AgriFood Skills Australia has released its 2011 Environmental Scan - Australia's Regions: Australia's Future. The 2011 Scan was developed in close consultation with agrifood industry to provide a contemporary overview of the state of the industry, its skills and workforce development issues and how well the National Training system is responding.

Click on the image to download the 2011 Environmental Scan in full as a PDF. Hard copies are available on request by emailing maddie.gay@agrifoodskills.net.au.

The 2011 Scan focuses on the untapped potential of regional Australia but which, without intervention, will be constrained by the workforce and skills crisis facing the agrifood industry:

• the industry faces a looming manpower crisis in several sectors due to the ageing of its workforce, skilled workers exiting to the resource sectors and poor labour attraction and retention rates over an extended period of time – suggestions are that the tipping point will occur between 2013 and 2018.  Within seven years, 56.2 per cent of our existing workforce will be over 55; half of our agricultural scientists are already nearing retirement.
• Converging factors are impacting on industry and necessitating new business models and a radically new skills base – the need to reduce emissions ahead of the price on carbon,  managing rising energy prices and water costs, biosecurity, animal welfare and ensuring our natural resources are managed and used sustainably.
   

National consultation and validation for the 2011 Environmental Scan highlighted five areas for priority action to address both industry’s immediate challenges and at the same time, lay a platform for sustainable growth:

1. 1. Improved employer culture, regional and industry leadership
2. 2. Greater attraction of workers
3. 3. Adoption of higher skill levels across the workforce
4. 4. Adoption and diffusion of new research, practice and technology
5. 5. Workforce retention and effective skills utilisation
    

These industry priorities will dictate AgriFood Skills Australia's direction over the coming months, with the development of new strategies that relate specifically to the skill and workforce needs of the agrifood industry:

• Development of an overarching National Agrifood Skills and Workforce Development Strategy;
• Assisting enterprises to develop and adapt to new, more sustainable and efficient business models through the upskilling of its workforce;
• Influencing policy on the need for a more flexible and responsive training system to equitably service regional Australia and support the learning culture of agrifood which is typically incremental, occurs over a lifetime, and closely linked to the innovation system;
• Empowering communities to build robust skilled workforces through devolved decision making, investment and local, cross-industry collaboration;
• Improving employer culture and leadership to assist enterprises to become ‘employers of choice’ and produce high performing workplaces;
• Establishing agrifood cadetships as a new mechanism to reposition the industry in the eyes of the community and attract young people into the new and emerging para-professional and technician job roles set to dominate the industry.
   

Launch

The 2011 Environmental Scan Australia's Regions: Australia's Future was officially launched by Mr Tony Windsor MP at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday 24 May 2011.

Click here to download the press release issued by AgriFood Skills Australia.