Why Only A Small Number Of People Will Consider Working On A Dairy Farm

There are 60 new dairy conversions going into Canterbury this year. In This video I discuss how this equates to an extra 250 dairy staff been required, and why most "townies" won't even consider a job on a dairy farm.

I'm surprised by the extra staff required, but the numbers seem to be logical.

Please comment if you feel I have got something wrong.

You Tube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaSu1NRWwQU

Transcription

60 new dairy conversions in Canterbury for 2013 season

Hey, well I want to talk about dairy farm employment issues. So staffing, of all the issues that the dairy industry face, finding people to milk the cows is the biggest issue. So I was talking to a cow shed manufacturer. He said there's 60 dairy conversions going into Canterbury this year; and those are new dairy conversions. 

60 conversions x 750 cows (cant avg) = 45,000 extra cows into Canterbury 2013

Now the average herd size in Canterbury is 750 cows, so 60 times 750 equals 45,000 extra cows coming into Canterbury this year alone. That's not including Southland or the rest of the South Island; 45, 000 new cows into Canterbury. 

1 employee : 180 Cows. 45,000 cows / 180 = 250 new dairy jobs required

Now, there’s a rule of thumb, that you need around 180 cows to one labour unit. So 45,000 divided by 180 equals 250 new jobs. So that's actually really good news. We hear a lot about job closures and job losses, but the dairy industry has been charging away for a good part of a decade. Adding a heck of a lot of new jobs to the economy every year.

Where are these extra employees going to come from?

The problem is where are all the people to come from to milk these extra cows? Now traditionally for the last ten years at least, dairy farmers have been employing Filipinos and Brazilians and other international employees to fill the gap.

I was talking to a guy and I said to him - or he said to me, why can't the dairy industry attract all these people from town? And I said because of working condition. Its the hours of work. And people who have read my blog will know what I think about that . And he said, "I don't" -- he didn't except that anyway. He said, "No, no there's are plenty people who will go and work those different hours." And he mentioned people who joined the army and go on fishing trawlers and all sorts of things. So I had a little think about things and I have came up with a theory.

So if we draw a standard old bell curve, I would say that the people who fit into there, these are your 40 hour a week people. That's a majority of the population. A big chunk of people fit in there. People who go to work on a dairy farm are smaller, with much less of a number of people. And I am going to call it 60 plus hours. 

How many "townies" would apply for a "town" Job, if the hours were 4am to 5pm, 9 days on 3 days off?

Now, I'll tell you why I think that. I, as I said before I employ people myself and I run an ad in the paper that says " Customer Service Rep Monday to Friday, 9 AM til 5 PM," and we get heaps of response. And I can be quite picky of who we employ.

But if I put an ad in the paper and said "Customer Service Rep required, 4 AM to 5 PM, 9 days on, 3 days off," they wouldn't even bother applying. Its just totally unacceptable to them, they just couldn't even imagine starting at four in the morning, working all the way to five o'clock in the afternoon and doing that for nine days in a row, then give you three days off.

Its just not - they're not even going to considered it. So these are the people here who wouldn't even consider that. 

Now the number of people who will consider that are much less, a much lower number of people I'd say, about half the of number of people would consider that. 

No surprise, Dairy Farmers struggle to attract and retain staff

And it's absolutely no surprise to me at all that dairy farmer's cant find staff because there's better options. They can go building and start at seven in the morning or eight in the morning.

Dairy industry must provide 40-45 hour weeks

So I believe if the diary industry want to get serious about actually solving their staffing issues, I think they need to move the conditions over to the centre here. So the dairy farm staff need to start working 40-45 hour weeks, and regular weekends off, not just rostered days off. 

In the next video I'm gonna talk about what it would look like for a dairy farmer to transition their staff from sort of the 60 plus hours per week over to the 40 plus and what its gonna cost them. 

And I guarantee you right now, if the dairy industry could do that the majority of the staffing issues will just go away. ...