Sheep producer Katherine Bain advocates for young people in agriculture to travel and head to uni

The sixth-generation farmer was getting her bearings around a sheep shed and was unsure about a career in agriculture until she saw the scope of the industry when she recently headed overseas to Japan as part of a high school student exchange program with Rotary.

"I was there for a year working in ag, and after coming back, that was when I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the industry," she said.

But rather than simply heading back to the farm, she decided to complete a business degree, with a focus on agriculture, at Marcus Oldham College, Geelong.

She has since worked on cattle farms in Canada, worked for Paraway Pastoral in Orange, NSW and participated in numerous scholarship programs around the country.

The most recent being the Australian Wool Innovation's Breeding Leadership course, where she learned everything from personality typing to streamlining workflow.

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While she admits it can be a bit odd to implement such work practices on a family-run farm, she found it helped her "understand other people better and why they may make the decisions they do when running a business."

"I was in a position where I was able to go away and take so much of what I learned at the course back into the home and implement it, and learning what leadership meant in running a farm" she said.

But aside from the education in the classrooms, she said travel shows the vast opportunities available to farmers back at home, and more producers are doing it too.

"I think it's a real generational change at the moment - my own dad did a year of uni and then went travelling," she said.

"I've been told his generation was the one that started that idea of education being really important for farmers and not just coming home after high school and doing what's always been done."

Ms Bain said she is seeing more of that trend in other farming families too.

"There's a lot of people that have come home to the farm around Stockyard Hill have all gone off done uni, maybe work somewhere else, maybe go on those travelling experiences."

At a government level, the Victorian government say they are supporting educators at the secondary school stage to encourage more agricultural career.

A $5.5 million Secondary Schools Agriculture Fund (SSAF) is supporting students to transition into agricultural careers.

The fund aims to help increase the local workforce enhance technical skills and give greater awareness to students and teacher awareness of agricultural careers in specific local areas.

There has been much anticipation from agricultural colleges that future years will also see an influx of new students.

Business development officer from Longerenong College in Hamilton, Donna Winfield, said it was essential campuses prepare and fulfil the requirements of any high school graduates wanting to pursue a career.

"It is a wonderful thing that we are seeing more demand for people wanting to take up courses at Longy," she said.

"We have students come from far afield from places like Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales, and it gives us pleasure to know people are keen to learn beyond their locality," she said.

Ms Winfield also said students are specifically interested in developing management and leadership skills and singled out agronomy as a career showing exponential growth.

"Our students who undertake tertiary courses like our advanced diploma of agribusiness walk out with exceptional positions being available to them, and I think that's what interests them in persuing further education," she said.

Other colleges have made changes to accommodate the growth in students, too.

In June, Marcus Oldham's Waurn Ponds campus opened a new 30-bedroom facility, which they say will ensure more students have an immersive on-campus experience.

In a speech at the opening of the facility principal Andrew Baker said the college went from 14 students when the college opened in 1962 to 160 students studying on campus in the current day.

"Over the past four years, we've been planning to increase our accommodation capacity, simply because we have more students wanting to persue a career in agriculture," he said.

"Agriculture needs more graduates because they will turn into leaders in driving i9mprovement in their communities and their industries."

But some still say that more significant changes need to happen to broaden the local workforce at home.

The Victorian Farmer's Federation's (VFF) state election strategy is calling for more upgrading of facilities at a TAFE level and modern upgrades to those institutions need to be enhanced.

"Enrolments in TAFE/VET and agricultural colleges are not meeting the workforce needs of industry and are having a significant impact on food and fibre production." VFF president Emma Germano said.

"This needs to change and greater investment and partnership between industry and education providers is needed to ensure the needs of our industry are met."

The VFF are calling for long term strategies to ensure entry-level students are accommodated provide ongoing funding for courses focusing on shearing, shed hand training.

Producers up north have also heard of some long-term ideas to boost young careers in ag.

Anthony Lee, director and chief executive of big Queensland-based beef producer, feedlotter and processor Australian Country Choice (ACC), delivered the prestigious Malcolm McCosker Memorial Address at the Rural Press Club of Queensland Ekka breakfast.

In his speech Mr Lee advocated for a single body that represents all agriculture nation-wide with a remit to develop agriculture education in students as young as three.

"Any sort of real agricultural study does not commence until year ten and even then, it's only an elective," Mr Lee said.

"That's too late. Our industry's ability to educate and effect a young person's life is being totally missed."

According to Mr Lee, if moves aren't made to sure up employment options, agriculture had no chance on meeting its target of being a $100 billion industry by 2030.

While solutions to achive that are manageable, there was also a need to address "a curriculum being filled with negative messaging about agriculture from the uniformed."

"Employment offerings, both on and off-farm, are increasing. However the number of graduates per year in agriculture is relatively constant and projections based on intakes suggest that this is unlikely to change," he said.

"Not only do we have insufficient people to fill positions, there is an increasing number of people, mainly external to our industry, who are dissatisfied with agriculture's supposed poor environmental credentials which unfortunately is likely to exacerbate our skill shortages in years to come."

Mr Lee quoted the Dean of Penn State Agriculture Science in the United States Rick Roush: "Students avoid agriculture because of the stain of climate change."

"Whether we agree or not, this is the world we live in and it is of concern. Skills shortages and our declining social license are linked issues," Mr Lee said.

He also referenced an increase in a corporation-style management of family farms and a growing in farm size being factors that add to the 'professionalising' of agriculture.

For Ms Bain, her experiences of travelling and continually developing skills have had a positive impact, and believes that is an ideal beginning to an agricultural career.

"It might be six or seven years down the line from when finished high school, but it's really important to have that kind of more breadth of knowledge, and a bigger network of people," she said.

"You learn about issues that range from things like biosecurity, the environment, but also the political scope, and figuring out how policies restrict how we operate too," she said.

"The big thing with any kind of changes is to be proactive, and just have your finger on the pulse of what is going on in the industry."