As part of the Macra na Feirme reboot package to encourage member development and activity over the winter months, each county/region was allocated €1,000 worth of training through Macra Agricultural Skillnet.

Fifteen county/regional executives are currently offering, or have offered, opportunities for learning and development to their members.

The committees engaged with the membership and from mid-November to the end of January, various events took place online. Topics ranged from personal finances and taxation to LEAN, and some softer skills including motivating others, managing difficult conversations, resilience, sales/persuasion and managing people/leading a team.

Farming also featured heavily, with numerous online hoofcare workshops, an introduction to the use of PastureBase, tax planning for farming and hedge laying.

To date, over 600 members have attended the various events, which are an ideal opportunity to maintain activity locally, while also rewarding members with upskilling opportunities.

Upcoming opportunities

Our grassland management courses with the Irish Farmers Journal are now available to book for 2021, with locations nationwide. The courses, now in their third year, run over the full growing season in monthly sessions.

Due to the current situation, our next face-to-face DIY AI course will be in March.

In autumn 2020, we launched our online learning platform and have a number of courses on offer.

Short online courses for those working with animal feed can be completed, including feed regulations and haccp for animal feed manufacturing and a new feed labelling and traceability course.

We also encourage everyone to complete the four online safety modules – safe livestock handling, safe tractor driving and machinery maintenance, manual handling for farming and first aid and health for farming. Those who complete all four will be awarded the Safe Agri Skills wallet card.

As a result of feedback from our business training modules, we are currently running a two-part training session online, focusing on roles within the farm business for non-farming partners.

Those participating will explore possible ways of understanding and contributing to the farm business more, consider defining their role and applying their current skills to this position. We will look at learning how to work better together and how strategic planning and governance should be applied to farming.

More information on all our current training opportunities for members and those working agriculture is available on macraskillnet.ie.