Agriculture must flip the script in how it advertises itself to potential recruits who view farm work as dirty-kneed "shovel and food" labouring and are unaware of its evolution to a well-paid, multi-skilled and portable profession.
While farm workers are now using " a drone one day and a driverless tractor the next", the attraction and retention own goal is just one missing link testing the industry's capacity to address an ongoing and crippling worker shortage.
Andrew Sattler, chief executive of Macquarie's Viridis Ag, a business that owns and operates broadacre row cropping farms, said the industry "can do a better job" of articulating "the fundamental skills we are after."
"When we advertise for a farm hand role, we need to acknowledge that there is a huge amount of engineering, electronics (and) chemistry that now plays a role in how that role operates," he told the ABARES Outlook 2024 conference in Canberra.
"On the large farms that we operate we need a large, practical skill base in terms of dealing with machinery, understanding the basics of agronomy.
"There are roles around supply chains or... the carbon intensity of products that we are using. Fertiliser, urea will no longer be urea, having a skill set within the farm team that has a broad platform is really important and I think really attractive."
Meanwhile, another significant barrier to recruitment in regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas is access to training - despite 81 per cent of all agricultural industry workers living in the regions.
Skills Impact stakeholder engagement executive manager Geoff Barbaro believes "a lot" must go right for registered training organisations to effectively put out a shingle in RRR areas.
"There are huge workforces in RRR Australia and yet the majority of agriculture training delivery is in metropolitan areas in Australia. Hands up all those who that makes sense too?" he asked the ABARES audience.
"I understand why it is the case but it's not necessarily the right way."
The situation has worsened after the closure of several ag colleges in recent years.
Mr Barbaro also underlined the need to not only attract and retain employees but to create a pool of workers that can circulate among employers.
He said a Skills Insight report, scheduled to be published in April, will show that while farmers were willing to pay above average wages to attract and retain workers, there was both strong industry support for, and resistance to, paying for training.
Meanwhile, Central Queensland University associate professor Amy Cosby suggested an agriculture apprenticeship and school-based programs to better sell the industry before young people made career decisions were also needed.
"Young people have strong beliefs about what they are not going to be and what they could be in primary school. If we don't start programs in primary school we are probably already losing quite a high proportion," she said.
Meanwhile, Mr Sattler said agriculture should also do more to attract professionals who could fill industry-specific and key roles in the regions.
"We need great minds that have gone off and done a law degree but whose practice revolves around agriculture, likewise in finance and accounting, to get them involved in the regions which support our industry," he said.
"We rely on those people who at some stages have had an attraction or work experience, maybe they went and did a couple of years on the back of a horse in the Territory and ended up doing engineering.
"We absolutely want to make sure that we plug back into that talent on an ongoing basis through their careers,"
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that peak industry bodies recently to discuss ways to improve the collection and accuracy of agriculture workforce data as the sector battles against the twin issues of a crippling worker shortage and ageing workforce.
The current approach to workforce data is failing to provide the information required to effectively respond to and plan for future workforce needs.
