Over half of the UK’s rural population work at jobs related to the farming industry. That accounts for half a million workers on the nearly 19 million hectares currently classified as agricultural land. To keep this important industry alive and economically healthy, new ways of producing crops and new uses for existing crops offer an exciting and prosperous future for farmers.

Farming jobs are vital for today’s economy for many reasons that tend to be overlooked with all the emphasis on “green” projects, revitalizing inner city areas and the upcoming Olympic Games in 2010. That is not to deny the importance of these other schemes; everything has its place and time, but the time for attention and investment in agriculture is now, before it is too late.

Farms Support Small Rural Communities

The countryside has become a tougher place to live, financially speaking, since many conveniences, such as subsidized public transport, choice of schools and easy access to commuter routes are missing or harder to obtain outside of the urban areas. For the fewer every year that stick it out in “the sticks”, local farms offer a place to buy produce of all kinds, act as a social center during seasonal celebrations, and most importantly, are the major employers in the area. If these small holders and farmers are not actively encouraged by decent financial incentives to remain in business, the next generation will not be farmers, but have to seek alternative careers, elsewhere. The result for small villages would be a gradual death, closure of local small schools and hospitals, followed by residents relocating in search of work and better services.

Small Businesses are the Root of Economic Growth

UK business statistics show the most growth, economically speaking, comes from the small to medium size businesses, which includes many farms. Those employing fewer than 250 staff have increased their business sizes and production, taken on loans to re-tool and improve all aspects of their businesses. This, in turn, creates new job, a cycle that is vital for the survival of small communities in rural areas.

History has a Habit of Repeating Itself

A hard lesson learned during WWII involved the quick cultivation of any even remotely suitable land for food crops. As food imports were halted by shipping coming under fire from enemy planes, the UK had to turn inward to supply itself with any foods that could be grown or raised at home. An army of workers recruited from many who were previously not in the general workforce produced huge amounts of food to sustain the population. Any reduction of imported foods, for whatever reason, will inevitably drive prices up and create shortages again. This could be a major problem if sufficient farming businesses no longer exist, or have cut back on production.

Growing Crops for Fuel for the Future

With the high process of petrol and heating oil, research is continuing into using crops to produce the energy needed. “Biofuels” as they are called, currently cause 30% to 40% less carbon emissions than the oil alternatives, offering a very profitable future for farmers who can use less productive land to grow the crops, since they typically need lesser soil quality than fruits or vegetables.

The Food Chain Stops Here

Farms are only the starting point for a huge industry based around food delivery and packaging. When those nice fresh vegetables arrive in a London supermarket, they have passed through many hands and helped provide jobs in all the stages in their journey. The food processing industry takes the basic raw materials and turns them into the convenience foods that help busy workers eat a good hot meal at the end of the day. Produce markets in London and other cities rely on fresh supplies coming from farms located all over the UK, as well as other EU countries. UK produce has an excellent reputation for good agricultural techniques, keeping up with recent health and safety regulations (often at a high cost) and are considered providers of superior quality produce.

Adaptability for Survival

Research into which crops will be effective in the coming year has lead to increased revenue and production for farmers. They are prepared to be more flexible in the selection of crops than ever before. Examples of this are identifying areas where markets are under supplied and converting existing fields and greenhouses to produce crops to fill these holes. Organic produce has gained popularity with consumers, and offers a good return for many farmers who have switched over some acres to grow vegetables in this way.

All the above reasons show how important farming is to the UK economy, and where it can assist in the future, by adapting and diversifying to changing needs.

A recent report by the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) looked in detail at internet use amongst gardeners. The report shows that the growth in use of the internet by very keen gardeners now stands at 74 per cent which almost matches the national average of 76 per cent.
Around seven out of ten use the web to get information about products and services. And, over the last three years, there has been a substantial increase in the role of the internet as a source of inspiration for the garden, with 27 per cent indicating that they now use the web for this purpose.
The report highlights the blurring of channel definitions in retailing and describes how online and mail order shopping are merging into one. It also questions whether the worth of online sales should be the only measure of the value of retailers having a web presence and explores the internet’s role as a means of driving footfall.

