Editor’s View: Creaking jobs market may tempt more into ag
© Tim Scrivener This week saw a trip to the House of Commons courtesy of Arla, which launched a report conducted in partnership with Harper Adams calling on MPs for a new strategy to improve promotion of agriculture as a career.
It is important work. All industries are in a continual tussle with one another for the best and the brightest, and those that fail to maintain a good impression in popular culture will surely be on the back foot.
See also: Skills shortages threaten future of UK food and farming, finds report
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The reasons why people choose – or don’t choose – a particular career path are varied, as we know.
Money and stability are important, but there is no shortage of people trying to succeed in industries that exploit the majority and hold out success for only a few, such as agri… er, I mean acting.
Equally, I am never quite persuaded by those who say youngsters are afraid of graft nowadays.
Witness the legions of delivery drivers humping boxes and parcels around in all weathers. Many of those roles were not even in existence a decade ago.
Tough jobs
There are many more examples of careers involving a lot of tough, repetitive work that seemingly don’t struggle as we do to attract people.
And, from an employer’s perspective, the one bright point of the steeply rising cost of living is that it is pushing more people back into the workforce.
Individuals who are economically inactive – a measure of those neither in work nor looking for it – fell by more than 450,000 from a recent high of almost 9.5m in spring 2025, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.
Meanwhile, job vacancies in other sectors are falling amid a curtailing of employment by bosses fretting about the increasing costs of employment (a problem for farmers too, of course) – and, in some cases, replacing human bums on seats with artificial intelligence (AI).
This is a particularly acute problem for young people, with unemployment for 16- to 24-year-olds at its highest level in a decade.
Fresh campaign
So this fresh campaign from Arla, which seeks to improve the awareness, attractiveness and accessibility of careers in agri-business, seems perfectly timed for those looking for a practical career that is, for the time being, relatively AI-proof.
Yet alongside a positive outward-facing campaign, there is still work to do to improve the experience of those already in our industry and those who may join in the future.
Farmers Weekly has covered in the past the energetic and positive attempts made by some businesses to create roles that fit around the rest of people’s lives and provide them with meaningful career progression and benefits.
These still seem to be the exception rather than the norm. We also need a bit of honesty about why the dairy industry is feeling this employment problem particularly acutely.
Decades of pressure to consolidate are seeing the small- to medium-sized family farm being steadily wiped out and replaced with a much smaller number of large, corporate businesses that need more external labour to survive.
More than half of the 18,910 dairy farms that were operating in the UK in 2005 are now gone, leaving just 8,738 in 2024.