A PLAN is afoot that will see students from Curtin University ditch the books and head to the country to help fill predicted labour shortages at harvest time, as part of a new partnership between the academic institution and WAFarmers.
Optimal seasonal conditions mean that Western Australia is predicted to produce about 20 million tonnes of grain which far exceeds previous harvests.
Seasonal labour in the regions has been a long-term problem but this year, with a record crop, coupled with a reduced overseas worker population, finding workers for harvest is going to be especially challenging.
Curtin University supply chain management and logistics senior lecturer Elizabeth Jackson said an important relationship between the university and WAFarmers' Grain Council had developed from a mutually-beneficial solution to the crisis.
"With Curtin University's commitment to engagement and partnerships with industry, there is an exciting opportunity for students to involve themselves in addressing global food security issues," Dr Jackson said.
"Curtin University has about 15,000 Perth-based students finishing their semester on October 22, many of whom will not be doing exams because of COVID-19 seating restrictions.
"This is perfect timing for students wanting to earn a good wage to travel out to the regions and participate in an exciting part of the farming calendar."
WAFarmers grains council president Mic Fels has long been talking about the need for a solution to the shortage of experienced workers available to drive headers and chaser bins at harvest time.
He said while the majority of these students won't have worked on a farm before and therefore weren't a quick fix to the problem, training could be provided to them and there were other roles they could fulfil.
"We are still working on the skilled operators front and realistically an immigration solution is the only one we can see to that problem, but in the meantime at least this gives us some hope for all the other positions on farms at harvest," Mr Fels said.
"2WorkinOz, based in York, already runs training courses for inexperienced people who want to work on farms, but realistically it won't have the capacity to train 1000 university students.
"We're hopeful the Muresk Institute might be able to help out in some way as well and both of those organisations are pretty close to Perth, so potentially students could go down on a weekend or some contact free days and do some training."
With Curtin and WAFarmers only formulating the plan last Wednesday, the development is in the early stages, with the university putting out expressions of interest to try to get the word around to students about the opportunities available for seasonal work.
There are also two departments within the university working to design programs that would recruit seasonal workers from the student body and also incentivise them with credits towards their degrees if they complete assignments on what they've learned while onfarm.
Mr Fels said while the priority for WAFarmers from a short-term perspective was to "get bums on seats", it would also provide a very valuable learning and career development opportunity for the students.
"Students studying some form of agriculture or agribusiness degree are probably going to be more likely to sign up, but there's no reason why students studying any other degree can't be involved as well," Mr Fels said.
"The course that someone is doing is not a requirement to do these jobs, it's more a case of someone being keen, enthusiastic, able and intelligent.
"If they are those things, I don't think they have to come from an agriculture course."
Dr Jackson said farms were technologically-advanced businesses where the latest machinery was used to manage the harvest and there were not too many students who won't have an interest in modern operations.
"Australian grain farms are power houses of innovation," she said.
"The provision of safe food for our global customers is at the forefront of farmers' minds so issues such as business strategy, marketing, supply chain management, engineering, data analytics, environmental management, crop science and even health are daily points of conversation on farms.
"It's not just labouring on a farm anymore and there is no better way for students to engage hands-on with such high-level issues than to participate in a global food system while earning a good wage during their holidays."
Mr Fels said there were problems on many fronts when it came to farm labour and it was not a new issue.
"We just don't have enough labour in the country willing to do the work which is why we've been employing foreign labour for so long," he said.
"The short-term crisis is how we're going to get the crop off which these students would help with, but the long-term problem is that we don't have enough skilled labour in the country and we're not recruiting enough people into agriculture.
"This university student idea could potentially be a structural long-term solution as well as a short-term solution - if we can pull it off and it goes well, why not do it every year?"