Opinion: Education can empower us and save our industry
© Adobe Stock We’ve all heard the proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”.
But it goes further than that, as he teaches his children and others around him to fish as well.
I’m not a classically educated person, nor a particularly clever one, but I am tenacious. I believe many farmers have this trait.
See also: Opinion – Big won’t be beautiful in the tough years ahead
About the author
I’ve always been intrigued by the opportunities that come off the back of the next step in education, the next group of people I’ve met on the course, the next door that opens.
Each layer of education has led me to the next level with our business.
I could never have been an agronomist without university; we would never have set up the dairy without the Worshipful Company of Farmers course; and we wouldn’t be buying the farm in France without the MBA.
Sitting watching the latest cohort of Nuffields on stage recently, I wondered where would we be if the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) funding had gone on education?
If the renewed SFI or a version of it purely funded education? Anything from funding of school visits to farms, to employee training through to management training and courses to the highest levels – even to include retraining of those wishing to exit the industry.
The impact would be enormous.
We all have different interests and strengths, so imagine if we all pushed ourselves, even just a bit more, in this respect.
We collectively could negotiate better, communicate better, market better, understand finances more thoroughly, and manage people more effectively. It would increase collaboration, reduce farming accidents and help us engage with our customers.
I’ve had a month of learning, including French lessons with the family, a negotiation module at Cranfield and finishing the month at the Nuffield Conference in Aberdeen.
Sometimes courses can have a very direct payback and obvious rewards such as sprayer qualifications or bookkeeping.
On other occasions, it can be hard at the time of the course to directly attribute the value of it. Sometimes it takes a while for the benefits to become apparent.
So often the people you meet on the course are as, if not more, important than the course itself. After finishing state school, I did a degree at Harper Adams, during which I was introduced to Nuffield by the then-principal.
Nuffield introduced me to my partner, and we learned about the Worshipful Company of Farmers and subsequently completed its business management course, during which I learned about its sponsorship of a graduate on the MBA course at Cranfield, which I will graduate from in June.
It’s a ladder effect; it’s up to us to keep climbing to take the opportunities.
Education alters behaviours – if farmers have a greater knowledge of habitats, for instance, they would be more likely to implement appropriate measures for their farm because they want to, rather than as a result of prescriptive measures dictated to us that never deliver the perceived benefit.
Maybe I’ve had too much time away from the farm, or maybe I just like the idea that we could have the knowledge to empower ourselves and save our industry, if only we could all access a bit more education.
If this was funded by the SFI, it could be the government’s greatest gift to the farming industry.