Bush needs to dump ‘boring, dirty’ jobs image to attract workers

Farmers need to reframe agriculture away from its ‘boring, dirty’ image into an innovative, hi-tech sector to overcome a severe skills shortage in the bush, says Cathy McGowan.

Australian farmers need to reframe agriculture away from its “boring, dirty” image into an innovative, hi-tech sector if they are to overcome a severe skills shortage in the bush, according to former MP and rural leader, Cathy McGowan.

She said that lack of workers was a “huge problem” in rural and regional Australia and surveys by research and development body AgriFutures Australia had found “people want to come and work in agriculture, but they need to be well paid”.

“They don’t want jobs as farmers, but particularly young people do want the tech jobs, of which there’s a lot,” Ms McGowan, who is chair of AgriFutures, said.

“The other thing that’s really changing is people’s understanding that ag is not just about farming … it’s actually the answer to environmental issues.

“If you really care about the environment … the future lies in rural and regional Australia.

“So part of our job is reframing what used to be a boring dirty job into a really exciting tech job.”  Speaking ahead of a dinner in Canberra on Tuesday night to announce the winner of the AgriFutures Rural Women’s Awards (RWA), Ms McGowan said at least half the jobs in agriculture were not in traditional production but technology-based.

McGowan, who served as an independent MP for the rural Victorian seat of Indi from 2013 to 2019, said the tech element of farming, along with high land values and good seasons, was encouraging young people to get back on the farm.

There was already a positive shift as young people with tech skills returned to their family farms after school and university.

“I’m not talking about the whole of Australia but certainly the southeast corner,” she said. “We’ve had three really, really good productive years – high prices with good seasons. So young people are going, ‘that’s the sort of agriculture I want’.”

Ms McGowan said that young people were excited about launching start-ups and the possibilities provided by tech and AI in changing Australian agriculture.

“There’s been a real turnaround (in attitude),” she said.

However, the rising value of land and competition for it from enterprises such as solar farms or from corporations wanting to offset carbon was complicating life in the bush. She acknowledged that land prices meant many young people could not afford to buy properties or to hold on to family farms, but said people were “really putting their minds to” developing alternative methods of financing farm ownership. While big companies were buying up and merging agricultural properties, they still offered a lot of jobs for farm managers, to some extent allowing a younger generation to run farms.

Ms McGowan said there was strong demand for leaders in rural and regional Australia: “There’s a huge amount of work to be done and we’re going to need everybody to put their shoulders to the wheel and step into that leadership space,” she said.

“There are a lot of men, certainly, in industry roles in Australia (but) there’s not a lot of women, and certainly not a lot of young people, and we really need them; we need their expertise, we need their viewpoints on the world, we need their creativity.”

She said the biggest challenge for women in the bush was having confidence to step up and take risks, not only in enterprises but in community roles. “If there is going to be a competition around land use, around carbon, for example, the community needs to be organised,” she said. “Right around the country so much change is going on, and if communities don’t actually find their voice, and their community organisations don’t have the skill to negotiate with companies, then communities just get done.”

Seven state and territory winners are competing for the national RWA award to be announced at the dinner in Parliament House in Canberra.