According to the Australian JBS Australia boss Brent Eastwood remarked on a panel at the Global Food Forum this week that it was hard to get good talent on the land and that ‘many had good faces for radio”
I have been giving this a lot of serious thought beyond the amusement that Mike Logan’s follow up comment generated. See footnote at bottom of post
I grew up in a large regional town which at that time was underpinned financially by the agricultural dollar. The farmers came to town well dressed and to me as a person growing up in that town were highly respected. If some-one had asked me whilst I was growing up which industry demographic had the best faces for TV I would have said without a doubt agriculture.
There is no shortage of young talented and ‘beautiful’ people in agriculture just like cotton farmer Ben Egan
I remember when I first started going out with Michael ( now 5th generation farmer) my girlfriends gave him a heart throb rating of 9.5/10. I causally asked him ( as young girls do) ‘Do you think I am pretty.? To which in all seriousness after looking me up and down he replied ‘You are average” Whilst I would have preferred he said that I made Cindy Crawford pale into insignificance when I walked into the room as no-one had ever remarked otherwise I took his comment at face value not overly perturbed as I had no desire to enter a career where looks define you.
Please tell me Mr Eastwood has been misquoted. Do looks and talent go hand in hand. Does agriculture only attract people with faces for radio.?
I must admit I get pretty cheesed off when agriculture continues to apparently delight in growing the myth that we cant attract the best and the brightest young people despite Australia’s leading agricultural demographer Neil Barr showing us this is absolute rubbish.
Time to get our act together agriculture and talk about the facts, not perpetuate the myths and find the dollars to invest in and up skill the people we have so we can retain them
As an aside – Mr Eastwood and I must socialise in different circles because there are plenty of ‘beautiful’ people in my agricultural crowd but then beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Footnote
The Australian April 17th 2015 in Andrew Mann’s MARGIN CALL column
Dirty, smelly, ‘sexy’
The twitterati were out in force at the GFF but it was a clear no contest
as to who produced the tweet of the day.
In a panel of the nation’s top food processors lamenting about how hard it was to get quality talent on to the land, JBS Australia boss Brent Eastwood remarked how many in
agriculture had “good faces for radio’’, to which Dairy Connect chief executive Mike Logan added by way of explanation that “It’s dirty, it’s smelly, it’s hot”.
It prompted this tweet from the Camm Agricultural Group’s young dynamo Bryce Camm: “Are we talking about the porn industry or Ag sector? Sounds pretty sexy to me!’’
