Sir Bob Russell, the Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester, has described a crisis in horticulture skills and training to Parliament. But a Government minister has said horticulture apprenticeships are burgeoning.
Russell told his fellow MPs: "Horticulture is a great British success story but it is an industry in crisis. There is not enough homegrown talent for the industry to sustain itself without increasingly importing skilled labour from overseas.
"Successive Governments and the education establishment can be blamed for this. Horticulture has not been seen as important - it is not something that young people have been encouraged to pursue as a career."
In 2010-11, only 1,060 of the more than 200,000 apprenticeships completed in the country were in horticulture, and only 10 of those were in production horticulture, said Russell.
He added that in June 2014 then Defra minister Owen Paterson started an initiative to identify the key opportunities and challenges in the ornamental horticulture sector. Sector skills council Lantra estimates that horticulture will need 595,000 more staff by the end of the current decade.
Minister for culture and the digital economy Edward Vaizey replied: "We have also adopted an employer-led approach to skills. It would be absurd for the Government to identify the skills that are needed. We need employers to come to us.
"We welcome the Agri-Tech Strategy, which aims to ensure that the horticultural sector is equipped with the knowledge and skills that are needed by horticultural employers.
"We are facilitating employer engagement across a range of sectors, including horticulture, with our employer ownership pilot schemes, which are owned by employers, giving them even more opportunity to take greater control of the skills agenda.
"For example, the G Growers project has given £1m to employers to train their staff in cutting-edge research and agricultural techniques. We have made £20m available through the Skills Funding Agency for adult vocational training in horticulture, an increase of 11 per cent on the previous year.
He added: "We have a new Trailblazer project in the horticulture sector, which focuses on a level 2 technician doing horticultural, fresh-produce, arable and glasshouse work.
"The G Growers employer ownership pilot that I mentioned should deliver 10,000 learning opportunities at level 4 plus in the horticulture sector."
Rise in apprentices
"The latest figures demonstrate that a step change is currently taking place. We now see almost 5,000 horticulture apprentices at work. That is an increase of almost 250 per cent since 2009-10. The latest figures for higher education show that more than 19,000 people are now studying an agriculture-related subject in higher education. These are the graduates who will lead the profession well into the 21st century."
Edward Vaizey, Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy
