Farming is the most ancient occupation on earth; a never-ending story with one common theme - people.
We have always needed the fit, strong doers.
Yet suddenly the world has shifted and now as employers, our reputation has become so tarnished we need a chisel to salvage it.
In the most competitive jobs market in history, enticing the 'work smarter not harder' generation means we have to change our approach to employment.
I am always fascinated by how little self-reflection there is about what we are doing wrong and, in a world where business culture is now considered a key indicator of success, is ours actually up to scratch?
If you asked your staff, current or past, what would they say about you, as a person, a boss or a colleague? Would you be proud of that answer or defensive?
Right there, THAT is your businesses culture in a single conversation. That's where we all have to start if we are going to become an industry of choice.
But instead, it seems that we are quite adept at asking the wrong questions.
We have seen an industry-wide focus on uni degrees and leadership in ag for at least 15 years.
Somehow, we stopped giving credence to things that never change. Degrees are great, but someone still has to drive the tractor, start the syphon, fix the fence and chase the cows.
That doesn't take study, it takes a completely different kind of person and agriculture used to be a safe haven for those kids who couldn't succeed in a constricted education system.
Yet we stopped employing apprentices because they were hard work; many had forgone them in favour of backpackers - more fool us.
In doing so we created a massive gap in our industry succession planning.
Those people were always the most important element of our industry because, without them, no other part of our trade could exist and yet, they had become the most poorly treated and overlooked element of our businesses.
If we budget to invest in land, machinery, technology and more, we must also budget to invest in our people.
Our failings are also evident in the loss of our ag colleges. When they weren't working, we failed to pitch in to make them better, we failed to validate their importance and we let our own schools die.
We can't blame anyone but us for that huge loss. And If we are going to talk truth, we also need to acknowledge that when we inadvertently stifled the likelihood of people being farmers in their own right one day, what did we replace the golden carrot with?
What is left to aspire to? A lifetime of working for someone else and never being able to have a piece isn't enticing to the sort of people we want to have in our industry. We have to come up with ways to help them in.
If we aim to have staff who value and respect us, as we do them, who leave us because we have taught them all we know and they have outgrown us, not because they are sick of us, then we will be on our way.
But most importantly we need a shift in attitude because when we take on a kid at the beginning of their working life, we have an opportunity.
It can be the start of a lifetime in our industry and an act of benevolence as much as it is an EBA, if only we can be the sorts of employers that grow people, inspire people and celebrate people and consider them our absolute greatest reflection of success.
What we see in them is what they see in us.
- Bess O'Connor, Goondiwindi
