Making changes - PAC Report by Ellen Garland

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By Ellen Garland

This week the hot topic in our weekly and daily newsletter has been based around “Messing with the Model”. Dwain mentioned my take on attracting young people to Agriculture and the example of the Horse racing industry and how deep-rooted changes to tradition and how the industry operates. See the weekly newsletter here.

We have received many responses to this with a number of great ideas to attract young people to Ag.

I’ve also had some feedback on my comments about the Racing Industry. Traditionally working in a racing stable as a stable hand is about manual labour, cleaning out horse stalls, paddocks, yards, horse walkers, replacing old sawdust and or straw with new and the list goes on. But I have recently heard about one of the bigger stables reducing part of the manual aspects. Don’t get me wrong, the horses aren’t walking around and saddling themselves, horse handlers are still required, but the days of that stable hand being on the end of a shovel digging out a horse yard are on the way out. Bobcats and Tractors with attachments that does the job of the old shovel, reducing time and labour by staff. This still requires someone to drive the machines, but hiring someone to drive the bobcat instead of manually cleaning out these yards is much more attractive.

Racing stables are becoming more innovative in the way that they do the stable hands job, which in this day and age is a must. This is also relevant to jobs in Ag, we are always learning and even if this is the way it has always been done, we can always find a better way.