Farming needs people who were not born into it just as much as it needs those who were, Jess Tilley-Moore argues in a column for Farmers Weekly. The views are the writer's own.
Tilley-Moore did not grow up on a farm or inherit one. She came into the industry by accident at 17, on a short lambing placement meant to help her university applications for veterinary nursing. One lambing season became two, weekend work became a full-time job, and she realised she wanted a career in farming.
She writes that many people still believe a "proper" farmer must have farming in the blood, ideally with the family name on a farm gate. Newcomers have to prove themselves again and again, she says, only to be asked whether their family owns a farm. Being young, female and from a non-farming background can feel like arriving at a party where everybody already knows each other.
After three years of obstacles she now has her own registered Greyface Dartmoor flock, which she calls not exactly an agricultural empire, but hers. Her sheep, she writes, have taught her more than any textbook: a ewe cares that you notice when she is slightly off, and a lamb cares that you are there at 2am, not where you came from or what qualifications you hold.
Her conclusion is that willingness to learn and the stubbornness to keep turning up should count for more than background, and that the industry needs those newcomers.
Photo: Amanda Slater / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: Farmers Weekly
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