Over the last year, the Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) has been engaging with farm business women to gauge their leadership aspirations and professional development needs.
More than 200 women participated in the project, through regional workshops held in October 2017 and a survey of rural women conducted between March and April this year.
The workshops and survey findings provide important evidence of farm businesswomen’s current responsibilities and skills, interests in future roles and professional development priorities.
The project’s findings show there is clear interest amongst rural women to access skills and capacity development in areas that would improve their business management and wider leadership capabilities.
The findings confirm that women are strongly involved in their rural and farm businesses and play multiple, diverse roles. Farm businesswomen have highly diverse skill sets, often with particular strengths in financial management (both operational and strategic). They are often the organizers and ‘level heads’ in the business while also bringing new information and creative ideas to the business strategy.
Because of the roles they play, farming women are well positioned to see the weaknesses and strengths of the agricultural business, and opportunities for future directions. An important point is that these businesses are, in most cases, long-established and often in a renewal stage. In this context, women are often a driving force to pursue diversification, transition, new areas of growth, new market opportunities (including export markets), and innovation.
The current emphasis of many government-funded programs on supporting entrepreneurialism and start-ups, therefore, is not well matched to the needs of many women in farm businesses. The findings from this project suggest that, in order to better service agricultural enterprises, training and support programs need to focus on the process of renewal for mature businesses and, in particular, supporting the women driving this process.
Another important insight from this project is that women involved in farm businesses often come to these roles from other backgrounds and other qualifications. Because of this, farming women are actively looking for ways to help them develop the skills and knowledge they need now and, in particular, to help them implement the kinds of business transitions outlined above.
The project findings demonstrate farming women are highly interested in accessing business coaching, mentoring, training and gaining relevant qualifications. There is an urgent need to improve accessibility and affordability of relevant training and skills development programs for farming women and to remove barriers to their access to subsidized training courses. For example, subsidized training is often restricted to those who do not hold any qualifications. This excludes many female farm business managers who have a historical qualification in a trade or profession but now need to build knowledge and skills in new areas that enable them to plan and implement strategies that bring growth and renewal to their mature farm business. A customized farm business mentoring program would also add significant value to the agriculture sector – and this project demonstrates that there is a strong pool of women willing to be mentors and many women who would highly value the opportunity to have a coach or mentor.
Some key findings:
Respondents indicated a strong level of interest in improving their capacity to write successful grant or funding applications (48%) and further develop skills in negotiation, communication and conflict management (46%). There was also interest in building self-confidence (44%) and skills in corporate governance and board directorship (39%). Improving skills in using social media was also identified as an area of interest: for sharing stories from rural businesses, industries and communities with an urban audience (39%) and for rural advocacy (36%).
The results also point to important areas of skills or capacity development need with a stronger business focus. Exploring strategies to pursue business growth, diversification, transition or value adding was confirmed as a high area of interest (48%) as well as skills in developing business plans that are effective and help attract investment (43%). The strong interest in grant writing, negotiation skills and building self-confidence reported above are also highly relevant in a business context. Other strong areas of interest (38%) included harnessing digital technologies, mechanization, automation and sensing, accessing business coaching or financial advice, and further developing core business management skills. Using social media for marketing was also identified as important (32%).
The insights gained from this project will be invaluable for guiding on-going efforts in industry, the community and government to support and encourage rural women to enhance their involvement, influence and impact in a wider array of management and leadership spaces. QFF looks forward discussing the findings of the project with the Rural Jobs and Skills Alliance (RJSA) and pursuing opportunities to ensure farm businesswomen can access the training and skills development opportunities they are seeking.
For information, contact Diana Saunders (diana@qff.org.au).