GENERATIONAL CHANGE IN THE AUSTRALIAN

AGRIBUSINESS SECTOR –IMPLICATIONS FOR THE

FUTURE

Ray Johnson,Managing Director,

Agricultural Appointments,Melbourne, Victoria

“Occasionally in history massivedemographic change combines with relentless technological change and within a generation society altogether changes. Today we are living in such an era”

McCrindle Report

Today• Finding people to work in agribusiness – skills

shortages Rapid changes in technology will create new

gaps• Impact of the biggest change in the workforce

in a generation – the rise of Gen Ys• Major change in the very structure of the

emerging agribusiness workforce

Good people = good performance• Study after study links the skills of people

and their management as major drivers of company profitability

• People are billed as companies’ most important asset, yet people management practices are more often an afterthought than a core strategy linked to business performance

Skills shortages accelerating

Skills shortages remain the number one threat to the agricultural sector’s ability to succeed (Pratley, 2012; Agrifood Skills Australia, 2014)

Skills shortages“Evidence is presented that there is a sizeable job market in agriculture and more than 4,000 jobs/year are consistently advertised”

“Conversely the number of graduates being supplied by Australian universities continues to decline significantly and is less than 20% of the number needed to satisfy the job market”

(Pratley, 2012)

The number of children studying agriculture in high schools has dropped significantly in the past 15 years

•In 1997, 7000 year 10 students in NSW studied agriculture but just 2,200 took it for the HSC that year.

•More alarmingly in 2012, 6,800 students in year 10 studied agriculture but only 1,300 completed it in year 12.

And there is increasing demand for agribusiness skilled people

X2.5

Year-on-year (2015 versus 2014) increases in Seek job advertisements for the Farming, Animals and Conservation (mostly agriculture) job classification, and the ranking of this classification in the total of thirty on the Seek advertisements (Seek Report, 2016)

State Increase in job ads from 2014 to 2015 (%)

Overall ranking in growth out of a total 30 job classifications

Comments

NSW +20% 11th Strong growth in agronomy and Farm Services

Victoria +31% 3rd Strong growth in agronomy and Farm Services

Queensland +29% 2nd Aquaculture and veterinary services

South Australia +24% 7th

Western Australia

+8% 9th

Farmers and agribusinesses will use technology such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) in order to choose production that is most profitable, to produce a speciality product and to be acutely aware of consumer demands

'Big Data' refers to the rapid emergence of the capacity to generate, store and analyse large volumes of data derived from a range of different low-cost measuring and recording devices, and to use this information in computerised decision support systems to take some of the guess-work out of farm decision-making (Australian Farm Institute, 2016)

Demography, not technology is creating the future.

A majority of employees will be Gen Ys by 2020$

Now

2020

Gen Y’s – who are they?• Those people born roughly between the

years 1980 to the mid-1990’s (25-35 years of age)

• Gen Y’s are the children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomers and the best-educated and most materially well provided generation ever

• Baby Boomers think Generation X needs a stronger work ethic, Gen X sees the Boomers as self-absorbed workaholics –and everyone thinks Generation Y is selfish and self-entitled

The average Gen Y will take 25,700 selfies in their lifetime!

Survey of 3,000 Gen Y’s, McCrindle 2008

For Generation Y the old adage has become their credo:“we don’t live to work - we work to live”

Ethical – Social - Innovative

79% said additional training was ‘very important’ and thatregular training would motivate 90% to stay with an employer longer

And so….

• The point is that we have entered a new era and while employers need not react to every whim of a new generation, nor can they hold fast to the old and expect the emerging generations to conform.

• These new workplace entrants have had two decades of cultural shaping and there’s little an employer can do to change this.

• Knowing and understanding these shifts will be even more critical to attracting skilled people to your company in the future, a future that is also shaped by ever-increasing skills shortages

Jillaroos now outnumber jackaroos in the outback – due as much to the busting of stereotypes as the end of the mining boom

VinleighJohnson was the only woman in final year Agriculture in 1954

Now more than 50% of all university agricultural science and veterinary science graduates are women

Table 2: Female Student Percentages By Area of Study at Australian UniversitiesArea Of Study ug% pg% total%

Education 78.2 72.5 76.1Health 72 70.9 71.8Humantities Society and Culture 64.6 62.5 64.1

Creative Arts 60.1 65.9 60.9Average (mean): 55.7 54.9 55.5Agriculture Environment and Related Studies

52.4 52.1 52.3

Natural and Physical Sciences 50.4 49 50.2

Management and Commerce 50.5 46.9 49.4

Architecture and Building 38.9 45.8 40.6

Information Technology 16.1 25 18.9

Engineering and Related Technologies

14.4 21 15.8

Source: Australian Government 2015

1987 – photo of 39 women who received their Bachelor of Veterinary Science degrees in 1987, and for the second year in succession, the number of female graduates was greater than for men

In summary

• We are in the midst of a major generational change in the workforce, as baby boomers retire and Gen Ys become dominant

• They are the children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomers and the best-educated and most materially well provided generation ever

• This change is important because GenYs have different attitudes and approaches to employment and working life

• Unless the ag sector understands these differences and adapts then the already growing skills shortage will quickly escalate

• Rapid adoption of new technology by the ag sector will add to this problem

• Women now make up the majority of ag and vet science graduates• Agriculture and agribusiness will need to adapt to these many

changes in order to compete into the future