Opinion: Technology is nothing without a skilled workforce

It is encouraging to see the UK government boosting funding for innovation and long-term sustainability in our country’s agriculture.

But recently outlined fiscal plans to boost food security, including £11.8bn for sustainable farming over the life of this parliament and £120m for agricultural productivity and innovation, risk being jeopardised if they are not supported with the appropriate skills backbone.

See also: Urgent investment needed to upskill workforce says Lantra

For if the land-based workforce is not equipped with the right skills that this moment calls for, these funding packages risk being squandered.

Productivity relies on an adequately trained workforce that can seize new technological advancements – that is what the evidence from years of research and upskilling land-based professionals by Lantra has shown.

Overlooked

The land-based sector – agriculture, forestry, aquaculture and environmental services – underpins UK resilience in ways that are too often overlooked.

Our industries steward more than 80% of the UK’s land and support an agri-food value chain worth £150bn. When accounting for ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and health benefits, the sector’s societal value is estimated at another £41bn annually.

Yet, while national ambitions are growing, the skills system intended to deliver them has not kept pace.

In an era of geopolitical volatility, domestic food security is a national imperative. We currently grow about 65% of what we eat, but maintaining this requires a workforce trained in modern, efficient production.

Lantra’s new research shows that skills shortages are more than a human resources headache – they are a delivery risk. When the workforce is not supported in adapting to new demands and technologies, productivity and long-term resilience are harder to sustain.

Innovation trap 

And with significant investment flows going into agri-tech and net-zero initiatives, this delivery risk could lead us towards an innovation trap – a trap whereby we focus on the technology while ignoring whether the workforce can adopt and maintain it.

Technology without adoption skills has no market. If a farm has the latest AI forecasting tools, but lacks the staff able to act on that data, the investment is wasted.

There is an uncomfortable gap between what the UK government expects farmers to deliver and the resources provided to help them do so. National frameworks, including the Industrial Strategy, largely overlook land-based industries, leaving skills development fragmented. Farmers are asked to navigate complex environmental compliance and transition to nature-positive management. Yet they face a system in which funding falls through the cracks and training is rarely tailored to the realities of rural businesses.

Chance to modernise

The next 10 years will define the future of our rural economy. In addition to the need for new skills, the workforce will be driven by filling vacant job positions as an ageing workforce reaches retirement age.

This is a massive opportunity to modernise roles, update professional standards and reshape career pathways. If we miss this moment, we risk locking in structural weaknesses for another generation.

We need a co-ordinated national strategy – a Land-Based Skills Plan – bringing together government, industry and training providers to align funding, provision and workforce demand.

Getting this right will ensure public investment delivers measurable outcomes and supports a more skilled, productive workforce across the land-based sector.

We need to think about upskilling the sector as an economically strategic tool in the national economy’s toolbox. There are people ready and waiting in our fields and forests, but it is time the skills system caught up.