Thanks to funding from the Scottish Government, a pre-apprenticeship programme is now providing young people with the opportunity to begin their careers in farming with mentor businesses, supported by machinery rings and colleges.

Judith and James Stephen run a dairy farm with their sons near Edzell, and have taken on three trainees so far. Judith explained: “Our trainees handle young livestock, and help our dairyman with the robots. Over the six months they’re with us, we increase their level of responsibility and they become valuable members of the team.

They don’t have all the answers when they arrive, but hopefully we’ll help them understand better where they might want to go in their career. We’re passionate about investing in young people and very aware of the difficulties they have getting into agriculture when they don’t have experience. The mentoring scheme is perfect for helping them get into our world.

Bringing in a young person with a totally different way of thinking about things has meant we’ve had to explain what we’re doing, and forced us to evaluate how we work as a business. That’s been really helpful.

Our previous two trainees are now working full-time elsewhere, so that’s been a success too.

By training the next generation of farm workers, you’re benefiting the industry as a whole, and if you enjoy working alongside a young person, then this scheme is absolutely for you.

As long as we’re continuing to run the business in the same way, then we would take another intern in a second.”

Find out more about becoming a mentor by calling 01561 376022 or emailing gail@ringlinkscotland.co.uk