Growing Jobs

What is growing jobs about?

SEEDA, the Regional Development Agency for the South East, funded Dr Alan Rae of Fletching Glasshouses to look for examples of good practice in workforce management and to develop case studies useful to different types of production horticulture.

This site makes the findings available to growers and policy makers. It contains case studies, guidelines and other outputs of the project. We identified 6 principles of good practice which you can see on the left hand side bar, and we’ve written a 24 page good practice guide which you can download via the form on the right sidebar.

You can find the case studies from the individual companies on their own pages, together with some video clips which allow the companies to tell their own stories for you. Finally, we’ve put together a page of useful resources and contacts.

We would still welcome additional case studies – if you think you’ve got a story that would be useful to other people, give me a ring on 0845 094 0407

Growing Jobs videos on You-Tube

One of the great things about social media is that the tools that we have at our disposal for getting our message across get more powerful all the time.

YouTube has recently revamped their channel facilities which not only make it easier for users to find the content that’s been created but also allows us to embed complete playlists into a web page.

I’ve recently been creating a Business Basics video series which uses the findings from the additional evidence base section of the growing jobs project as the bulk of the section on Managing Teams.

I’ve taken the opportunity to create a new play list which is embedded here. It combines this 16 minute video with the 4 video clips from the project from VHB-Humber, Bardsleys, Lowater and Hillier.

I hope you find it useful

Growing together implementation plan from West Sussex Growers.

West Sussex growers have recently released an update to their strategic plan for developing horticulture in their area. There are three key priorities that have been identified.

Strategic Priority 1

Ensure that planning and land use policies support the sector and identify suitable locations for development.

Strategic Priority 2:

Improve understanding of the sector with local communities.

Strategic Priority 3:

Improve the attractiveness of the sector to young people and potential recruits.

Priority one focuses on transport especially the A27 , energy and water conservation and looks at the need to make suitable land available outside the existing Horticultural Development Areas based on the area around Tangmere and the rump of the old land settlement association site at Runcton.

It is framed around the need to move towards all year round supply chains to meet the “needs” of the dominant retailers and raises the issues of food security and import substitution.

The third area of course falls within the remit of our Growing Jobs project so I’ve reproduced a small part of the report here.

The WSGA plans to update their recent training needs analysis of the local industry. The Association recognises that

The Industry is highly technical; knowledge based and requires well trained management and staff.

There are a wide range of specific training courses available for operational staff.

A new accredited course is being developed for the ornamental sector with the HTA/HDC. The course could be rolled out to other sectors after a trial. This will take over 2 years.

“Bank” schemes for seasonal work-loads have proved to be successful. ( see the case study on this site about Humber VHB)

Links with Education and Training Organisations

The provision of horticultural degree level courses at universities throughout the UK is declining; leading to a shortage of Horticultural Graduates.

A review of degree courses needs to be prepared from allied sectors, e.g. arable farming and vegetable production.

Schools

Strengthen links with local Primary & Secondary Schools.

Encourage individual Horticultural Businesses to form strong links with their local Schools.

Industry Specific Training

Growtrain provides a range of courses and has the capability to design and deliver bespoke courses.

The Industry needs to further communicate its requirements with local providers.

Develop relationships with Lantra.

Education Business Partnership

Links between the successors to the Education Business Partnership and WSGA need to be strengthened.

Strengthen links with local Primary & Secondary Schools.

Apprenticeship and Work Experience schemes should be encouraged and developed.

The full report can be downloaded from the WSGA site here

New training programme for land based industry managers

New training programme for Managers

Concordia has introduced a new training programme starting in early November aimed at middle managers in the land based sector.

In conjunction with Plumpton College, Concordia is offering Management and Leadership Training (MALT) for busy managers who want the knowledge and skills for a successful career in 21^st century farming.

MALT is a level 5 qualification validated by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). Managers on the course will study Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Resource Management, Recruitment and Selection, Stakeholder Expectations and Decision Making

The course is delivered over a period of 15 months and attendance at college is divided into five separate residential blocks totalling 18 days, to minimise disruption to the working routine. Between the blocks of study, work based assignments are completed.

Concordia Chief Executive, Rob Orme, says, ‘We are aiming to a the clear need in the sector for management level training targeted fairly and squarely at the land based sector. Our new course is for people already in middle management positions who want to further develop their skills. The assignments are focussed on the individual student’s workplace enhancing the relevance for employers.’

Concordia is expecting interest from managers who are established in their role but may not have undertaken formal training for some time as well as people who have completed Concordia’s other management courses.

Concordia already offers its Management and Supervisory Training Programme (MAST). This is a Level 3 course aimed at supervisors and team leaders in their first management or supervisory positions.

Applicants or employers should telephone or e-mail Amy Wood, Concordia Education and Training Manager on 07808 888525 or amy.wood@concordia.org.uk for more information about the MALT programme. Information is also available at www.concordia.org.uk

The full report, case studies and evidence base is now available as a paperback.

This book came from a project carried out for SEEDA to develop some general principles about how to build a world class workforce for the horticultural industry. I talked to about 30 growers and unearthed some interesting case studies about innovative ways that real companies had used to develop their workforces.

Horticulture is a highly technical industry but is seen as a Cinderella by policy makers and educators as it doesn’t fit the usual pattern where qualifications map easily to expertise.

