Farm sector industries must rapidly become much more female-friendly and build far more ethnically diverse workplaces or else agriculture will not find the talent it needs to meet current growth demands.
"We can't have an attitude of wanting more people living and working in regional Australia if we only employ people who look just like me," says Nutrien Ag Solutions managing director, Rob Clayton.
The "race for talent" threatened to leave the sector struggling to compete for labour against other regional industries.
Agriculture also needed to lure a whole spectrum of much-needed new skills away from city technology businesses, which were chasing more people, too.
Employers on farms or in agricultural service businesses such as Nutrien, must challenge themselves to recruit from a broader pool, not "just ag", he said.
They had to wake up to an unconscious bias in the bush where people often shied away from welcoming and acknowledging different cultures, backgrounds or qualifications.
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With many farms already operating at less than full capacity, especially at harvest, the consequences of talent shortages were being felt right along the food supply chain to supermarket shelves.
Just within Nutrien's own network there were 140 jobs sitting unfilled, while more broadly the agricultural supply chain was short of 172,000 workers at the same time as Australia's unemployment rate was at a 20-year low.
"The need to access a workforce now is more significant than ever," Mr Clayton said.
We need to work hard to ensure our city-based cousins, and people who don't look like white Anglo Saxon me, understand the benefits of living and working in regional Australia
- Rob Clayton, Nutrien Ag Solutions
He conceded his farming background in Central West NSW was typical of the small pool from which the industry traditionally "fished for talent".
"We need to work hard to ensure our city-based cousins, and people who don't look like white Anglo Saxon me, understand the benefits of living and working in regional Australia and ensure we make their diversity feel welcome.
"There are 750,000 people from India living in Australia today, but 690,000 of them choose to live in our capital cities."
Unaware, discouraged
That figure alone suggested many from diverse backgrounds were either unaware of opportunities outside the cities, or did not feel encouraged to move.
He said agriculture's much-needed potential recruits may currently be in workplaces as diverse as Woolworths supermarkets, the military, or Microsoft, or have skills ranging from biotechnology and chemistry to engineering.
"As our business evolves and technology improves, the skillsets we're looking for are changing fast - they're not necessarily the skills we've relied on in the past," Mr Clayton told this week's Regional Australia Institute national summit.
Agriculture was pursuing greater sustainability opportunities and encountering tougher market expectations and therefore required more workers with environmental science credentials and technical abilities.
We need a mix of old hands and new eyes
- Rob Clayton, Nutrien Ag Solutions
The sector needed enthusiastic people with a start-up mentality and willingness to fail fast and learn from those failures, moving quickly to the next challenge.
"We need a mix of old hands and new eyes," he said.
"We need strategic thinkers and solutions-focused people in our industry - whether they be male, female, young, old, from Australia or from overseas.
"We need a shift in culture to not only accept but encourage the diversity that will come from drawing city-based people to move to regional Australia."
Flexible and appealing
However, to make the bush genuinely appealing to newcomers and retain and engage the farm sector's existing workforce, employers had to become far more flexible and rural communities had to be proactive in providing positive thriving social environments.
Potential farm sector workers were weighing up multiple job offers, not just for the wages on offer, but access to childcare, good schools, health services, social opportunities including football and netball teams.
Many farmers and other employers would need to re-educate themselves about cultural, religious and diversity issues, in particular about providing appropriate leave options and workplace facilities for women who were underrepresented at most levels in the rural workforce.
"There are many things at play when people decide where to live, and their job is just one of them," Mr Clayton said.
"We need to ensure that when people move to the regions it does truly feel to them that they are moving to more."
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Andrew Marshall
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
Andrew Marshall is the group agribusiness writer for ACM's state agricultural weeklies and websites. He is a former editor at The Land and has worked in various Rural Press group roles in Canberra, North Richmond (NSW) and Toowoomba (Qld).
