Providing skills in the agri-food sector

Farmer's Weekly recently ran a feature "The skills needed to make SA farming more profitable". The message was that a skills shortage exists in all areas of agriculture.

Skills that need to be sharpened included:

• Farm management, entrepreneurship, marketing, financial planning and management, natural resource management, some technical knowledge (small-scale farmer level)
• Adult basic education and training (ABET) and other life skills (the labour force in commercial agriculture)
• Business and marketing skills, environmentally responsible production and processing systems, raising health and safety compliance and making more progress towards meeting international standards (commercial farmers)

Find the AgriSETA list of scarce skills here.

Amongst the nearly 180 chapters of The Agri Handbook is Agricultural education and training. It lists the achievements in education over 2011-2012 and provides contact details of training providers in the country: all agricultural schools, colleges, Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, AgriSETA-accredited trainers, universities and more.