Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre in Wairarapa is offering international students a special diploma to study dairy management.
Forty students, mainly from India, will this year begin a two year course of study which will also offer them the likelihood of a New Zealand working visa on graduation.
Centre spokesperson Miekes Buckley says there is a significant shortage of skilled workers in New Zealand's dairy industry and the dairy industry is already recruiting from overseas.
She says the diploma is one way the centre can support that by training those international students before they go and work in the New Zealand agricultural industry.
Ms Buckley says there is a high demand in the dairy industry for highly skilled workers at all levels including for assistant herd managers, herd managers, farm managers and assistant farm managers.
She says there is demand for around 1000 graduates to come into the industry every year.
Ms Buckley says the first intake of students to the dairy management diploma will be in late February early March and enrolments are coming in every day for that programme.
She says more students will be taken in July.
The diploma teaches general farm skills, breeding, milking, feeding and pastures and the higher level management skills of production management, action planning, feed budgeting, financial planning and managing human resources.
