My name is Robert Ayres and currently I am a mature student at Nottingham Trent University studying for a degree in Horticulture. My aim, once I graduate, is to work as an agronomist within agriculture, crop science and food production areas.
So why am I here?
I spent many years working in sales, both within the finance sector and the motor trade, and when I was made redundant at the height of the credit crunch I had no idea what to do. As a stop gap I started working for Tesco as a stock controller and got to see the final end of the food supply chain. So I started questioning how the food gets here, how is it produced, how much does it cost, where is it produced. I had grown my own vegetables from an early age and wanted to know how food is produced on a large scale.
It was hard to know where to start, what qualifications would I need and could I afford to study. Then one Sunday evening I was watching BBC's Country File and they did a report on the lack of horticulturists at the moment. This was the light bulb moment for me, so I started looking for Horticulture courses. The only college that did anything like this near me was NTU Brackenhurst, so I signed up to go to an open day to potentially look at doing a BTEC course.
The campus at Brackenhurst is fantastic and after listening to the talk on the BTEC I was certain I wanted to start studying at NTU, but I stayed in the room and listened to the talk about the foundation degree and full degree. This was much more what I was looking for, more managerial in focus, while looking at scientific reasoning behind horticulture and agronomy with practical sessions thrown in for good measure. The only thing holding me back was funding, so after a chat with the NTU staff and running my details through Student Finance and getting clearance for funding and acceptance on the course a new direction in my life was started.
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