There is a new attempt at growing the interest of working in the agricultural industry amongst young people. This comes as the EU launches the Pact for Skills partnership aimed growing employment within the industry. It’s understood that the partnership employs 200 million people from 10 million farms, 22,000 agri-food co-operatives and 289,000 food and drink processing sites.
The initiative sees the 2021 joint collaboration between Brussels associations Copa-Cogeca (agriculture) and FoodDrinkEurope (food industry). They have also secured the involvement of other industry associations, member states, small and medium-sized enterprises, and larger companies, universities and training providers and EU projects already working on upskilling and reskilling the workforce.
The Pact for Skills partnership has seen growing numbers recently, and appears to be gaining momentum. The main task of the partnership is the following:
- Setting up a joint strategy to design and implement a sectoral upskilling and reskilling framework
- Maximising the competitiveness of all the actors involved
- Enhancing job retention and job attractiveness of the agri-food ecosystem within the frame of the Pact for Skills
According to a spokesperson from Copa-Cogeca, the agri-food system is by far the biggest employment sector in Europe, and it has a significant impact on both rural and urban communities, and is comprised of more than 99% SMEs. The spokesperson additionally commented that that together, they want to build a food chain that can provide life-long learning opportunities in a stable and viable career.
LSL News.