Bruce Wills compares the city-country job scene and says those with the right attitude can prosper in a farm job, one with many lifestyle benefits

By Bruce Wills*

What is your perception of a farm worker?

The response from those who don’t know much about farming is possibly that they are low-skilled, low-waged and over-worked. 

Federated Farmers, with Rabobank, have produced an annual remuneration survey for a number of years now and the most recent was released last month.

The positive thing about social media is that it is easy to catch out those ‘swinging the lead’. The downside is that it anyone with a keyboard can take aim and fire off a salvo.

The response to our 2013 survey, aside from one colourful Facebook post, has been that it is on the money if you excuse the pun. 

We are coming out of the shadows on farm worker remuneration to counter the “response” above.

It also comes after seeing hundreds of Aucklanders queuing for seven jobs at a factory to earn just over $15 an hour.  

The Federated Farmers/Rabobank Farm Employee Remuneration report had the input of 1,194 farm employers covering 3,900 positions. It means I can confidently say the average farm worker earns $5,500 more than the average non-farm annual wage and salary earner.

Farm workers earn an average salary of $46,246 but that is more like $49,159 when the value of non-wage benefits is taken into account.

Many farm positions are residential, many also come with farm vehicles and as the Rural Broadband Initiative gathers momentum, Wi-Fi will make an appearance I am certain.

Unlike Auckland, country living costs are generally lower although some will suggest that this is ‘because there’s little to do’. That is another unfair generalisation. There is heaps to do when you join a community and that is what we still have.

This is not just a farming story as Waikato’s Professor of Agribusiness, Jacqueline Rowarth, noted several years ago; “Of the approximately 20,000 graduates each year,” Jacqueline wrote, “a greater proportion are from the creative arts (11.2 percent) than in the sciences (10.7 percent). In agriculture, the figure is 0.5 percent, less than 100 students. All the disciplines are important, but I think that we have the balance wrong”. 

For us, the jobs are in the country but the labour force is seemingly in the city. That said, Wellington Chef Martin Bosley could speak for many a farmer after trying to give someone “a break”.  After paying for adverts, going through time consuming interviews and then training, he had no-shows when it came time to work.  That saw him reportedly write online, "I'm fed up putting time, [money and] effort into training new staff only for them to no show. Unemployment? Can't be f..... working more like”. 

Is there a cultural malaise among some of our potential workforce?

Being an employer, skills can be learned but attitude cannot.

Knowing absolutely nothing about farming can be corrected so long as there is curiosity and a willingness to learn.

Training farms, like the superb Smedley Station in my neck of the woods, are a great bonus.  So if you have the attitude we have the roles.

To check the training options simply Google Lincoln, Massey, Taratahi or the AgITO.  For vacancies, visit sites like TradeMe, Seek and Federated Farmers own, www.ruraljobs.co.nz.

To be fair it is not all sweetness and light. Our industries need to face up to a less than stellar safety record.

It can also be remote and at times can involve long hours, especially during calving and lambing.

As things also even out the average full time dairy worker will work 50.5 hours per week, Sheep & Beef 44.5 and Grain & Seed 46.1 hours.

The upsides are that you are outdoors and there are no boundaries for what you can accomplish inside the farm gate or out of it.

Take Te Aroha Dairy farmers Richard Revell. His MO2 milk based soft drinks launched in 2010 have been reformatted to carbonated ‘traditional’ milk flavours. This could not only be big but shows you how varied the primary industries are.

Employers know that keeping good staff is better than recruiting and the drought will see many staff earn more than the farm’s owners.

Our skilled workers show up virtuously in another statistic; Labour Productivity. Agriculture’s labour productivity is our economy’s star-turn increasing 3.4 percent each year.

Despite this we increasingly turn to those from the Americas, Europe and Asia to fill vacancies. Could it be as our Head of Comms, a former Careers Advisor, described it to me. That many careers advisors could star in ‘Night of the career dead’ as David colourfully put it. 

Whatever it is, the primary industries and sciences are being starved of talent as we graduate far more photographers than farmers. There’s also no reason why photographers, film-makers and communication graduates cannot go farming either.

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Bruce Wills is the President of Federated Farmers. You can contact him here »