Farm experience and travel

Press, 14 July 1978, Page 8

Farm experience and travel

The International Agricultural Exchange Association has a full-time secretary in New Zealand now. She is Ms Sue Stafford and she is stationed at Lincoln College. Sue is interested in encouraging more young New Zealanders to travel under the scheme, which has several versions. At the present time there are 29 young New Zealanders spending six or seven months in Canada. Six of these will also go on to spend six months in Europe before returning home. In the first year that New Zealand took part in the scheme in 1969, 69 New Zealanders participated. Last summer and autumn between November and April, 175 young people from overseas came to New Zealand.

The association arranges host families for the young people in the countries that they visit and they work on the farms on which they are placed. Although they are paid a training allowance—they are known as trainees—and get free board and lodgings, a feature of the scheme is that the trainee is looked on as part of the host family. The scheme is open to young people of either sex between 19 and 28 years and about a third of those taking part are young women, who can do inside work, combining housekeeping with child minding. They are required to have had a year’s agricultural experience of some sort, such as on a farm or at institutions like Flock House. Ms Stafford thinks that more New Zealanders do not take part in the scheme because they do not know about it. She does not think that current economic conditions have anything to do with the limited numbers at present participating. Those young people who go to Canada from New Zealand for about seven months have to find about $l6BO to cover their fares

both ways, insurance, attendance at an orientation seminar and administration and supervision. Where visits are made to Europe as well as Canada and the trainee is away a year the cost is $4015, and where the trainee goes to Europe only and works on a farm for six months and

then has two months to travel around on his or her own account the cost is $2460. In New Zealand the scheme has almost enough host families, but would welcome a few more. Ms Stafford finds that farming families appreciate having someone from another country in their home and the children hearing another language spoken. And she thinks that there is a spin-off for New Zealand in that these young visitors, who are likely to become farming leaders in their home countries in days to come, are likely to take away with them a good impression of the efficiency of New Zealand farmers. That could do the country nothing but good. Sue, who comes from Lincolnshire in England, was a trainee herself in 1974, visiting Canada for six months.