Herdsman pay

ollie989898 said:

So you don't see any value in formal education for anyone hoping to work in agriculture?

I think I see a bit of a problem for the industry at large if that is the case.

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I do, but there's no point going to college/university if you don't have a good grounding first (just my opinion) also having employed a fair few Harper students as relief milkers it's surprising how many said they'd chosen the wrong course and it wasn't what they wanted to do, far better to have a nibble first to see if it's too your liking.

Headless chicken said:

whenever these threads come up I can’t help but chuckle. As I say every time I have mates who are managers in Aldi that do very well o think roughly £30-£40k a year. They are expect to commute up to an hour( in contract they can move you to any store within that and they don’t have to pay mileage for that) they work anti social hours, 50 + hours a week, must be clean shaven, must be freshly showered, can’t turn up looking like a bag of sh!t from the night before and are absolutely performance managed at every turn. One I know of got sacked for taking a sandwich out of the bin to eat.
Wife works as a med sec, band 2/3, travels up to 40 miles a day at her own expense 40 hours a week and I think starting salary is £18.5k. Again far from this eutopia where you roll out of college land a 50k job have no responsibility and don’t get a bollocking if it goes wrong.

to the OP if you have asked two years in a row then your not happy where you are is my opinion. We pay what we can afford to people and strive to provide the best working environment possible. Plenty others Will chase the money and work themselves to death in the middle of it.

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Real world reality

The old requirement to have a year's pre-College/Uni experience was a very good one, the industry was used to taking youngsters for a year. In my opinion for those brought up on a farm, that should also have been a year on someone else's farm, not just at home.

It meant that when you started your academic training you had some practical experience in at least some sectors and also an idea of what you might or might not be interested in.

s line said:

https://www.facebook.com/107534408295383/posts/151301263918697

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Good job for an 18 year old that. Get trained up, tenner an hour is much higher than minimum wage at that age group and you get your own place with no bills so you don't have to live with your parents.
An Ag job is a great opportunity for youngsters to make a start and earn money. Its later on in life when you have a family, mortgage and are getting a bit knackered and want a better higher paying/lower hour, easier job that you struggle a bit. That's why Ag is full of youngsters and the older folk move on.
If you start work at 16 ish work for an outfit like that and save hard think how much further ahead of a 22 year old leaving uni you'll be.

kiwi pom said:

Good job for an 18 year old that. Get trained up, tenner an hour is much higher than minimum wage at that age group and you get your own place with no bills so you don't have to live with your parents.
An Ag job is a great opportunity for youngsters to make a start and earn money. Its later on in life when you have a family, mortgage and are getting a bit knackered and want a better higher paying/lower hour, easier job that you struggle a bit. That's why Ag is full of youngsters and the older folk move on.
If you start work at 16 ish work for an outfit like that and save hard think how much further ahead of a 22 year old leaving uni you'll be.

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Very true.

ollie989898 said:

So you don't see any value in formal education for anyone hoping to work in agriculture?

I think I see a bit of a problem for the industry at large if that is the case.

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It depends what you want to do. My wife has a Ag Science degree and works as an agronomist for a large food processor, so for her uni was certainly worth it but if you're just working on a farm, I think its a bit of a waste of time unless you're going down the manager route. The problem with that is there's not many managers jobs.
Farmers sons/daughters who plan on joining/taking over the family business would benefit from some sort of business management course.
Ag mostly needs semi skilled labourers, no point getting a student debt for that.

kiwi pom said:

It depends what you want to do. My wife has a Ag Science degree and works as an agronomist for a large food processor, so for her uni was certainly worth it but if you're just working on a farm, I think its a bit of a waste of time unless you're going down the manager route. The problem with that is there's not many managers jobs.
Farmers sons/daughters who plan on joining/taking over the family business would benefit from some sort of business management course.
Ag mostly needs semi skilled labourers, no point getting a student debt for that.

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Wise words.

