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SERVICE DEALER BUSINESS QUARTERLY Published April, June, September and December 2013
WHEN it was kicked-off almost six years ago, the LTA Scheme (Land-Based Technicians Accreditation) was immediately acclaimed as an exciting and vital initiative in ensuring that consistent training was available across the industry as a whole - as well as providing technicians with a clearly identifiable career path.
Its merits were imediately recognised by major suppliers such as John Deere and Claas, both of whom had mature and well-resourced training programmes in place, but who viewed LTA as adding an extra dimension to their product-specific training qualifications.
On the back of this, the number of LTA registrants quickly rose to around 2500 - and although numbers are rising steadily, the challenge always has been to find a way of reaching out to the majority.
But what is the majority?
It has been the subject of much debate and discussion, but extraordinarily, nobody can agree on how many people work in the agricultural and turfcare supply industry.
Last year, a coalition of industry organisations such as AEA, BAGMA, IAgrE and LANTRA published a Skills Strategy for the next five years. The introduction to the report said right at the outset “. . we have no really accurate information of the number of people in the industry or the annual throughput required to service the industry”.
Quite how you can formulate a five-year strategy plan without having this basic information is very strange. However, the Skills Strategy report did have a stab at coming up with a figure based on a compendium of various research projects - and the cross-party consensus decided that the published projection for current industry staffing levels is 10,400.
Now BAGMA itself has challenged this figure saying it reckons the industry head-count is around 25,000.
Much effort is being expended by many people to try and ensure that our industry has the education and training resources in place to meet the demands of the market in future years. But for training providers, colleges and others in the training mix, it doesn’t look good if the industry as a whole has no idea about how many people it needs to provide training for.
A narrow band estimate is acceptable, but either 10,400 or 25,000! (particularly as most agree that of these half are technicians)
It is not as if ours is a massive industry. The Skills Strategy report says it reckons that there around 2200/2300 businesses within the sector.
It would not be the most difficult job to confirm this number, find out how many each employed - and come up with a credible and ‘official’ head count for the industry without which it is almost impossible to assess future resources.
