More than 1,000 young people attended AgriFest on Thursday 22 October, as a jobs fair at the Norfolk Showground Events Centre in Norwich put agriculture and the industries around it in front of people considering their next step.
The event was Norfolk’s first Youth Guarantee Jobs Fair. It welcomed 1,951 visitors in total, including 1,261 people aged 16 to 24, and brought together more than 65 employers and training providers. For a region where rural and countryside communities are central to the local economy, the scale of the turnout gave young people a chance to explore work that can sometimes be less visible than city-based careers.
Hands-on routes into the sector
The day was designed to make career options tangible. Visitors could try virtual-reality welding, explore HGV training and take part in an exercise building a water-irrigation network. These activities were introductions rather than qualifications or job offers, but they showed some of the technical and practical skills used across agriculture and its supply chains.
An employability zone added support with searching for vacancies, completing applications and preparing for interviews. That mattered because a careers fair is not only about identifying a role. It can also help someone understand how to approach an employer, explain their skills and decide whether further study, a training placement or an apprenticeship is the right next move.
The fair’s field-to-fork theme reached well beyond work on a farm. Employers and providers came from agriculture and horticulture, food production and processing, hospitality and catering, retail, logistics, transport, warehousing, finance, business support and professional services. The mix reflected the way food and rural businesses rely on a chain of roles, from growing and machinery to processing, moving goods, customer-facing work and specialist advice.
First conversations can widen choices
For young people weighing up their options, meeting people who work in a sector can make a broad label such as agriculture more specific. A visitor may be interested in practical work, engineering, vehicles, environmental management, food production or business services, rather than seeing the industry as a single type of job. The event gave employers a setting to describe those different routes and gave participants space to ask what they involve.
The attendance figures do not show how many people will go on to take a job, begin training or apply for an apprenticeship. Nor does a conversation at a stand guarantee a vacancy. The immediate outcome was exposure to options and employment support, while any longer-term effect will depend on follow-up by participants, employers, education providers and local services.
Part of a wider youth employment drive
AgriFest forms part of the Youth Guarantee, which sets out a goal that young people under 25 should have access to a high-quality route through employment, continued education, an apprenticeship, a traineeship, work experience or a Sector-Based Work Academy Programme. The approach recognises that a first step into work does not look the same for everyone.
Earlier Youth Guarantee jobs fairs have been held in Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff, Nottingham and London. More than 1,000 young people from those events have moved into jobs, work experience or training opportunities. The programme’s wider youth-employment package is backed by £2.5 billion and aims to support almost one million young people while creating 500,000 opportunities. Those figures are programme ambitions and reported progress, not a prediction that every visitor to the Norfolk fair will secure a role.
For Norfolk, the fair’s significance lies in joining local employers, educators and young people around a part of the economy with many connected occupations. The practical demonstrations and conversations offered a starting point. What follows will be shaped by the opportunities available and by the support that helps young people turn interest into a sustained career path.