Following weeks of protests by dairy farmers across Europe the EU has announced a €280 million package to boost the dairy sector. Yet as soon as the package of support was announced, the UK government criticised the move, suggesting that it was going to slow down the necessary process of CAP reform and claiming it would support inefficient milk production.

Figures released by DEFRA show that average farm business income for all farm types was slightly higher in 2008/09 at £50,900 compared to £48,200 in 2007/08. This reflects firmer prices during the year for a range of commodities, particularly pigmeat, lamb and beef and to a lesser extent milk. Farmers also saw an increase in the value of their single farm payment due to a more favourable exchange rate compared to the previous year.

Of the individual farm types, specialist pig farms, grazing livestock farms and dairy farms all saw modest increases in income, whilst cereal farms, poultry farms and horticultural units saw a small decline in income.

A good network of contacts is one of the most valuable things you can have when searching for employment, although many people don’t know where to start when it comes to ‘networking’.

At its simplest level, networking is about building up a group of contacts in your industry sector that you regularly talk to and keep in touch with. It is not something that you can do overnight – indeed you don’t want to only be contacting people when you are desperate for work!

Go to as many events, meetings and conferences as you can and make an effort to engage people in conversation. Introduce yourself, ask them what they do and listen to the answer. It can be daunting at first, but the more you do it the easier it becomes. Always have business cards with you and don’t be shy handing them out. And if this all seems a bit awkward then another route that can be easier is to try volunteering on an industry-related project or for a relevant charity. This type of activity gives everyone involved a common aim and can make it easier to get to know people. Finally, make sure you follow up all potential leads no matter how insignificant they may seem – you never know when you might need them!

Recruiting the ideal candidate is all about setting realistic targets when advertising. It is vital that as an employer you are pragmatic about your requirements. Do the experience and qualifications that you require match the remuneration and terms and conditions you are able to offer and does this compare favourably with other similar vacancies in your geographic location and sector? It is well worth researching this before advertising in order to pitch the advert appropriately and therefore target relevant candidates. Ultimately, time spent researching the competitiveness of your offer is time well spent, as it will ensure that your advert attracts the attention of suitable candidates, helping you to rapidly fill the vacancy.

Every year around 250,000 people are motivated to plant more than a million trees through a series of events organised up and down the country to celebrate National Tree Week. Officially starting the winter tree-planting season, this programme has been taking place since 1975 and offers communities the opportunity to get involved with their local environment. Events are organised by Tree Council members, schools, community groups, tree wardens and many others and are guaranteed to be fun, inspiring …and a little bit dirty! You can organise your own event – find out more at  www.treecouncil.org.uk

Some people have really crappy jobs – really, really shitty jobs. You might think your office job is tedious, demanding and dull, but at least you don’t spend the day knee dip in other people’s shit and come home smelling like poo. Unless you have one of the following eight jobs, your job isn’t half as shitty as you think it is.

Shitty Job No. 1: Elephant Cage Cleaner

credit You can’t just become a zoo keeper – you’ve got to work your way up from the bottom. Specifically, animals’ bottoms. Basically, you’ve got to shovel shit to get on the animal husbandry ladder. And zoo volunteers can expect to pick up a shovel or two of turds in their time, too. Each elephant can produce around 350 pounds of poo every single day, and there’s about one hundred elephants in zoos in America. Not to mention those in circuses, rescue facilities and in private facilities. That’s a shitload of poop. And that’s a lot of dung to be sitting around – especially since poo contains disease. Lucky for us, there are a few unlucky souls whose job it is to clean the poo-filled cages. And that poo becomes fertilizer. Now that’s recycling for you!

Shitty Job No. 2: Artificial Inseminator

Apparently bulls can’t get it in the right spot, because every year, thousands upon thousands of cows get someone’s hand up their bum, followed a long syringe full of semen. It’s all very romantic. In order to breed a high-quality bloodline of cattle, farmers, vets and insemination experts (oh, yes, they exist and they cost a lot of money – not to mention the thousands of dollars it costs to purchase the bull semen), then they put on a really long glove and work their hand in the back end of a rather alarmed cow. Once the hand is in, they slide their arm up (usually about as far as their elbow, depending on the length of the cow’s insides), find the opening to the uterus and create a clear channel for the syringe. The outside arm feeds the syringe in, deposits the sperm and the dirty deed is done. And when that glove comes out, that lovely lady cow normally leaves a sizable smear of shit all over it. And that’s the romantic beauty of baby-making in the bovine world:

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Shitty Job No. 3: Plumber

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Plumbers make pretty good money and they get to charge ridiculous fees for coming out on a weekend, holiday or any time that doesn’t really suit them. And their delightfully hairy cracks are usually out on display. But we need plumbers. If they all upped and left town, it would either be you with your hand in your toilet, unblocking clogs of shit and hair; or, your neighborhood would have a pool of stagnant poop floating around. And with the recent downturn in people taking vocational training, America is looking at a shortage of plumbers very soon.

