When three senior Cabinet Ministers can openly state that they do not see the value of training on their farms, I can only imagine what sort of support they give their trainees as mentors and educators.

When there is AgITO research showing that the return from agricultural training is between $4 - $13 for every $1 spent, how can we justify slashing funding for this essential education, especially at a time when NZ needs to lift industry productivity, especially in the export sector?

In the infinite wisdom of education funders (this wisdom I am sure is cloned into nearly every education provider), funding is provided on a ‘bums on seats’ approach rather than genuine individual outcomes. This sees many people being pulled into the training system, who should be left alone and others who should be progressing quickly though the system being denied the opportunity because they are too ‘bright’. This is due to the current funding regulations restricting  individuals to a maximum of credits they can earn each year, so to fill their quotas there is initiative for training organisations to pull more low hanging fruit into training.

The most disappointing part of this is that there is a segment of our dairy industry in the position of training, who do not have the necessary skills themselves and/or who do not appreciate the flow-on effect of passing a student who is in fact not proficient in certain tasks. And they are put in a position where they hurt, or worse, kill themselves.

We need more funding, not less, to ensure that we have a workforce and skills base that increases our industries chance for survival and reputation as one that grows people into careers and business opportunities. This is more important now than ever before as we are required to lift our productivity not to feed the world, but to feed ourselves.