Local Food Apprenticeship

As some of you will have seen in the local and national press back earlier in the year, the 2008 Local Food Apprenticeship course had to be cancelled at the beginning of March due to a last-minute funding hiccup. However, a dramatic 11th hour turnaround by HIE means it is back on track and this year’s intake of 14 students have already begun their first module – business planning and plant propagation.

So what exactly is the Local Food Apprenticeship? The aims of the course are simple: to develop new and viable local food businesses; and to develop the ability of local producers to transfer skills to a new generation of food producers. Funded by HIE and the apprentices themselves (and last year, Communities Scotland), 2007 was the pilot year for the LFA, the first project of its kind in Scotland.

Registered and approved by LANTRA (the sector skills council for land based industries) as a ‘customised’ vocational qualification award, this year-long, part-time horticultural course provides a framework for students to learn a few days per month over the course of a full growing year. With a balance between practice and theory, students cover everything from soils and fertility, marketing and protected cropping to field cultivation, weeds, pests and diseases and produce packing and processing. There’s even a ‘Tractor and Horticultural Implement Use’ module to enable students to up their scale to field size production.

All teaching comes from existing farmers and crofters who have been certified as Instructors as well as expert tutors and speakers from across the industry. This transfer of local knowledge and skills from existing to new producers was one of the key aims when Jo Hunt, Network Leader of HILFN, first conceived the course: “Consumers in all parts of the Highlands and Islands are looking for fresh and local food – but in many areas and for many products there is just not enough of it being grown at present. The apprentices are learning the trade from people already doing it, and cover both the technical skills needed to grow great food, and the business skills to make a living at it.”

The HILFN will follow the progress of the 2008 apprentices and those from future years with interest and hope their ventures and businesses will gain the support of local people. With plans to extend the LFA to cover the West Coast and Islands in 2009 and a separate ‘meat apprenticeship’ in the offing, it looks like local food production can only go from strength to strength.