Young farmer and new entrant mentoring program 2022
Applications for the 2022 program are now closed
Program overview
The Young Farmer and New Entrant Mentoring Program provides young farmers and new entrants the opportunity to be a paired with an experienced farmer or ‘mentor’ to assist them in:
- developing skills to better manage their farm businesses
- identifying risks
- developing strategies to build resilience and achieve their business goals.
The program is facilitated by a farm business consultant who pairs the young farmer or ‘mentee’ with a mentor whose experience aligns with the mentee’s enterprise and personal development goals.
The 2022 program runs until 30 November 2022. During this period the mentor and mentee work together overseen by their facilitator. All parties work together to arrange regular catch ups to track the progress of the mentee.
The purpose of the program is to assist the mentee in building professional networks, using trusted sources of advice and information, and developing competency in setting business goals and assessing risks.
There is one mentoring program round per year and approximately eight mentorships are awarded per round.
The Young Farmer and New Entrant Mentoring Program is funded by the Victorian Government's Smarter, Safer Farms initiative through its skills program which provides targeted training to build capability in financial literacy, risk management, farm planning and adaption to climate change.
Jamie Pepper:
I’m Jamie Pepper. I’m a beef and sheep farmer at Tahara.
Farming is not a career. It’s my life.
And I think… It’s my lifestyle. It gives you such a broad range of doing things every day, improving on what you do year to year. It’s just a great lifestyle to have.
I’m participating in the Young Farmers Mentoring programme.
I grew up on the family farm. It was a great place to grow up and post finishing school I went off and worked at some other major stations for some experience, which I really enjoyed.
About six years ago I felt I was ready to come back. I was ready to take on the challenge of helping to manage the family property. And I have actually done quite a bit of study in that time to try and improve my knowledge and skill set so I can actually help make the changes and just do the best that I can do.
The Young Farmers Mentoring programme has been an incredible experience for me to be a part of. It’s meant I’ve had access to an experienced mentor and through his practical experience I’m able to gather the information required, and, with confidence, make that change on my own property.
I wanted to be able to join my ewe lambs but I was always worried about the potential issues, and I’ve been able to ask him all questions related to that. And next year I will have the confidence to go ahead and join my own ewe lambs.
And based on our conversations I bought my first scanning wand and he walked me through the process of connecting the wand to my phone and to my computer and we’re going to have further conversations later in the year about how to use that information, or how to make that data work for me and for my business.
I highly recommend the mentoring programme to any young farmer.
I love farming. It’s a great lifestyle.
More information
For more information contact Sarah Wallis – Young Farmer Project Coordinator sarah.wallis@agriculture.vic.gov.au