The dairy industry has undergone considerable change over the past decade and staffing levels can often be challenging for farmers.
A new training programme in Canterbury is looking to help plug some of this gap by providing school leavers with the opportunity to “earn while they learn” – the NextGen Dairy Farmers Programme.
Co-op farmer Aaron Stenton is one of the programme’s inaugural host farmers, employing school leaver Jack from Christchurch for six months to work on the 320ha Ngai Tahu farm in Eyrewell Forest milking 1,000 cows.
“It was pitched to me by our operations manager and I really liked the sound of it. It’s about getting young people into farming who wouldn’t normally have a pathway in. I wish I had the same opportunity growing up. It took me years to get into farming and it happened by chance,” Aaron says.
“The school leavers coming through this pilot are not from farming backgrounds. Jack definitely doesn’t have a farming background, but it’s something that interested him. He is really keen and sees dairy farming as a future.”
The NextGen Dairy Farmers Programme is a pilot initiative of industry education provider Dairy Training Ltd, a DairyNZ subsidiary, with the support of Lincoln University.
It kicked off in December last year with four students undergoing a three-week intensive pre-employment training programme at Lincoln University Dairy Farm where they were taken through basic farming activities (such as learning to ride a farm bike, putting up a fence, and milking a cow), budgeting, and basic independent living skills. They were then matched with a local farm, which employs them for an initial six-month period working 32 hours a week on-farm and one set training day rotating between the current host farms.
Aaron has praised the programme’s set up to provide the NextGen students with a supported transition to the dairy industry. Jack is flatting with a fellow NextGen student on another Ngai Tahu Farming dairy farm, and there is a focus on pastoral care with farm managers actively engaging with students, Dairy Training, and the students’ families.
“They’ve come to the farms with some basic skills, which made the transition for them a little bit easier while there is still plenty to learn. We’re making sure that the learning is at an appropriate level. So with Jack, he and I have a weekly catch up, at the start of the week and then at the end of the week about how things have gone and then work out a plan for the coming week as to what he’d like to be working on and what I’d like him to be working on,” Aaron says.
“We variable milk – twice one day, once the next. This means a 3.30am start then breakfast then cracking on with some jobs on farm. There might be a bit of fencing, cattle work. We have quite a lot of technology on this farm with Halter and automated pivots so Jack spends a good bit of time learning about these processes when we’re not in the dairy shed or getting cows in. The initial six-month contract working from January to the end of June gives the students a good introduction to dairy farming with exposure to summer conditions, dry off, and wintering. It’s a really good programme and Dairy Training has worked well with farmers to make it fit-for-purpose,” Aaron says.
Applications are now open for the next intake of the NextGen Dairy Farmers Programme and close on 30 May. Dairy Training is also on the lookout for Canterbury farmers who are interested in hosting future students.
If you’re a farmer in Canterbury and interested in hosting a NextGen student please contact Dairy Training via email or visit the Dairy Training website to find out more.
NextGen students learning about vacuum in a rotary shed with Shane Stocker from Stocker Solutions.
Levi, a student from our first NextGen cohort learning to milk in a herringbone at Alpine Dairies.
Jack milking.