GIRLS are flocking to farming at Hartpury College and University Centre in their droves with this autumn reaping a record harvest of female land-based students, including a bumper crop from Wales.

With Hartpury, near Gloucester, again emerging as the top specialist land-based college in the latest Department for Education league tables for its diploma courses and 100% of the college's agriculture students going on to secure employment in recent years, it’s not surprise that so many young people choose Hartpury to further their farming knowledge.

And, increasingly, girls are investing their future in farming and looking to open the door to their dream career in the agricultural industry. This September, 18% of the new agriculture intake at Hartpury College was female, compared to 9% in September 2015, meaning Hartpury now has nearly 60 female agriculture students.

Niamh Chapman, 18, from Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, is hoping to secure a career in farm finance or as a land agent when she completes her Level 3 Extended Diploma in Agriculture.

She said: “I don’t actually come from a farm but my family do have a smallholding and I’ve always worked on my nan’s friend’s farm, which has around 30 cows and 120 sheep. From the age of around eight or nine, I started helping out with feeding the new lambs and that’s where my passion for farming stems from.

“I want to work in farm finance. I could have stayed at school, studied maths A-level and gone into accountancy but I wanted to improve my farming knowledge and practical skills as well as get a grounding in the farm business side. The course at Hartpury was perfect for that.

“On my course, you get a chance to spend a year working in the industry and I completed my work placements on two farms in South Wales. One was a sheep and beef farm – Newland Farm near Margam, where I got involved with lambing, sheep shearing and wool rolling, but I also worked on a dairy farm, feeding the calves, de-horning, foot trimming and TB testing.

“There’s quite a few female land agents now and I think the number will continue to grow. The idea of getting out and about to different farms and helping them to improve and be more profitable really appeals to me, and my time at Hartpury means I’ll have the knowledge of the industry that I need.”

Britanny Poacher, 18, from Margam, near Port Talbot, is on the Level 3 Diploma Agriculture at Hartpury. She is combining her studies with continuing to work at weekends at Ty Tanglwyst Dairy, which supplies milk throughout Wales. Before coming to Hartpury, she worked there full-time and was involved with calf rearing and the milking process. Her family farm has beef cattle and pigs.

She said: “There are colleges where you can study agriculture in Wales but I decided to come to Hartpury because it has a commercial, working farm and the facilities and the opportunities to take what you learn in the classroom and practise them in a practical setting are so much better. I’m also learning so much about the business side, and I can take that knowledge back to my family farm and into the rest of my career.

“It also offers you the opportunity to live on site and I was keen to move away from home. I think it sends a message to employers that you’re independent and you have the drive to succeed.

“I really want to work in the AI (Articificial Insemination) side of agriculture. The manager’s wife on the farm where I spent my year in industry worked for Genus UK breeding, and that’s what sparked my interest.

“I think the number of girls going into farming is only going to grow. I was really surprised when I went to the Usk Show how many girls had such a keen interest in it. I think women are so much more involved these days in the day to day work of a farm and they tend to be more skilled on the caring side.”