Project Manager: Niel Jacobsen

AgriFood Skills Australia managed the Machinery Partnerships Project, which was funded by the NSW Department of Education and Training under the Strategic Skills Program.

A key objective of the project was to establish partnerships with a number of farmers, machinery dealers and contractors who could support training delivery and assessment. Another key aspect of the partnership was access to implements and attachments and to provide access paddocks where participants could operate machines.
The Machinery Partnership Project achieved the objective of developing and fostering relationships that support the delivery of accredited training between:

• Private and corporate farms, contractors and machinery dealers
• RTOs that deliver agriculture machinery training in regional NSW
• Peak industry bodies that have an interest in and support VET

A significant outcome was to develop new competency standards for machinery operations. The existing standards did not reflect the work being undertaken by machinery operators in the contemporary agriculture industry.

A problem identified by industry representatives was that the Operate specialised machinery gave no indication of the type of machinery that people were being accredited against. Nor did the standard reflect the high level of sophistication of the on-board controls and instruments such as GPS, rate controllers and other data logging systems.

The following six standards have been incorporated into the Agriculture, Horticulture and Conservation and Land Management Training Package AHC09:

• Operate broadacre harvesting machinery and equipment
• Operate land-forming machinery and equipment
• Operate row crop planting and seeding machinery and equipment
• Operate broadacre sowing machinery and equipment
• Operate chemical application machinery and equipment
• Operate precision control technology.

The new competency standards focus on the safe, efficient and controlled operation of the machinery.