Name Dale Griffin
Twitter @cropprotres
Age 38
Location Victoria, Australia
What part(s) of the industry do you work in? Scientific research, technical data generation, pesticide development, plant protection, plant disease diagnostics
Job title Managing Director
What does your company/ business do? Project-based scientific research project for government, industry and corporate clients
Describe your job on the average day Business management, report writing, field-work, client/business development
How did you get involved with agriculture? Started with ambitions of becoming a vet but preferred the plant science subjects in First-year uni.
Education Bachelors degree in Agricultural Science
If you studied/ trained in agriculture, why did you choose that degree/ certificate? Most relevant degree available and it had the most broad choice of subjects at the time
What are/were you plans after school/TAFE/university? Work
Job history Private enterprise since having left uni. This is unusual because most undergrads probably expect that the government will provide them with a career path – this is simply no-longer the case.
What are your interests?Plant disease diagnostics and management
What is your favourite thing about the industry? The diverse mix of tasks on a day-to-day basis. Particularly the ability to get a great mix of indoors and outdoors work.
Best experience in agriculture? Solving problems for industries
Worst experience in agriculture? The lack of young people coming through university because we have no-one to employ and more work than we can handle.
What do you think will be the biggest challenges of the agricultural industry in the future? Having enough educated professionals to solve the issues that will arise with expanding industries.
Why do you think less people are becoming involved in agriculture? Traditional career paths no longer exist are modern career paths are not as clear or certain. Salaries are not attractive and a reasonable amount of travel is involved in most roles in Agriculture that I’m exposed to.
What advice do you have for people thinking about getting into agriculture? Specialise to make yourself indespensible and valuable.
You must also understand that the fundamentals are in your favour i.e. earths population exploding which requires us to produce more with less. This requires intelligent experts.
Farmers are becoming business-people, not farmers, and they rely heavily on professional and expert advisers to help them make critical decisions and to manage the labour they require to run their farms.
How important do you think an agricultural background is to become involved in the industry? It helps enormously because there are so many aspects to it and with out some structured learning it can take a long time to grasp what is happening. Nevertheless, it is not essential unless the career you’re seeking is at the professional level.
What do you think is the most common misconception about agriculture? That it has no future in it.
