The three day seminar taught by staff at the NSW Department of Primary Industries' Tocal College took prospective workers in Dubbo through all the ins and outs of operating harvesting machinery safely and competently.

Education Officer Charlie Bell of Tocal College says the demands in the agricultural workspace are never easy to meet, but the latest course, and ones that will follow in the new year, should help people enter into agricultural harvest work.

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"The skills required for modern winter crop harvest labour are significant, with harvest workers operating and maintaining sophisticated machinery and equipment, while maintaining high standards of workplace safety and product hygiene," Mr Bell said.

"This is about ensuring people are able to safely and productively contribute to harvest operations, as well as providing opportunities to progress to more highly-skilled positions."

Mr Bell said the introduction of newly skilled workers will benefit Dubbo directly now that the course has been completed.

"The idea is to give people the basic skills they need when working on grain harvest to be both safe and productive, we don't pretend we'll be able to make people experts in three days, but we give them an overview of the harvest procedure," Mr Bell said.

"We talk about all the grain harvesting equipment, silos and all those things and make sure people know about all the risks and hazards associated with all aspects of those things and make sure people are safe and that they understand the process so they can begin working in those jobs and be productive as they learn more."

Mr Bell said the most recent course, which was held mid-October in Dubbo, attracted an atypical group, including school students and other unusual applicants.

"We had a fair few mature aged people who were either retired or semi-retired and thinking of working on harvest," Mr Bell said.

"We try hard to promote this course to people who aren't already in the agricultural industry and that is really crucial, this year there's a chronic labour shortage due to COVID-19."

While the course was successful, Mr Bell said the Tocal college would be returning in the future to ensure that others who had been retrenched or unable to work were able to take up the agricultural trade if interested.

"We'd actually hoped to do this course a little earlier in the year, maybe around June or July, but we weren't able to with everything going on," Mr Bell said.

"What we're hoping to do is return maybe early next year, sometime around March and hopefully hold an introduction to harvest seeding in preparation for the winter."