The only thing I learned in Multyfarnham Ag College was how to down a flagon of cider,” proclaimed Skip, as we tucked into the pub lunch on a sprayer operator course. For most of us, it brought back distant memories of the last time we were in education and had to sit a written exam.

While the college in Multy – as it was known – is now closed, I am quite sure that the goodly brothers who ran the establishment did not encourage, let alone teach, the inebriation of alcohol.

Multy was focused on dairy farming, but as milking cows and Skip were a totally incompatible mix, he developed other interests to relieve the boredom. I’d have needed a distraction myself if I’d done time there.

Besides, beer and agricultural colleges go together like fish and chips. I had a learning experience with spiked beer as a prank while at agricultural college.

It was the eve of St Patrick’s Day 1981 and it brought a whole new dimension to drowning the shamrock. Every St Patrick’s Day since, the memory comes flooding back to me. But we’ll leave it at that and move swiftly on.

There were 16 of us enrolled on the boom sprayer pesticide application course, which is a legislative requirement for all professional users of pesticides to have completed by November 2015.

I knew before I started that personal protective equipment (PPE) is very important where pesticides are concerned, but its emphasis was completely overdone at the expense of other areas. It must have been mentioned 100 times and the fellows working in the reactor hall in Sellafield wouldn’t be more kitted out.

In fact, most of us probably knew as much before we started as we did at the end of the three-day course. And to make matters worse, they were three good, fine days when half the country were out ploughing and the other half were catching up with spraying winter crop herbicides.

The Fetac Level 5 course was basic in its content and was geared towards novices who had probably never seen, let alone operated, a crop sprayer before.

The in-field training about sprayer and ground speed calibration was archaic. It was like something they’d have done in the 1960s with a Fordson Major and 45-gallon drum Hardi sprayer about to spray spuds with a Bordeaux mixture of copper sulphate.

In this age of radar and GPS speed and area measuring devices, it’s pretty backward to have to step out 100m to calculate the timed ground speed.

I’d at least use a metre wheel rather than sending a fellow off down the field with every step a different length. Besides, in-cab computer-controlled proportional output systems have obliterated the need for a constant ground speed.

I regarded this mandatory course as a missed opportunity for real learning about spray formulation and application. While our instructor was perfectly adequate for a Level 5 course, the content wasn’t stimulating enough for a class like ours, which was a pity.

On reflection, the course was really geared towards a farmer spraying a few docks in a paddock with a quad, and to stop him from polluting a watercourse and killing the hedge as well.

And in this regard it would be entirely satisfactory, which is good. But for 16 seasoned operators, it was plain boring and nearly enough to drive Skip back to the cider.