Kia ora koutou,
Happy New Year! We hope you have all enjoyed some quality R and R with friends, family and loved ones, despite the rather unseasonal southerly flow.
EIT classes all start before harvest and we are looking forward to seeing familiar and new faces over the next three weeks. Level 4s will complete the whole compliance course, whilst Level 3 will do weeds and weather, and there’s a tractor course for our first years. We break from 31st January and start back in May, to allow full focus on harvest.
We are looking forward to seeing Level 4 and 5 graduands receive their certificates at the HBFA industry awards night, as well as scholarship recipients.
Level 5 Fruit production hits the ground running with a first lecture on Wednesday the 22nd of January at the Taradale campus. This course is Horticulture Business Skills – Budgeting, Capex and performance stats. We then break for harvest and resume the teaching in May.
Level 5 Post Harvest students have completed the teaching and are now working on their assessments. The new program will start in July and I am happy to come out and meet HR and potential students at any pack house operations to go through the program and commitments.
The last two years have been extremely challenging for the industry, and as a result the level 5 program student numbers have been low. If the industry values and want to keep these programs we will need to increase student numbers to make these viable. I am happy to say we are seeing improved interest in the Fruit production program, but its about bums on seats and we still need a few more to take this program out of the at risk zone. Post Harvest is even more challenging and we need to see a significant increase in industry engagement to secure this programs future. (cthorman@eit.ac.nz for any enquiries).
Clare, Chris, Steven and Warren.