This is of course normal amongst SMEs who continue to baffle the good and the great. The book’s influenced strongly by my own experiences of running businesses in IT and horticulture as an organic grower and I have tried to develop insights that are useful to anyone running a small business.

The second half of the book provides an evidence base and embeds the findings of the research into current management thinking about high performance work practices and current approaches like Lean and Smart Working.

You can sample the book here

You can buy it via the www.Completelynovel.com site or you can buy it directly from the Author here for £11.99 inc post and packing.

Is sustainability the new black?

Last week I was giving a talk on the Growing Jobs Project to the British Independent Fruitgrowers association’s Technical Day

What was particularly interesting was that all of the talks had working sustainably at the core of what the speaker had to say.

The science was all about managing pest control to minimize or eliminate pesticide residues with a lot of work being done at East Malling on that subject. We had a presentation on Garlic as a tree wash and natural insect repellent and two talks about managing labour in a way that increases how long it lasts.

The speaker from Waitrose was also explaining how they were building more longer lasting relationships with their growers while a very interesting talk was given by Emily Durrant who has worked with organisations such as Heineken and Bulmers and has done some work developing a sustainability index for fruit growers.

The index covered these dimensions

Farmer and Local Community
Social and Cultural Wellbeing
Environmental Pollution
Natural Resource Use
Biological Resources

Emily said that this sounds quite complicated but that it really boiled down to

Growing lots of quality apples at a fair price for a long time. That seems fair enough

The most serious thing that I took away was that the one thing that all the speakers referred to was the need to use water more effectively. There is certainly going to be increasing competition for water in the supply chain for fresh produce over the coming decades and all growers should have a strategy for dealing with this emerging issue.

I felt glad that we were following Lowaters in installing a rainwater harvesting system in our own nursery.

Growing Jobs now out in Paperback!

Thanks to the wonders of social media marketing and a great new site called Completely Novel you can now buy the Growing Jobs report and the case studies as a paperback – 57 pages for £5.99

You can use this link to buy it.

The completely novel site also allows you to read it online before you buy it.

If you do got this route, please let me know how you get on

Alan

School of Fruit Growing

One of the themes that came out of the original study was that we need to take control of our own education and training. Since this site was set up as a means for the industry to talk to itself I’m quite happy to describe new initiatives here – Public or Private – as long as they’re relevant.

When talking about the project at the National Fruit Show last week, I found out about a new 4 module on Fruit growing from FAST. This 4 day course runs one day a month from December to March and covers

Soil management – types, structure and nutrition
Tree Physiology and Management
Harvesting and Storage
Pest and Disease control.

As demand for UK fruit increases the need to supply fruit over a longer season requires a good understanding of the influence of the picking date and storage conditions on fruit quality.

It costs £350 + VAT per day. If you are south east based you may qualify for some grant funding. More details from Sheenagh Levett on 07950 775161 or via the web site

The course focuses on top and stone fruit, but similar courses aimed at soft fruit are also available.

Update on Lowaters visit

One of the companies I interviewed on the project was Lowaters. In addition to kindly providing on one of our case studies, one of their directors, Charles Carr was also carrying out a project – this one on water recycling.

You see the water industry has woken up to the fact that we are likely to start seeing difficulties with water supply – and countries where food is grown for us such as Spain and Italy are very much in the front line. Already it’s nearly impossible to get a new water abstraction licence in the South East as a commercial grower. So there is some real interest in water recycling – and until it’s abolished SEEDA is offering 40% grants for water recycling projects. Since we have about 2 acres of glass here it’s clearly of more than academic interest to our own nursery- in fact we’re at the grant submission stage ourselves having already jumped through the planning permission hoops.

Anyway Lowaters have created a really interesting set up – 7000 cu meter reservoir (we would get through about 600 cu meter here in months like July and August) which is purified by oxyenation via a venturi pump and an iris bed. More about that in a minute.

As permaculture enthusiasts will know this is a key trick in the reservoir – but it’s amazing to see it installed in a mainstream nursery. What’s particularly surprising is how small it is relative to the amount of purification of pathogens like phytophora that it removes. But analysis of the water demonstrates that it does. It passes 4 cu metres per hour or around 100 cu metres per day – five times what we would use here at our irrigation peak. Here’s a couple of pictures.

Lowater Iris Bed

Under the bonnet

As you can see, the roots of the Irises which sit in a floating polystyrene island are able to clean the water that passes through them.

If you would like a copy of Charles’ report you can download it free from this page which also has a slideshow of the whole project

Water Champion’s report now available

One of my fellow champions, Charles Carr of Lowater’s nursery has recently completed a report on water harvesting in the horticultural sector and it reviews among other things the use of reed and iris beds in cleaning run off water.

It has a number of case studies and documents their own experiences in putting in a harvesting system. You can download the report here free.

The launch event of this is tomorrow so I’ll report back on anything interesting that’s said.

Alan

btw – this is of slightly more than academic interest to me – we’re progressing a rainwater harvesting scheme here at Fletching Glasshouses. Will keep you updated on developments.

Growing Jobs – How to get a top notch workforce

Is the title of the next presentation I’m making.

It’s at the National Fruit Show, Kent County Showground on Wednesday 20th October. Time is 4.15 – 4.45.

Entrance to the show is free. More details here.