February 13 2018, The Times

An Agriculture GCSE Will Help Grow The Next Generation of Farmers

Last week I led a debate in Parliament calling on the government to introduce a GCSE in agriculture. This is already available in Northern Ireland owing to that region’s strong rural tradition and vital contribution to the local economy. However, I would assert that the same could be said for many regions across Britain, and this GCSE could be valuable to pupils from all areas.

I felt it was important to start a parliamentary conversation, since a new qualification of this kind would offer significant skills and career opportunities to secondary-aged children, and could increase the pool of educated younger workers from which the farming sector could draw on. One of the main functions of our education system is to equip young people with necessary skills to make a contribution to the social and economic life of our country. Given pupils can currently study for GCSEs in geology, astronomy, business and psychology, surely they should also be able to learn about farming at the earliest possible opportunity, given how essential it is for putting food on everyone’s tables, and managing our landscapes and natural environment.

The average age of a farmer is 59 in the United Kingdom, so there is a serious need to encourage fresh talent into the sector. Agriculture is the essential foundation of the UK food and drink industry, our largest manufacturing sector, which contributes over £100 billion annually to the economy, and sustains more than 400,000 jobs. There is also the urgent global challenge of food security, with its huge implications for international development and economic growth in poorer nations. World population growth means have to produce 70 per cent more food over the next 30 years, and do so in a sustainable way that maximises finite resources. This challenge in some respects is as significant as climate change, and putting this on the school curriculum through an Agriculture GCSE could inspire young minds to help us produce a solution.

Young people could gain a huge amount from being able to undertake a practical vocational qualification that is directly-linked to a diverse field of employment. Agriculture is increasingly a high-tech, high-skill industry that will be transformed by unfolding scientific developments, and we should be looking to engage our young people with these advances and alert them to the opportunities for a fulfilling and socially useful career.

Methods in farming are changing at a rapid pace with the increased use of robotics, biotechnology, gene editing and data science. A school leaver entering the farming sector in the next few years could expect to use GPS technologies to harvest wheat, driverless tractors, drones to deliver herbicide to weeds on a precision basis, grow wheat with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and new technologies that will drive up animal welfare, such as robotic milking parlours.

Our country is home to some of the best agri-science research in the world, such as at Rothamstead Research in Hertfordshire, and Fera Science just outside my constituency in North Yorkshire. We should be trying to fire the imaginations of our young people by engaging them in the classroom with such examples as soon as possible, just as we try to inspire pupils with the achievements of British scientists and astronauts, and the richness of British cultural and literary achievements in their science and English GCSE courses

Furthermore, the development of indoor vertical farming using hydroponics will also expand the opportunities for growing food in urban areas, which could serve to make agricultural knowledge just as relevant to a pupil in an urban area as in a rural one.

The majority of farms are family businesses (mine being no exception) and the routes to getting involved if you are not from a farming background can be quite limited, to the detriment both of the sector and school leavers, who are restricted in their ability to get a taste of an industry they might well be able to thrive in. Putting an Agriculture GCSE on the curriculum would widen opportunity and access for students by giving them the option to learn about a sector that relatively few of them will have knowledge of, or consider as a career choice.

A new Agriculture GCSE would also represent a sensible extension of the government’s very welcome plans to expand the provision of vocational and technical education, in order to create a better-skilled workforce. The development of T-levels as a full technical alternative to A-levels is encouraging, but if we are truly to establish the parity of esteem necessary to seriously boost take-up of the vocational and technical route, this option needs to be offered to pupils at the first point they select the qualifications they will take — at GCSE level.