It's an inconvenient truth that many Australians care deeply about the provenance of their food yet for the most part, have no desire to contribute to its production.
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This is evident every time we post a job and the openings remain unfilled for months.
It's a trend that's replicated across the entire industry - a quarter of dairy farmers can't find the labour they need to run their businesses.
So, like most dairy farmers, we turned to skilled migrants to fill the gap.
As participants in the Dairy Industry Labor agreement, the Chesworth's The Little Big Dairy Co. farm has sponsored skilled migrants and we've also taken advantage of the second and third year farming requirements of the Working Holiday visa (in a move demonstrating a lack of government understanding of the labour issue, we were alarmed to hear that come 2024, British backpackers will no longer need to complete their 88 days of farm work to extend these visas).
However migration was never meant to solely bear the burden of labour shortages.
Decades after John Howard opened up skilled migration, the band-aid fix became a permanent solution that was never fit for purpose for dairy farming.
Take Kyo, a Japanese employee who worked for us for three years, part-time, while he was a university student.
As required by the Australian Government, he left the country to gain the necessary skills to become a skilled migrant.
He did his time in Canada and dutifully submitted his 482 visa application. That was four months ago. At the time of publishing, we're no closer to learning if Kyo's application has been successful and if we can offer him a permanent position on our farm.
Or Gurbinder who is from Italy and worked with us for two years. Gurbinder failed his visa application when he didn't meet the language requirements. Not one person in our business, or our wider community, has an issue communicating with him. This begs the question, is it the applicant or the application that's the issue?
In not making it easier for these workers to get a visa, we're leaving the door open for other countries like Canada, to poach these skilled and willing workers who would happily settle in Australia.
There's so much to gain from a career in agriculture, specifically the dairy industry.
The opportunity to work with and care for animals, job security and career progression, a life lived in the fresh air. And farmers are the key to solutions that could unlock this potential.
For instance, it's farmers who are best placed to upskill their own workers. Processing times aside, the larger injustice is that Kyo had to go to Canada to gain the necessary skills in the first place. We could have easily trained him up on site and given both sides continuity of service. Unfortunately, we weren't given the opportunity.
While I know this is an area ripe for exploitation from unscrupulous operators, we couldn't have been happier to employ Gurbinder permanently. We would have vouched for him, and provided the necessary language training if it meant he could stay.
Lastly, policy makers should spend more time in the trenches. Instead we find ourselves in a situation where shoes on the carpet are affecting boots on the ground, tying us up in unnecessary red tape that's decreasing productivity, output and denying us the workforce we so desperately need.
- Owner and co-founder of The Little Big Dairy Co Erika Chesworth is a 5th generation dairy farmer and a passionate advocate for the industry.
