Dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard said Federated Farmers had met Primary ITO chief executive Mark Jeffries who did realise there was an issue in terms of the quality of the people coming through.
“Part of the challenge is low-quality people going in to start with. You’re not going to get much better out the other end.
“So we’ve got the perception issues of the industry as a career we need to change to attract high quality people.”
Sharemilker employers’ section chairman Tony Wilding said the problem was not just with the training providers and farmers because employers also needed to play their part.
“The biggest problem is the turnover and rollover of employment practices onfarm – the lack of support from employers to employees that have done training and they wonder why there is failure.
Bryce Kaiser of Taranaki said he wrote in 10 hours a week for training and other non-core activities into workers contracts to address this.
“If we don’t do that I’ll end up with more staff that are quite talented but they haven’t completed what they’ve needed to complete to progress.”
