Saving The Australian Economy !

 Back in the 1950's the chance for a young man to earn a fortune was cane cutting.  It was back breaking work in the north of Queensland and first the cane fields were fired to run out the snakes and scorpions and then extraction began - by men slashing the cane with machetes.

Since then, harvesting has moved to the machine age but our vast food manufacturing area is still reliant on human labour to pick the crops, and this coronavirus has simply dried up the stream of back packers from Europe and the Pacific islands who made crop harvesting in Australia their summer holiday.

Australia seems to be becoming an oasis of calm in this pandemic, but it is still out of control in the rest of the world and our borders are closed and the airline industry is shuttered.  There is a real danger that the progressive nature of the agricultural industry here  will rot on the trees because of lack of people to pick and process the fruit.

Our weather pattern delivers ongoing fruit and vegetable crops that ripen through spring, summer and autumn so there is constant work for those seeking to avoid the northern hemispheres winter. At the same time, our recovery from the virus lockdown has created an uncertain job market.   There are indications of a jobs shortage as the recovery proceeds.

As job opportunities shorten in the cities we actually have jobs going begging in rural areas  There is opportunity for enterprising young men and women to make a change of direction and the government has wisely made that attractive to save this important component of our industrial base.

This incentive is attached to the Jobseeker benefit available to workers displaced by the coronavirus lockdown and which currently pays $815.70 each fortnight.  The government is proposing that those receiving that benefit be allowed to earn an additional three hundred dollars per week of agricultural income without any loss from their Jobseeker benefits.

This work in the agricultural sector is diverse and interesting.  It is as varied at actually picking fruit from the trees to packing it in the display containers in which it appears in the shops.   Some tasks are as simple as quality control, rejecting mishappen or hail marked fruit or placing strawberries in packs to make them look appealing.  Not all agricultural work is in the fields.   There are many jobs in the packaging sheds where fruit or vegetables are presented to look appealing to retail customers.

Young people taking up agricultural work for the first time will probably be surprised at how the machine age has intruded into the task.  In the main, it is the human eye and dexterous fingers that create the type of presentation that the market is seeking, and which at this stage of their development is far beyond the capacity of AI.

It is often said that the commercial world eventually turns full circle.  During the industrial revolution people abandoned the farms to work in factories.   Now those factory jobs are not so prevalent, the job of getting in the crops has regained its importance - and the rate of pay offering is certainly attractive !