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The Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester is the UK’s best known agricultural college. It’s also First Milk Academy’s lead academic body, who accredit and co-ordinate design and delivery of the Academy’s Professional Development Workshops in partnership with Kingshay and The Scottish Agricultural Colleges.

First Milk Academy has now been running for over two years. It started out as a small number of business clubs across the country, run in conjunction with DairyCo, where members shared ideas and debated relevant issues. By the end of this financial year, we’ll have fifty business groups across Britain covering around 25% of our members.

However, we’ve also taken the development of our members a step further and we work with bodies like the Royal Agricultural College to develop and run modular courses in areas like fertility, environmental practice and business management. The overall aim is to help members improve their bottom line and move towards that ‘best in class’ goal.

StraightTalk caught-up with the Dean of The School of Agriculture there, John Alliston, to find out his views of primary agricultural education and of the need for and benefits of the First Milk Academy.

Whatever an individual’s farming career aspirations may be, somewhere in the UK there will be an agricultural college offering a course that fits the bill. From day release to full time degree, UK farmers and stockmen are spoiled for choice. Usually those who make the time to attend, leave with far more knowledge than before they went. The emphasis on the word “some” is deliberate, because many who finish their courses view their passing out or completion day as being the end of their education, says John Alliston. Instead they should view it as the end of the beginning.

‘Every day is a learning day’ is John’s philosophy. “You can never stop learning in life, and should never stop learning,” he says. Naturally he was only too keen to become involved when First Milk asked the RAC for its assistance with First Milk Academy. The College is, he says, the perfect partner for First Milk because it has a great heritage in dairying, having kept dairy cows ever since the college started in 1845.

Following World War II, the college helped to pioneer very high yielding dairy cows and currently has 300 cows on 9,600 litres per year. The unit has an integral role for education and development purposes at the college.

“Dairy farming is a very sophisticated industry with farmers having to do many things covering a wide range of responsibilities. Farmers need to be technically competent animal physiologists and agronomists; businessmen and man-managers; they have to handle accounts, be engineers and deal with machinery and many more.

“So making improvements on these through professional development is obviously logical and financially beneficial. At the same time retailers and consumers expect farmers to be extremely professional, so anything that makes the agricultural industry more professional has to be positive for the industry. I applaud First Milk’s move to make professional development available to their members,” he said.

Members taking the four modules currently being offered or being developed by First Milk Academy - fertility, lameness prevention, Good Agricultural Practice and business management – get credits which enable them to gain qualifications certified by the College.

Feedback from members who have attended the workshops has been extremely positive. ‘The course was very professionally delivered and there was comprehensive coverage of all aspects of fertility,’ said one while ‘I have enjoyed this course very much. It has refocused my mind on the huge importance of herd fertility and I hope the steps I have adopted will result in large benefits for my business’ said another.

But John Alliston isn’t a fan of paper qualifications just for the sake of them. “I do believe that if someone is a practitioner in agriculture then it is beneficial to have some independent benchmarking.”

Formal evidence of attained skills is becoming increasingly important to retailers and consumers, and this will continue, he says. “The perception of people outside of the industry, looking in, is important. It is important not only from the point of view of people potentially coming to work in the industry, but also because consumers want to know the provenance of the food they buy, and want to be reassured over the quality.”

So does he think there is a marketing advantage from First Milk Academy? “I am sure First Milk is doing this for its members first and foremost. There are likely to be extra benefits for First Milk and its members as they will be viewed as responsible and efficient supply chain partners. ”

First Milk Academy aside, how does he feel about the current difficulties of attracting young people into farming – a task that colleges like The Royal have a pivotal role to play.

“We’re doing OK at the moment. How successful we are in recruiting is related to the fortunes of agriculture. The upturn in fortunes has helped recruitment and the RAC is currently up 24% on applications for this year. Some of those will be core agriculture, some of them land agency. But our foundation degree in agriculture is flying. We will have over 30 on that this year, up from about 15 two or three years ago.” A significant number of those – perhaps up to 30% – will return to the family farm either immediately or in time, he says.

Whether full time primary agricultural student on a four year course, or a First Milk member participating in a 4 day (one day a week) professional development workshop, those who embark on continual training will be better individuals and businessmen as a result, he insists.

“Our industry is moving so fast with so many new technologies and pressures on it that if you aren’t out there learning new things either formally or informally then you won’t be keeping up to date.

And First Milk Academy, of course, is determined to do all it can to help its members stay ahead of the game.