake for the year we are in. There are now 60 farming students out there on farms around the country.
Stuart Ellingham, who is managing director of Horizon Farming and a board member of GFF, got in touch with me and asked if we could do an interview on my rural radio show The Cockies Hour. I of course said no problem, as championing our sector is a primary driver of the show.
We had a good chat about GFF, its goals and that to be successful it needed a good complement of young school-leavers to apply and equally critical, enough farmers prepared to be farm trainers to provide a farm and to nurture these young people.
He told me they were looking for trainers who would be good, patient listeners, encourage engagement, know the subject matter, be organised, be able to communicate well and value lifelong learning.
The students would end up with top skillsets and qualifications, two trained dogs and assistance moving on into good shepherding jobs.
We gave out the details of the open days and I moved onto other interviews.
Later in the day, I chanced into Nick who works across the road on the neighbouring farm and asked him how Lochy his son was getting on. Lochy had been particularly useful for my docking in the past few years.
Nick told me he was good but determined to leave school, which they would allow as long as he had a job and his driver’s licence, which is pretty much the advice most parents hand out to their school-leaving children.
Later that evening I had a chat with Jane and the next day went over to see Lochy and his parents. I told them about GFF, suggested they have a look at the website and if interested I reckoned, we might be able to do something together that would be in everyone’s interests.
Lochy would have a purposeful two-year structured training course, Nick and Amy would have young Lochy under their roof for two more formative years and I’d have a great young fellow helping me run 3500 stock units, which I’ve found more taxing in my sixties than in the carefree days of past years.
Lochy and his mum Amy went along to an open day and the decision was made for us to apply.
Our joint application was successful and for the past five months Lochy and I have worked together. It has been a genuine win-win relationship and he has performed and grown admirably. I’ve been able to download much of the learnings from a 40-year farming career. And I’ve really appreciated the reduction of the physical load that farming requires.
Coming up are the farm trainer and student open days over the next six weeks, designed to show another potential intake of what GFF has to offer.
Regions such as Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, King Country, Taihape, Winton and Kurow are hosting these days.
This is your chance to encourage young people into a well-constructed training programme and to become a farm trainer yourself, and perhaps have a profound positive influence on a young person’s life.
Go to the Growing Future Farmers website to get the details and dates.
