One of the highlights of delivering the Next Generation Training fund was having the ability to support (very) new entrants to undertake the tractor driving course for 13 to 15-year-olds. When we were promoting the funds, we found that teachers and parents were usually just as delighted as the kids in knowing that training on how to be safe and how to do it well was being carried out by professionals.

However, there was more than one occasion where at least one parent didn’t look quite as impressed, and at a couple of career fairs, there were some who seemed to take my recommendation as a bit of a personal slight.

This is a phenomenon I think unique to agriculture, where it seems you are either just supposed to ‘know’ how to do a task as it is ‘in your blood’, or that if you are not able to do a task well, then it’s a sign that your parent / farmer in charge, does not know how to do it either as ‘clearly’ they would have been the one in charge of passing on the skills.

Of course, this does not apply to every farm or to every farmer, there are multiple examples of excellent employers in our sector who support skills development and training. However, it isn’t isolated to one or two cases either. In a recent P&J article about farm safety, despite emphasising the importance of taking time and doing the task well, training wasn’t mentioned once.

No other sector that I work with takes the approach that you should ‘just know’. I presume it is because so many farms are passed down through the family that there is a presumption that skills will be too. This is of course often not the case, with some parents being excellent at undertaking a role, but terrible at explaining it, or at teaching others. Others might be excellent at training, but as their own knowledge has gaps, might not be the best trainers of the next generation. In some cases the technology for the task has moved on and although they can do the job well, it could be much easier if they applied the tools that are available now.

It is for this reason that I think the tractor driving course for 13 to 15-year-olds is so important. Tractors now are bigger and more powerful than just a few years ago. There is more technology and those who learned a few years ago might not be so up-to-date around options and the H&S guidance associated with their use by young people. By doing this course, the more experienced young farmers get the ‘rough edges’ in their practice smoothed away, and new entrants who have not had a parent or family friend to show them the ropes, can get a taster for what is involved.

We clearly need more courses like this, imagine if we had one for ATVs too? (one for next time)