Farming Sector undergoing a shortfall of Skilled Workforce in UK

Agriculture is the new buzzword in the job industry. With the Growth of population and urbanisation all around the world, we are diverting our minds from the most important ingredient of life; Food. Every individual eventually is working to bring food for their families, along with other necessities for a comfortable life. Agriculture industry is going to grow in the next coming few years. Many countries like UK, Canada are now realising the same. The farming sector of UK is experiencing a deficit for certain jobs in growing agriculture industry. The shortfall in job market has been a cause of concern for many. There is also a growing alarm that skill shortages would hinder the UK’s ability to produce enough food as about 60,000 new employees are needed in next ten years to make up for the shortfall. The only vision for this as adopted by UK is that more and more people could enter and take up the jobs in the sector on work visas.

What is seen as a small problem right now could become a major problem in later stages. As UK’s ageing work force is on the verge of retirement is mainly the prime problem which threatens the farming and food production industries. The agriculture job sector does not allure many British workers as they consider it as unattractive and as a result the shortfall in the farming sector would need to be filled by people from abroad who desire to work and live in UK.

Lantra, the farming sector skills council revealed their findings to MP last week on the issue. Their findings reveal that 41 percent of the people working in agriculture are over 50 years of age out of which the average age of the farmers was 55 and half of them did not have any successors to run their farms after they retire. However, in farming industry 31 percent of the vacancies are hard to fill as there are skill shortages in UK as compared to 21 percent shortages in any other industry. Obviously there are going to be provisions and measures to help UK recruit skilled workforce in the industry. Immigrants on work visas to UK are likely to play an important part in helping the country’s agricultural industry to flourish and provide the food that is needed to feed the UK’s growing population.

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by varsha negi

www.angadinfo.com