So this Nuffield thing all happened pretty quickly really. In mid June this year I received an email from Nuffield Australia who said they had been given my details as someone who might be interested in applying for a Nuffield Scholarship for 2017. But applications were closing in two weeks so if I wished to consider applying I would need to decide pretty quickly. I had heard of Nuffield Australia before and knew of a few of the previous cotton industry scholars but hadn't put a lot of thought into whether I might like to take something like that on. But my girlfriend Kate and I had been thinking about (and what I mean is she'd been, let's say, firmly advocating for) a trip overseas in the next year or two and so I thought well maybe this will be a chance for one of those two birds, one stone type jobs. If I'm fortunate enough to get a Scholarship, I will have a fantastic opportunity to be part of a global agricultural network and put my energy into some study that will hopefully benefit our business at home and the ag industry. And at the same time go on that big overseas trip Kate's keen on and still have something to keep me busy and not feeling like I ought to be back at home on the farm. Win win.
So why not, I printed out the application and figured I'd take a shot at it. A basic summary of what a Nuffield Scholarship is; Scholars are awarded a bursary that allows them to undertake a minimum of 16 weeks international travel to study a topic of their choosing. The first half of the travel is organised by Nuffield and incorporates a Contemporary Scholars Conference (CSC)(with all the 2017 scholars from around the world) and a Global Focus Program (GFP)(6 countries in 6-7 weeks in a group of around 6 scholars). The remaining travel (around 8 weeks) is to wherever the Scholar chooses in order to further study their chosen topic. So I guess I needed a topic.
I'm pretty quick to admit that for a farmer I'm not hugely passionate about the nitty gritty of agronomics and I certainly don't have much expertise in most things mechanical. Obviously they are of interest to me and I try to stay up to date on most things but as far as something I'd want to spend the next year working on, that wasn't going to work. But having majored in management at uni I have a fair interest in business structure and management. Here at home our business has recently acquired more property and we've reached a size in a business sense where our reliance on our middle management to assist in making decisions and implementing plans has increased. And over the course of the last two years we have never quite had a full compliment of people in those roles. And without meaning to be rude, of the guys we do have in those roles the youngest is 40. Now that is not a bad thing in itself but I guess it's a bit like a sports team, you need the guys with the experience and the runs on the board out in the middle but you also want to have the next batch of players coming up through the ranks to provide depth and ensure you're not premiers one year, wooden spooners the next.
Agriculture I think can say that it does have that next batch of talent coming through. For a young person deciding on a career path, agriculture is a pretty exciting industry to consider. There is such a broad scope of ways you can be involved; sales, suppliers, research science, agronomy, commodity trading, agribusiness and banking and of course, on the farm. But unless you're someone who is headed home to a family farm, it seems that a lot of younger people aren't choosing a career on farm. And while the rapid technological advances and mechanisation of agriculture will make it easier, less labour intensive and more cost effective to farm, that will only increase the need for people with that decision making skill set and make it more important to have that workforce capacity at a farm level.
So now I had a topic; where will the next generation of farm managers come from and how can quality candidates be attracted to a career in farming?
So the application must have been ok because I was given the chance to front a NSW interview panel in Sydney. Sitting on one side of a boardroom table across from 9 interviewers was a different experience and doing it with a black eye and busted nose from rugby made it that bit more interesting. They must have thought I needed another chance because I was then progressed to a National interview a few weeks later in Melbourne. Unfortunately, I hadn't fared much better that week and was looking just as beat up from the previous weeks rugby. But if nothing else I thought that the whole interview process had been a good way to get out of my comfort zone and experience something I otherwise may not have. In the last week of August, I received a call from Andrew Johnson, Nuffield Australia's Chairman at the time, to say I had been awarded a scholarship which I received in Adelaide at the Nuffield Conference two weeks later.
So that's how this all came about. I'm not sure if this blog will be of much interest to anyone and it's not normally something I would do but I figure if nothing else it might serve as a way for me to keep track of everything that's ahead in the next little while. The 2017 CSC is in Brazil in March and my GFP group leaves from there to travel Brazil, Mexico, the US, Ireland, France and New Zealand, so I'll be away for basically all of March and April (while the rest of the team on the farm will be picking our biggest ever cotton crop, sorry guys!). Then there'll be another 8 weeks to who knows where later in the year, which Kate will be with me for.
Nuffield Scholarships are only possible with the support of industry bodies and organisations so I should recognise the contribution made to sponsor my scholarship. Thank you to the Cotton Research & Development Corporation and to Cotton Australia for their support of Nuffield and for giving a cotton grower each year the opportunity to be awarded a scholarship. I'm looking forward to working with them on this topic and hopefully providing some useful insights for the cotton industry and ag more broadly. And of course a great deal of gratitude to Nuffield Australia for their work in Australian agriculture and for the opportunity to be a part of this global network of people.
That'll about do it for this first post. The next few weeks will hopefully see me get some planning done on the how, who, what, where and when I'll be spending time and I'll endeavour to write something about it.
Cheers, DK.