It’s all well and good to rave about farming and agribusiness being the heartbeat of the regional economy but what does this mean in real terms?

Approximately 300,000 jobs are provided by farming, the food industry and the services industries depending on agriculture.

We talk about a fraction of those jobs here in this supplement, but the beauty of the following pages lies in the fact you won’t find this information anywhere else. This publication provides not only an insight into where jobs came up in 2015 but also a heads up as to where the jobs are going to be next year.

This content is unique – it is exclusive to the Irish Farmers Journal because we put one person sitting on the phone for several weeks, calling approximately 260 companies, to find out exactly what their recruitment activity was for 2015 and to gauge their plans for next year. Altogether 118 companies came back to us with information about jobs they’ve created.

So what did we find out?

We found that 2,557 jobs and 695 seasonal jobs were created across those 118 companies in 2015. There were also 24 placements, 11 internships and three part-time jobs created.

Many companies were shy about predicting employment numbers for next year but when we collated the stats given to us by 59 companies, it was found that 1,338 jobs will be created across those companies altogether in next year. 254 seasonal jobs and nine internships will be created. You can go about getting those very jobs yourself at our agri careers fair which takes place in the RDS on 3 March – learn more about this on page 11.

We couldn’t do this survey without co-operation from the industry and to those companies that came back to us with information, thank you. Many didn’t call us back, which means that what we’ve found here represents only the tip of the iceberg.

It is vital that industry players cooperate because there is a very positive story to tell. And the best story here is not necessarily the major players with the big job numbers. It’s the small company in Co Tipperary that has a staff of 12 and plans to take on three more next year. That’s a 25% increase in the workforce in one year and we saw this happening, time and time again, across the country. But this is the employment creation that doesn’t make the headlines and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here – give it the recognition it deserves.

Focus on agri-careers: 2,557 jobs created in 2015 in companies surveyed

2,557 jobs and 695 seasonal positions were created in 2015 across T companies surveyed by the Irish Farmers Journal.