Human Resources On The Farm

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Perhaps the biggest investment any company can make is in their employees. But sometimes in agriculture, staff can be misjudged as just a cost rather than a long-term investment. At Maverick Ag, their goal is to change this mindset, by establishing hiring processes and promoting retention on the farm, says co-founder Evan Shout.

Shout… “So when we looked at, you know, hiring, it was always a cost. So we went down to the, the local shop, we got the cheapest employee, and then we put them on a $2 million drill. We're the only industry I know that would actually do that. That was the first thing is getting the guys to quit looking at it as a cost and looking at it as, you know, as an investment. You wanna find a good employee, you wanna find someone who's got additional skills, not that can just drive a tractor. And you want to pay them more, because honestly, if you pay them more, the return will be much higher than, you know, finding somebody that you can pay less that's not experienced. So that, that was the first one. The second one was the processes. I mean, most of these farms are getting very high equity. And in terms of, you know, value, any business in the city with that value probably has an HR manager. Farmers don't. That's one of the areas where we don't have those skills. So it's more or less, how can we get the processes in place, you know, for the correct way to hire? And then retention, you know, once we have them, are we actually offering them a career? That's probably one of the narratives we needed to change the most is, you can have a career on farms.”

Learn more at maverickag.com