Shitty Job No. 4: Flatulence Analyst

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Believe it or not, your farts are more than just a source of hilarity and disgust – they mean something. If teams of scientist and medical experts (who apparently don’t have gag reflexes) didn’t take interest in farts, then how would we know if there’s a connection between smell and food? Or smell and cancer? It’s not a huge field of research, but it’s been done. Too many farts every day? You might be eating the wrong things and eating too quickly. Never farting? That’s not healthy either. As ever, a healthy, varied diet is best.

Shitty Job No. 5: Cow Poo Analyst

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When fossilized cowpats are found, analysts dig in and get looking up close for evidence of food, bacteria and microorganisms. From looking at the crap up close in a laboratory, it allows historians to build a frame of reference about what kind of crops were around at the time, what cows were munching on and how this affected the meat that people ate. But cow poo analysis isn’t just limited to old, fossilized crap. Scientists like to get stuck into fresh, new, steaming crap, too. From studying the dung, there’s a slew of diseases and digestive issues that can be diagnosed which, otherwise, could wipe out a whole herd of cattle – or more. Don’t believe me, take a look at this:

Shitty Job No. 6: Sewer Worker

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Depending on the country you live in, this job goes from kind of crappy to unbelievably shitty. Sewer worker in America? Pretty gross. Sewer worker in a Third World country? Dangerous and damn disgusting. In America, approximately 450 billion gallons of water go sloshing into the sewer systems every day. Some of it is nice clean drinking water, some of it muddy dish water, some murky bath water and about 5 billion gallons of it is pissy, shitty toilet water. So either the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had no sense of smell, or Splinter and April cleaned that place day and night. Sewer workers are in charge of fixing bad blockages, investigating city drainage issues and – bizarrely – for cleaning the underground draining systems. Why do sewer systems need to be cleaned? Who knows. But they do. And according to a Cincinnati sewer system worker who spoke to National Public Radio about his job, he finds tires, bicycles and – once in a while – doors floating around down there.

Shitty Job No. 7: Porta Potty Cleaners

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These lucky fellows get to drive a big old tank up to shit-filled portable toilets, stick a vacuum hose in there and suck it all out. Delightful! Or, on fancier models, there’s a big plastic “holding tank” underneath that holds all the turds, toilet paper, tampons, cigarette butts, beer cans and piles of vomit it could ever want. Big tanks can hold up to 100 uses of the porta potty. And some blessed soul gets to cart this to some water treatment facility, flush it all away, check it’s all out and clean it all up. Again, delightful! Not to mention, someone has to get in that porta potty cubicle with a bunch of cleaning supplies and wipe down every surface (every pube, chunk of vomit and smear of shite), replace the toilet paper (if there is any to begin with) and make it nice and shiny for the next outdoor event full of people comfortable enough to take a shit between four thin, plastic walls. Many porta potty cleaners take pride in their work:

Shitty Job No. 8: Septic Tank Cleaner

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The average septic tank holds about 1,000 gallons of waste matter – that’s an enormous volume of poop (especially considering hundreds of thousands of homes across the United States use septic tanks as their primary waste disposal units). If you have ever been unlucky enough to be around a tank that has flooded or overflowed, and you’ve smelled the fresh aroma of feces all over the lawn (or worse, in the house) then you know how important having someone come and empty the tank is. The bacteria in our poo breaks down the waste in the tank, but the toilet paper, soaps and detergents mean a manual approach must be taken to cleaning the tank. In this case, a cleaner comes by with a huge portable tank and a big hose and sucks it all up. Delicious! So, next time you’re sitting behind your desk thinking about how dreadful your job is, thank your lucky stars that you aren’t covered in shit.