Have you studied Bachelor of Science in Agriculture/Horticulture/Acqua culture?

Have experience working on crop fields or cattle farming?

This will help you to understand who are highly required in countries like Australia and New Zealand!

I read number of stories about software professionals or young and professionally skilled graduates are converting themselves into farmers. Farming used to be the backbone of many countries such as India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. However, this has gradually changing to service-oriented countries with the increase in globalisation and technological changes. This growth may not sustainable because number of severely food insecure people has doubled in two years – from 135 million pre-pandemic to 276 million, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. COVID-19 and inequality – all drivers of global hunger – are being amplified and accelerated by the war in Ukraine.

This reveals there will be a desperate need of farmers who can produce various types of produce. Australia and New Zealand has number of visa programs in place for various types of farmers.

Farmers list on Regional Occupation List:

Australia and New Zealand has classified number of types of farmers in Regional Occupation list (ROL). ROL is the list of the occupations that are highly in need in Regional Australia (Not metropolitan cities). The following are some of the visa categories that the farmers are eligible to apply (conditions apply).

• 407 – Training visa (subclass 407)
• 489 – Skilled Regional (Provisional) visa (subclass 489) – State or Territory nominated
• 482 – Temporary Skill Shortage (subclass 482) – Medium Term Stream
  report caveats apply
• 187 – Regional Sponsor Migration Scheme (subclass 187)
• 494 – Skilled Employer Sponsored Regional (provisional) (subclass 494) – Employer sponsored stream
• 491 – Skilled Work Regional (provisional) visa (subclass 491) State or Territory nominated

 

The following farmers are listed in the skilled occupation list of Australia and New Zealand. In a nutshell, these visas are granted in two ways: 1. Sponsored by an employer and 2. State or Territory sponsorship.

In this article I am going to show you how you can search your farming profession and check what visas you are eligible for and how to get a sponsorship from an employer.

Australia:

Before you plan to apply for sponsorship through an employer or a state/territory, get your skills assessed through VETASSESS, a skill assessment provider that assess your qualifications and provides the outcome of your assessment. If you get a positive outcome, your skills are recognised for immigration purposes.

Once this is sorted out, click on this website; go to the skilled occupation list (located in the middle of the page)

I typed ‘Farmer’ to provide all the occupations with ‘farmer’. I have got the below list of farmers:

Acqua-culture Farmer

Beef Cattle Farmer

Crop Farmers

Dairy Cattle Farmer

Deer Farmers

Goat Farmers

Livestock Farmers

Mixed Crop and Livestock Farmer

Mixed Crop Farmer

Mixed Livestock Farmer

Pig Farmer

Poultry Farmer

Sheep Farmer

I have got the result as ‘above’. This list provides:

Occupation: type of occupation

ANZSCO Code: Australian Government through National Skills Commission identifies occupations based on the frequently advertised jobs and define them in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO).

Visa: This helps the candidate to understand what type of visa he/she is eligible to apply for this occupation.

List: This list can be ROL (Regional Occupation List), STSOL (Short Term Skilled Occupation List) or MLTSSL (Medium and Long Term Strategic Skills List)

Assessing Authority: This section provides you the details of the assessing body to review your skills. The positive outcome is considered as your skills are recognised in Australia. If you click on the link, it takes you the to the assessing body providing more information on skills assessment.

Number of occupations under the Category of ‘Farmer’ are either employer sponsored or state sponsorship.

State/Territory sponsorship:

You must be either nominated by an Australian state or territory government agency or indicate that you will be sponsored by an eligible relative.

You must go to this website and make an expression of interest to get you an estimate of a points score.

If you are eligible, you will get an invitation to apply for a visa.

Employer Sponsorship:

This is time consuming and requires lot of patience to find the right opportunity and employer. You apply for a job through an employer, once the employer selects as their employee. You can apply for a sponsorship visa under 407, 494 or 187 categories by co-ordinating with the employer.

You may be wondering where to find these employers:

Australia has entered into labour agreements with number of employers to sponsor employees from within and outside Australia. Find how you can find sponsors in the below article:

1000+ Australian companies sponsoring work visas to Australia

Select LA type as Pork, Meat or Horticulture depending on your specialisation as below

The number of employers that are eligible to sponsor appear in the list. Pick each supplier and search in their career section and apply for jobs of your interest.

Another way to search and understand what skills the Australian employers are looking for is clicking the jobactive search website

Recent news as of April 2022:

The Australian Agriculture Visa (AAV) program is being introduced to address workforce shortages in the agriculture sector by building on existing government programs. It is a long-term contribution to Australia’s labour supply, intended to support Australia’s Agriculture and Primary industry sector as they strive to reach $100 billion in value by 2030. It is a stream of the Temporary Work (International relations) subclass 403 visa. This visa is a special visa that is been granted up to 2 years under the terms and conditions of a bilateral agreement between the Australian Government and a government of another country.

Vietnam is the first country in Southeast Asia to participate in the AAV program.  Australia has signed its first Memorandum of Understanding under this program.

India has been invited to participate in the AAV program as part of the interim Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (AI-ECTA). Consistent with the process

and conditions for other participating countries, an MoU would first need to be agreed before any workers could arrive. Should an MoU be concluded, we would expect the first

workers to arrive in 2023. At this stage, Australia is undertaking ongoing discussions with other countries and will provide updates as appropriate.

• The AAV program will support the recruitment of employees across a range of agriculture and primary industry sectors, including horticulture, dairy, wool, grains, fisheries (including aquaculture) and forestry, including support services and primary processing.
• The program will target skilled, semi-skilled and low-skilled employees within specified occupations across these sectors.
• Australian government has committed to create options for permanent residence pathways, further consulting and design work is due to be completed.

Employees must have the experience and/or qualifications to commence work at the skill level and occupation for which they are recruited (where relevant). This includes a minimum level of English (Average band score of atleast 4.0 based on the 4 test components)

New Zealand:

New Zealand is another country that is highly in demand of farmers.

Click on the link to find the list of visas you can apply for.

I have typed workers which shows you number of farmer occupations; select the one that suits your occupation the best. In this example, I have chosen “Crop Farm Workers nec”. Underneath you will be provided with a list of skill shortages where your occupation is highly in need.

Click on the highlighted text: “Next Step: Explore your visa options” by filling out some details for the system to display the visas that you are eligible to apply as per your situation.

Currently, Vegetable farm workers, Agricultural technician and Agricultural consultant are also in high demand in New Zealand.

New Zealand is also offering Resident 2021 visa for those farmers who have been in the country temporarily for more than three years or earning above $27 per hour or work in a role of scarce list.

It is understood Farmers are highly in demand in these countries! Why late? it is a call out for all those agricultural students, farmers (medium to low skilled) who have a dream of migrating to Australia or New Zealand.