Southern Training needs analysis

Summary

This project has shown:

• producers have a desire for training in marketing, animal management and cropping and have a moderate level of interest in the proposed topic areas;

• producers full training needs must be distinguished from their felt knowledge and training needs;

• producers can and increasingly do fulfil their knowledge and learning needs independently of training;

• the role of training for producers operating in an increasingly complex environment must be questioned;

• training is an accepted and evolved part of life for most producers;

• training is valued for a range of reasons apart from information provision;

• only a small proportion of producers intend to translate a learning need to a training need and actually participate in training;

• training carries significant costs and risks for producers;

• there is a need for local training brokers to amalgamate demand for training and understand felt training needs and provide this information on a regular basis to MLA;

• MLA should see themselves as knowledge providers who assist producers by providing training to them indirectly as much as directly, working with the advisors that producers use;

• MLA needs to focus on the areas of market demand identified in this study, including demand for non-commodity-specific training such as climate, finance and marketing;

• there seems to be three market segments we have termed pre-training, actively training and post-training. The post-training group tend to align with the larger producers;

• regular and constant two way communication is required with producers to understand their needs and communicate what is available; and