14 May 2024 | 4 mins
Overview
  • Ditch the office job! Tassie farms are booming with ideal weather, clean air, and high demand for their produce.
  • Level up your skills for free with TasTAFE courses or dive deep into ag research at the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.

If you're set on having a career that's more outdoor adventure than daily office grind, then there's no better place to do it than Tasmania. Tassie has some of the cleanest air and pastures in the world, and all that natural goodness means that people all over the world enjoy Tassie produce – whether they realise it or not. This article will sum up 5 great reasons that future farmers should look at Tasmania to get started. 

Tassie has some of the best farming conditions in the world 

Here in Aus, we’re blessed with some amazing farmlands, but there’s no doubt that Tasmania has some of the best conditions for farming we have to offer. It’s not too cold in winter, and not too hot in summer, which means that there aren’t too many big frosts or droughts around to spoil crops. Plus, Tasmania’s situated in a zone called the Roaring Forties, which supplies the whole state with plenty of fresh air, resulting in healthy and happy crops and livestock.  

There’s plenty of demand for Tassie produce, which means loads of jobs to go around 

Tasmania exports almost a billion dollars’ worth of agricultural products to over 70 countries, which is pretty amazing for one of our smaller states. And it’s not just the great soil and conditions that makes the world go crazy for Tassie exports – it's also the farming techniques and practices that have been honed for hundreds of years.  

For starters, the Tassie government has completely banned genetically modified crops, and hormones and antibiotics are banned for growing livestock. There’s also plenty of government investment in things like large-scale irrigation products to allow for even more farms. All that, plus cutting-edge farming techniques means that the industry growth rate for Tassie agriculture is nearly double the world average, and almost triple the growth rate of the rest of the country. All that growth needs skilled farm workers to make it happen, which is where you could come in. 

You can get farm-ready fee-free at TasTAFE 

That’s right – it's never been easier or more affordable to get the skills you need to land a job in the Tasmanian agricultural industry. While you can start working on farms right away without formal certifications, if you wanna take your job to the next level, unlock better wages and try out some more advanced roles, then you can take a look at fee-free courses* like: 

* Just a heads-up – this is the list for 2024 courses, so if you’re planning on studying in 2025, you can double-check the course you want is still fee-free over at https://www.tastafe.tas.edu.au/fee-free. 

If Uni’s more your speed, then you can learn at a specialised Tassie institute 

If you’re interested in being a part of Tasmania’s cutting-edge agricultural research in areas like biotechnology, plant pathology, smart farm technology like drones and sensors then it’s hard to pass up the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture. It’s a specialised institute within the University of Tasmania that takes knowledge from around the world and combines it with Tasmania’s long farming traditions to keep Tassie farms productive, while making sure that quality lasts for generations to come. It’s not all about time in the lab or the classroom either – they have their own research farms rigged up with all kinds of sensors to show how new tech affects growing conditions in real time. Pretty cool, huh?  

Farming in Tas isn’t going anywhere – in fact, it’s on the grow 

It’s absolutely no secret that global warming is causing plenty of problems for farmers all over the world, as conditions change and crops that used to thrive in some areas become less viable. Because Tasmania is so uniquely sheltered from the elements, the world now has an eye on Tasmania to become an even bigger player in agriculture, especially in wine production. As global temps increase, Tasmania’s going to be one of the very few places in the world that can grow those sensitive wine grapes. There are even some farmers preparing their vineyards to export in 2050, and even for the year 2100! If you’re a wine afficionado, working in Ag in Tasmania is set to place you where the action is. 

We’ll spare you the full lecture (because we could go on for days), but suffice it to say that if you’re interested in learning to farm in some of the world’s best conditions, then Tassie’s going to be hard to beat. If you’re keen to learn more about farming careers in Tassie, then make sure you head to https://careerify.tas.gov.au/ - it’s a one-stop shop for exploring your post-school options right in Tasmania, with resources, toolkits, videos and more!