TRAINING FOR FARMING

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 10

TRAINING FOR FARMING

The initial training period of the young man wanting to enter the farming industry, particularly the city man, was best spent on a one-man farm where people were “talking. eating and drinking” farming, Mr H. M. Caselberg, of Wellington ,told the Lincoln College farmers’ conference. This experience provided for early decision-making, he eaid. Mr Caselberg agreed, however, with questioners that there were fewer opportunities today for getting boys on to such properties. One questioner remarked: “It does not happen in any other industry that the employee lives with the manager.” Still another said: “I think that this sort of training with the employee living with the farm family will dry up in the next few years.” Mr Caselberg: It has pretty well dried up. “Have we got to accept that young trainees will not be taken on by farmers?” asked another man. Mr Caselberg said he had no answer to that problem. “Does it not boil down to the fact that we must look after them,” said another man. “The unfortunate overemployment situation and the dearth of skilled farm workers in New Zealand has forced farmers into expensive labour-saving mechanisation," said Mr Cfselberg. “In general the farmer has neither wanted to train or to employ an unskilled boy or man, and his wife after so many years of selfless effort has recently staged a minor revolution and now does not wish tn cook for hired help. For the same reasons it is difficult to place a town boy to work on a farm during the school holidays. So the present farm labour situation has arisen largely through the farmer’s own attitude towards his labour problems.” Mr Caselberg said that there appeared to be three main methods of entering the farm ing industry: (1) by birth and the inheritance of either a farm or the cash to enable the purchase of a farm; (2) by marriage; and (3) by wisely planned study, training and experience designed to en able a trainee to become i senior farm employee, a share milker or a manager. “Those with little or nt cash resources are unlikely tc >be able to save sufficient money to enable the purchase of an economic sheep farm The prospective dairy farmei .has a ladder through share milking and with the quite generous finance available tc competent sharemilker: should be able to purchase hi: own dairy farm before he is. say, 40 years old. It is pos sible for all of these classe: to qualify by experience and to save enough money for the deposit on farms offered foi selection by Government balr

One thing that should firmly be impressed on both the trainee and his parents was that no matter how skilful he became as a tractor driver, fencer, shearer or scrubcutter it was likely that a hired man would be available who was equally, if not more, skilful in performing these tasks. What could not normally be hired was a man with a sound knowledge of animal and field husbandry sufficient to enable him to make the decisions essential to the proper management of livestock.

Discussing the training of the boy who was to inherit a farm or economic part of a farm, Mr Caselberg suggested that after qualifying for school certificate, and preferably also taking university entrance, he should spend two years on farms—if going sheepfarming the first should be spent on a store sheep or high country property with experience being gained in the more intensive field in the second year. In the third year a diploma course should be taken at Massey or Lincoln. At intervals between farm or college the young man could spend the time in wool stores, freezing works or dairy factories. Then it was necessary to concentrate on animal and field husbandry in a practical way—in other words stock, their care and feeding. Employment for this purpose should be selected on a property where the programme was as nearly like the home farm as possible. After one to three years of further planned experience the young man should be capable of taking over a farm at 25 to 27 years of age. In the case of the son of an urban dweller with sufficient cash to purchase either a sheep or dairy farm, Mr Caselberg said that the training should be similar but the exercise was slightly more difficult because no one knew whether he was going to like store sheep, fat lamb or cropping, town milk or other dairying, or in what district he would prefer to settle. This should be determined probably in his third or fourth year and after this employment should be obtained on the type of farm selected—preferably in the district he preferred. The training of those with little or no money and who were determined to make a career in farming—he called them “my dedicated eccentrics” —was the most difficult exercise.

These lads rarely knew what kind of fanning they wanted to specialise in nor where they really wanted to settle. Their training had to be planned to give them a wider experience. “The question is often asked whether the city-bred boy has a reasonable chance in farming. I have proved that it is a little more difficult for him in the first two or three years but after that there is really no way of telling any differ-

ence between the skills of the city boy and the country-bred boy. “The future earning power of a trained man in farming is reasonably good today. There is not the slightest doubt that the commencing wage is low and bears no relationship with that paid in other industries, but viewed as an apprenticeship wage it is not so bad. Where it has failed so dismally is that it is not an apprenticeship and no easily ■ obtained assistance towards experience or study has been available up to now for the farm learner. This is most curious and

anyone with the good of the farming industry at heart will watch the new Federated Farmers training scheme with the greatest interest and wish it well. . . .

“Once a normal lad has progressed beyond the first two or three years and has acquired a reasonable competence it is easy to find a job at wages comparable with those in urban life. If, or when he has progressed still further, there are sufficient jobs at quite high wages available for him. Albeit not as many as there could have been had skilled farm workers been in better supply in the past.”