It’s now an urban myth that only country kids can get jobs on the land.
At Tocal College, students get trained for farm work wherever they hail from.
Tocal has great facilities run by the NSW Department of Primary Industries in conjunction with the CB Alexander Foundation.
Tocal is a 2200 hectare property situated near Maitland in the lower Hunter Valley.
It has a 300 head dairy, a commercial Brangus beef enterprise and 90,000 head free range egg production operation which the students all get experience on during their year at Tocal.
There is also a small sheep flock for students to round out their hands on experience.
Tocal Agricultural College’s Jill Clayton looked at two snap shots of Certificate III in Agriculture graduates, 20 years apart.
In 1995/96, more than 80 percent of students were from regional backgrounds.
But, by 2015/16 more than 50% came from urban backgrounds with the rest from rural townships and properties.
What’s driving this transition?
A few things that spring to mind are positive school agriculture experiences, school steers competitions, Tocal field days, Dairy Australia’s Cows Create Careers and social media.
But what does this mean for the dedicated vocational trainers at Tocal College?
As some of these students have never handled cattle or ridden horses, safety awareness and practical training are a must.
As with every practical task the underpinning knowledge has to become second nature to the students.
Both from the city and country alike!
Practical skills such as fencing, quad bikes, side by side, chainsaws, tractors and precision agriculture are just some of the range of activities that students train in.
The culmination of the year is the AgSkills challenge where students compete against each other and the clock in the wide range of skills they acquired during their year.
This is widely supported by industry donating prizes as they can see the value in the skills that students are learning.
Tocal students also get the opportunity to visit and work on local commercial properties.
These farmers give up their valuable time as off campus cooperators to work with the students giving students a valuable insight into realities of working on farms.
As part of the Certificate III course, Tocal also runs the cropping tour to North West Slopes, visiting research stations and properties.
This is a real eye opener to many of the city students seeing the scope of opportunities and the size of properties, machinery and towns.
Interestingly, both the Dux and bronze medalists in Certificate III in Agriculture came from urban backgrounds during 2015 and 2016.
It is not unusual for the city cousins to do really well during the Certificate III course as they work extremely hard to catch up on the assumed knowledge of their country counterparts.