Search is on for
Search is on for
future leaders
The Worshipful Company of Farmers is running its sixth
leadership course at Seale Hayne College this year. With
unprecedented uncertainty about the role and structure of
UK farming in the years to come, it is bound to attract
particular interest, explains organiser Stephen Fisher
WHEN the idea of a leadership course was first mooted seven years ago, agriculture was facing a number of threats, not least the domination of the supermarkets, shifts in government support and changes within the common agricultural policy, while changing consumer attitudes towards animal welfare, the desire for "healthy" foods, demand for increased access to the countryside and a public questioning of the need for agricultural subsidies also loomed large.
Seven years on, all these pressures are still there, but stronger and more urgent than ever. Add in foot-and-mouth, the lowest commodity prices for 30 years and the worst weather for 300 years and farming can be said – without exaggeration – to be in crisis. So the need for the industry to bring forward able leaders who can communicate with farmers, the government and the public has never been greater.
At the outset, the two-week course aimed to bring together the best young practitioners in the country from agriculture and its ancillary industries. It provided intensive training in the latest ideas ranging from the EU and the future of the CAP via things like Agenda 2000, to gene technology.
Those values still stand, but the course has grown in content and stature since then. We have had representatives from large farming companies, large farmers, small tenant farmers, consultants, bank managers, media specialists and others from ancillary industries.
Our original age range was 25-35, but we have extended this to 25-50. We have influential speakers including some from outside the UK, and increasingly one or two delegates from abroad. Our scope has widened and we now look to business strategies rather than purely agricultural ones.
A new feature last year was a major computer business simulation, certainly one of the best in the world, which we run over the middle weekend. Our aim here is to put the agricultural business into the context of the outside environment.
Delegates also faced the daunting, but instructional, prospect of facing television cameras for mock inside and outside broadcasts from our own TV studios in Plymouth. The F&M crisis has illustrated how important this particular skill has become.
This year, as last, the course will address a variety of current issues by means of case studies, lectures and discussions and consider current key issues in both the UK and Europe. There will be debate with animal welfare campaigners and countryside campaigners, discussion with industry leaders, supermarket buyers and suppliers, and the chance to argue with those at the forefront of research into gene technology.
The Worshipful Company of Farmers helps with bursaries for those who find it difficult to afford the fees. Interviews are held annually in July.
For more information about the next course in November 2001 contact Steve Fisher at Professional Development Unit, Seale Hayne Faculty of Land, Food and Leisure, University of Plymouth, Newton Abbot, Devon. TQ12 6NQ (01626-325677, e-mail sjfisher@plymouth.ac.uk).
Last years delegates. The maximum age this year has been raised to 50.