I would just like to take this opportunity to wish everybody involved in our diverse amenity / horticultural and sports turf industry a very happy new year. It will certainly be interesting to see what 2025 brings in terms of economic stability, prosperity and opportunities.
As for industry memories of 2024, I have many. I attended plenty of seminars, trade shows and I met so many dedicated turf professionals who always go way beyond to deliver the best they can, with the resources they have at their disposal.
I also enjoyed the opportunity of trying out many different manufacturers’ hand tools and mowers throughout the year, including brands such as STIHL, EGO, Makita and Milwaukee, comprising a wide range of blowers, hedge cutters and multitools.
However, one of the highlights for me apart from the trade shows was attending the Service Dealer Conference and Awards in Stratford. The event celebrated the hard work done by servicing dealerships up and down the country, ensuring the grounds industry has the right tools, machinery and support to achieve the high workloads and maintenance regimes they undertake in preserving our landscape, heritage and sports facilities.
The start of any year is always a testing time for grounds staff, trying to keep pitches playable when temperatures are low with short hours of daylight and the chance of wet and wintery weather fronts.
I also feel for the thousands of service dealer businesses who are tasked with predicting the industries sales forecasts for the year. Hopefully all can continue to provide such a valuable service to their customers.
No doubt there will be even more new products to choose from this coming year.
On the customer front I think we shall see a greater demand for battery powered products and a continued up take of robotic technologies.
As for online selling, this will continue to grow as more people are turning to this method of purchasing. However, more expensive machinery will still be sought via reputable dealers.
On the employment front we have been talking about recruitment and retainment for a number of years now and I know that many organisations and governing bodies are trying hard to address these issues. However for me, as I’ve mentioned many times in blogs and news items, there is now a real need for a collective and collaborative approach of all these organisations and leading lights of the industry to come together and deliver on the main issues facing our industry. These being recruitment, pay and conditions.
We as an industry should not be advertising jobs that are below the recommended pay scales. We should also be going into schools and encouraging the next generation to join our diverse industry. Maybe we need a national campaign to do this? We then need to be able to offer a new pathway / apprentice scheme to be funded by government, that has as its aim attracting 5,000 a year for five years to come and experience the vast array of careers our industry offers.
And yes, many of you will be saying we are already doing this on many fronts. Indeed we are, but it is currently achieving our industry needs? From talking to many industry professionals, I believe the answer is no. We simply are not getting enough people coming into our industry.
We need to do something soon as we will end up with a vast shortage of experienced practitioners in the coming years.
Is it not time the leading top professionals and organisations finally come together for the sake of our industry needs? It would be fantastic if the likes of the GMA, BIGGA, PMA,RHS, Fields In Trust, Landscape Institute and many others worked together to achieve some key aims in promoting, recruiting, improving pay and working conditions of our industry.
Let’s hope that 2025 brings us closer together in these difficult times.
