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Lantra estimates agriculture will need 60,000 new workers over the next decade ‘just to stand still’. The AgriSkills Strategy is meant to plug that gap.

Richard Longthorp, a Yorkshire pig farmer and the national chairman of the AgriSkills Forum, said the conference had been a huge success. “We have been calling for improved industry engagement with the skills agenda for many years.

“Today’s highly impressive attendance shows that the strategy would already appear to have achieved at least one of its objectives – it is engaging with industry,” he said.

Lord Taylor of Holbeach, Shadow Defra Minister, agreed a combined approach was essential to success.

“I seek to build a political consensus on the importance of our industries and the need to invest in our skills base. We all should work together to deliver it.”

The AgriSkills Strategy, still only in draft format, is available for comment online and should be launched alongside Defra in spring 2010.

Laura Biddick Bray, Lantra’s agricultural industry partnership manager, said more input was needed before then. 

“If we can get the input of those who are already involved in the industry then it can help develop an even better strategy. We must ensure the UK can equip itself with the right skills to guarantee a profitable and sustainable agricultural industry for the future,” she said.

The Lantra conference came the same week a Commons select committee warned low-carbon industries faced a ‘skills gap’.

MPs from the Environmental Audit Committee said if the right investments were made now, the UK could create hundreds of thousands of green jobs and become a world leader in the growing global market for green technologies – worth £3 trillion worldwide.