The Skills for Agriculture framework presents a streamlined set of core skills, grouped into four main categories: Crops, Extension and Advisory Services, Relationships and Business, and Behaviours. Each skill includes a general description, guidance notes, and descriptors across seven levels of responsibility—defined by autonomy, influence, complexity, and knowledge.
The framework supports multiple uses:
- Job design – by selecting relevant skills and levels to define roles
- Career planning – by helping individuals assess their current level and identify development goals
- Training needs analysis – by highlighting team or organisational skills gaps
- Education provision – by identifying opportunities to align training with sector needs
This structure enables a shared language across organisations, enhances workforce development, and supports clearer pathways into and through agricultural careers.
Structure
Categories
As we gradually expand the scope of the framework we will add further categories.
Skills
Each skill contains:
- A general description
- Guidance notes
- Level descriptors
The Levels
The Levels of responsibility and accountability help to map the skills to particular roles within the industry.
Each level is described by the following characteristics:
Autonomy
Influence
Complexity
KnowledgeHow it can be used
Support personal career planning
Individuals can identify where they sit on the skills framework, probably working with an advisor. Then they can identify additional skills to develop, or levels to aim for.
Develop job descriptions
Using the skills framework will help to embed a common language about roles and responsibilities across organisations.
To create a new job description:
- Select the skills required
- Choose the appropriate levels
- Use the level descriptors within the job description
Identify gaps in educational provision
Training and education providers can use the framework to identify where there are gaps in their training and education provision.
Support training needs analysis
Managers can use the skills framework to assess where their team’s skill levels are, and then identify which skills could be developed.
Summary Chart
The summary chart gives a one page view of all the skills and their associated levels. The download will provide an example of how to fill out the chart, as well as a blank one for you to fill out yourself.
Learn more about the framework
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