The UK’s land-based economy is facing a workforce challenge unlike anything seen in decades. Whether you speak to employers in rural advisory professions, environmental services or utilities & Infrastructure, the same concerns echo across the countryside:
🔸 Too many vacancies, too few applicants
🔸 A shrinking pool of early‑career entrants
🔸 Mid‑career professionals are unaware that their skills are transferable
🔸 Limited visibility of rural career pathways
Firms operating in the Rural landscape consistently report difficulties finding suitable candidates, even as demand for talent accelerates. Even though membership of the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV) has risen significantly in recent years, the supply of candidates is not keeping pace with the breadth and complexity of work emerging across the sector.
And it’s no wonder. The land-based economy is evolving rapidly. Environmental land management schemes, renewable energy projects, biodiversity markets, natural capital, and major rural infrastructure programmes are reshaping the workforce landscape. Yet many people outside (and even inside) the sector simply don’t realise the scale of opportunity.
Fixing it requires coordinated action from employers, educators, and sector‑specific platforms like LandIt.jobs.
🌱 The Challenges Holding the Land-Based Workforce Back
A. The Awareness Gap
Most students, graduates, career changers, and even many teachers and career advisors in urban areas have only a limited understanding of land-based professions. The sector is often still associated with traditional images of farming, despite the vast number of roles in strategic advisory work, natural capital, rural planning, environmental management, ecology, and rural infrastructure, to name a few.
B. The Pathway Gap
While the UK now offers degree apprenticeships, accelerated learning routes, postgraduate conversion courses and industry‑aligned university programmes, few people understand how these pathways work. These entry routes must be clearly communicated if we want to widen the talent pipeline.
C. The Experience Gap
Work experience remains one of the most powerful tools for attracting future talent. CAAV and its Route to Rural campaign strongly advocate for placements, insight days, and employer engagement, yet many land-based businesses struggle to consistently offer or promote them due to time and resources.
D. The Accessibility Gap
Great candidates are everywhere in urban areas, other sectors, ex‑military communities, hospitality, engineering, logistics, customer service, and more. Route to Rural stresses that recruits do not need a background in the countryside to succeed. But this needs to coexist with targeted employer messaging so that people outside the sector can see the opportunities to pursue a land-based career.
🌄 The Opportunity: A Sector Ready for Renewal
Despite the challenges, momentum is building:
- Route to Rural Week, each October, has become a flagship campaign, drawing national attention and inspiring students, graduates, and career changers to explore rural careers.
- Applications to universities for rural land management have increased, helped in part by media that showcase the industry in a modern light.
- Employers are increasingly open to non‑traditional entrants, welcoming people from diverse professional backgrounds who bring fresh perspectives and transferable skills.
🌿 How Employers Can Attract and Retain Talent
A. Make Your Roles Visible
1. Post roles on land-based specific platforms like LandIt.jobs
General job boards bury land-based opportunities. LandIt.jobs is built to surface them directly to people both inside and outside the sector seeking land‑based careers.
2. Align with Route to Rural during campaign periods
Joining the unified campaign message boosts visibility and reinforces sector‑wide impact.
3. Share your story
Talent is drawn to purpose. Tell candidates about your work, whether in sustainability, biodiversity, natural capital, estates, farming, water, energy, or rural infrastructure, etc.
B. Offer Clear Entry Routes
1. Promote your apprenticeships and graduate opportunities
Highlight degree apprenticeships, placements, and links to institutions such as Harper Adams, Plumpton College, RAU, SRUC, Cumbria, Bangor, UHI, Newcastle, UBE, Myerscough College and Reading.
2. Build structured early‑career programmes
Offer taster days, insight weeks, summer placements, year‑long internships or graduate rotations.
3. Communicate qualification pathways
Demystify RICS, CAAV, ecology, forestry, environmental management or utilities & Infrastructure qualifications. Visibility builds confidence.
C. Invest in Work Experience - Your Most Effective Recruitment Tool
CAAV’s Route to Rural strongly encourages employers to offer meaningful work experience.
Create:
- Short insight weeks
- Taster days
- School and college visits
- Shadowing opportunities
This isn’t charity, it’s talent pipelining for your future workforce.
D. Engage New Audiences
1. Career changers
Second‑career entrants are among the richest talent pools, especially from the military, engineering, hospitality, logistics, utilities, and corporate sectors, bringing transferable and life skills.
2. Urban candidates
People do not need a rural upbringing to thrive in land‑based work, especially with today’s diverse work in our sector.
3. Schools, colleges and universities
Attend careers fairs, deliver talks, and use your younger staff as ambassadors.
E. Modernise Your Messaging
Highlight what sets land-based careers apart:
- Purpose
- Sustainability
- Innovation
- Variety (“no two weeks are the same”)
- Impact on communities and landscapes
The land-based economy must compete with tech, finance, engineering and other industries, and storytelling is a powerful equaliser.
F. Partner with LandIt.jobs — Your Sector‑Specific Talent Engine
LandIt.jobs supports employers by offering:
- Dedicated job listings, including early careers
- Targeted campaigns aligned with Route to Rural
- Sector‑specific search tools
- Employer profile pages
It is the digital recruitment infrastructure that the countryside has been missing. We're here to support you and invest to support our wonderful land-based economy and its future.
✔ What Employers Can Do Today
- List your vacancies on LandIt.jobs
- Join Route to Rural Week each October, as well as promotion throughout the year.
- Offer work experience opportunities annually
- Attend at least one education-sector event
- Create simple pathway guides for your roles
- Share employee stories, especially ones that resonate with the less traditional routes.
- Review and simplify your job descriptions.
🌱 The Future of Land-Based Talent
The sector is entering a new era, one defined by professionalism, digital capability, environmental responsibility and economic diversification. Demand for talent will continue to grow.
But the employers who succeed will be those who invest in:
- Visibility
- Accessibility
- Engagement
- Inclusivity
- Early‑career development
- Strategic storytelling
Initiatives like Route to Rural bring attention.
Platforms like LandIt.jobs bring access.
Employers bring the opportunity.
Together, we can build the next generation of land-based professionals and create a countryside workforce ready for the future.