70,000 bush jobs are going begging

The rural sector desperately needs workers to maintain supply to our biggest markets, writes Debra Bela.

China and India are hungry and Queensland’s rural heartland is eager to fill their bellies.

But a “dire” shortage of labour in rural industries could threaten to cut the supply line.
A month out from our annual agricultural showcase, the Royal Queensland Show, industry employers and trainers will gather in Brisbane to give rural workers the biggest pep-talk of the year.

There are more than 30,000 agri-businesses in Queensland employing more than 125,000 people.

Productivity growth in the sector has been strong, up to four times higher relative to other sectors of the Australian economy, according to the Australian Farm Institute.

Educators reckon the resource boom will lead to 20-30 years of good trading conditions. Yet the industry is under threat from a shortage of skilled workers and competition from the mining sector for staff.

“One of the big problems is that a lot of people in urban areas are confused about what jobs in the bush are, and they don’t realise that quite a number of large companies offer stable positions in many regional towns,” says Angus Adnam, pictured above, councillor for The Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland (RNA).

Doom and gloom headlines regarding the drought, depression on the land, fuel prices and floods, also cast a shadow over rural career opportunities, detracting from the need to encourage a “caring for country” mentality to protect the resource base.

And when the drought ends, Australia will be short 70,000 rural workers, according to industry stakeholders.

To address these concerns, the RNA teamed with agri-businesses and rural training providers last year to host a one-day RNA Career and Training Expo as part of the Royal Queensland Show.

The event attracted 25 businesses and educators and 1300 senior secondary school students and was considered an overwhelming success.

On August 5, the expo will be repeated with increased exhibits and an expected 2000 city and country students and job-seekers will attend the event on the Main Arena.
The expo coincides with the Rural Youth Competition at the Ekka which is traditionally held in the days before the Ekka opens, with some 600 young people taking part.

For employers like the North Australian Pastoral Company, the rural expo is a lifeline to promote the lifestyle of the bush.

“Attracting stock people, jillaroos and jackaroos is not difficult at all,” says Delphine Puxty, general manager of corporate development for the North Australian Pastoral Company.

“It’s the careers like heavy machinery operation, cooks are quite hard to find for remote stations, governesses, people with developed or more unique skills.”

Puxty says rural industries cannot compete with mining on wages, but on lifestyle, a rural career wins hands down.

“Our profits are not nearly as comparable,” she says. “Our biggest overhead is wages. We are doing as much as we can. But it’s far more than what we offer in terms of wages. People get a roof, three meals a day, everything is bought for them, and there’s no need to travel to get to work. If they were living in the city they would have to fork out rent and travel costs.

“People do leave to go to other industries like mining, but often they come back because they don’t like the lifestyle.”

Each year, the Australian Agricultural Company (AACO) must find and train 50 people to fill stock staff positions made vacant from staff movement within and away from the industry.

“That’s grader drivers, cooks, mechanics, boremen (people who check the water supply and keep all the pumps running to keep water up to the cattle on the stations),” AACO training and recruitment officer Kim Mackenzie says.

“Some of the main positions we’re looking for at the moment are feed mill operators. We’ll always need stock staff, and the maintenance positions.”

Puxty says her company attends the Expo to dispel myths about the industry which often are started in schools.

“Agriculture traditionally has been promoted in schools as something to do if you’re not performing academically, which is obviously not correct,” she says.

“But I think there is a lot of good being done by schools in urban areas, in terms of encouraging agriculture now and to (give them) some hands-on experience.”

The Australian Agricultural College Corporation has 4000 students spread across five campuses in Queensland, including 700 high school students doing vocational education programs.

This September, they open their 60,000 hectares of farming country to secondary school students to be fully immersed in the rural lifestyle, living and working on the land as part of their school holiday TASTE program.

College director for the Dalby campus, Malcolm McKay, says a recent Meat and Livestock Australia survey into attracting and retaining staff in the pastoral industries found the main attractor to a rural career was having a family farm connection.

“It’s that sort of familiarity with the understanding of the nature of it that drives them to grow,” McKay says.

“If we don’t have sufficient numbers of people born on farms, somehow we have to give them that experience, so they can understand what a career might be about. An expo is an ephemeral experience.”

The strength of rural industries in Queensland, according to McKay, is not in growing new industries but in doing the traditional industries better.

“Precision agriculture for example,” he says. “Output for input, reducing the carbon footprint to improve productivity. If you can use less water, less energy, less fertiliser, that all goes back to an energy input. Remote sensing for soil conditions, satellite technology, GPS, putting all these together and coming up with planned activities for the most efficient way to use the land, that’s more the frontline technology that’s going on.

“You can work on high technology but get your hands dirty from time to time. This is one of the things that has been a traditional part of agriculture.”

McKay says the drought has played significantly on rural futures with producers shedding themselves of staff and postponing farm expansions, but he says times will change.

“You see over the last five years the workforce in Australia has declined by 70,000 workers in the farm sector, and so if you have a return to normal situation, there’s 70,000 job opportunities just waiting for the taking,” he says.

Ekka, August 7-16, RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
The 2007 Meat and Livestock Australia study of the Australian Pastoral Industry key findings:

* 57 per cent of workers in large rural enterprises are under the age of 30
* 49 per cent of workers in small rural enterprises are over the age of 50
* 61 per cent of workers in the red meat industry and 69 per cent in the pastoral wool industry are highly engaged in their duties
* Medium and small farms perform better than large farms in engaging and satisfying their employees.
* Based on work hours alone, 62 per cent of the workforces are at risk of burnout and only 12 per cent work in a sustainable way.
* Percentage of employees working 46-52 weeks per year: large companies (56 per cent), medium companies (84 per cent) and small companies (86 per cent).
* Top attractions for a rural career include having a family farm background, lifestyle, working with animals, and in the outdoors.
* The sector is finding recruitment difficult due to a shortage of skilled workers, lower wages and is losing staff to the mining sector.
* While 48 per cent of managers indicate problems with losing skilled workers to mining, only 3.3 per cent of current employees are considering moving to mining in the next five years.
* Employees leave a rural employer mainly due to career opportunities, uncompetitive wages, not feeling valued and poor leadership/communication from management and supervisors.
* 70 per cent of small farm employees are certain of their long-term future, compared with 56 per cent of medium farm workers and 53 per cent of large farm workers.
* Employees unsure about their future have the lowest levels of engagement and job satisfaction, although they still work hard and recommend their employer.