Headless chicken said:

whenever these threads come up I can’t help but chuckle. As I say every time I have mates who are managers in Aldi that do very well o think roughly £30-£40k a year. They are expect to commute up to an hour( in contract they can move you to any store within that and they don’t have to pay mileage for that) they work anti social hours, 50 + hours a week, must be clean shaven, must be freshly showered, can’t turn up looking like a bag of sh!t from the night before and are absolutely performance managed at every turn. One I know of got sacked for taking a sandwich out of the bin to eat.
Wife works as a med sec, band 2/3, travels up to 40 miles a day at her own expense 40 hours a week and I think starting salary is £18.5k. Again far from this eutopia where you roll out of college land a 50k job have no responsibility and don’t get a bollocking if it goes wrong.

to the OP if you have asked two years in a row then your not happy where you are is my opinion. We pay what we can afford to people and strive to provide the best working environment possible. Plenty others Will chase the money and work themselves to death in the middle of it.

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I’ve lost count of the number of people who have left this business and been back within a year or two. It’s not always greener out there. They nearly always do better after they come back.

Yes there are places that are not so great to work at. Those exist in every industry. I agree with a lot saying it’s a good start for a teenager. Have a 17 year old here who gets started on the same wage as everyone else with no experience. Gets a house and essentially no commute. It’s a good way to get started and frankly he wouldn’t have much of a chance if he stayed around his family. He was paying all the bills as nobody can keep a job.

If you are willing to move and have a drive to learn and progress then I’d say you can move up in most professions. If the original poster is unhappy and the employer is unwilling to discuss improvements it may be time to move on.

I don’t care what anyone says it’s a fact that it’s harder to be middle class in most any first world country than it was decades ago. That doesn’t mean it is impossible but you have to be a bit more clever than you used to. Wealth concentration at the top is a problem in any economy and there are no clear or easy answers to address it. It’s the Pareto principle at play and it exists in most everything.

As for university or any higher formal education there simply isn’t the return on investment in this country that there used to be. The cost of attending a 4 year university has risen dramatically faster than wages. That does not mean there is no return or that you can’t pick a career that is consistently high return. But on average tuition costs are saddling most young people with a debt that is not so easy to repay when it comes time to join the workforce.

If you want to get into a trade that’s a different game. Lots of demand and a significantly lower cost to get qualified. In school though this route is seen for the “dumb” kids and in most areas is looked down upon. I have friends from school on six figure salaries working in a trade with no student loans who were seen as ignorant hillbillies in school. They just wanted to be out doing things and not stuck inside a classroom.

Dead Rabbits said:

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have left this business and been back within a year or two. It’s not always greener out there. They nearly always do better after they come back.

Yes there are places that are not so great to work at. Those exist in every industry. I agree with a lot saying it’s a good start for a teenager. Have a 17 year old here who gets started on the same wage as everyone else with no experience. Gets a house and essentially no commute. It’s a good way to get started and frankly he wouldn’t have much of a chance if he stayed around his family. He was paying all the bills as nobody can keep a job.

If you are willing to move and have a drive to learn and progress then I’d say you can move up in most professions. If the original poster is unhappy and the employer is unwilling to discuss improvements it may be time to move on.

I don’t care what anyone says it’s a fact that it’s harder to be middle class in most any first world country than it was decades ago. That doesn’t mean it is impossible but you have to be a bit more clever than you used to. Wealth concentration at the top is a problem in any economy and there are no clear or easy answers to address it. It’s the Pareto principle at play and it exists in most everything.

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You seem to have a very different mentality to the mainstream here though.

You say you have a 17 year old but will pay them the same wages as anyone else irrespective of their age. Accommodation is provided- I don't for one second thing a 17 year old would need (or possibly want) a 4 bed centrally heated new build in the village right next to school but a mobile home isn't necessarily the sort of place I would want to have come back to after a long day at work. It's one thing to do this for a seasonal job but in the depths of winter on a dairy etc is a different proposition.

There are no end of jobs out there in agriculture for those who want one but as in any other industry if you want skilled staff you need to invest and train them by taking them on as unskilled. Fudge me I had to go tooth and nail to get any experience when I was 16-17 as I am not from a farming background.

Dead Rabbits said:

As for university or any higher formal education there simply isn’t the return on investment in this country that there used to be. The cost of attending a 4 year university has risen dramatically faster than wages. That does not mean there is no return or that you can’t pick a career that is consistently high return. But on average tuition costs are saddling most young people with a debt that is not so easy to repay when it comes time to join the workforce.

If you want to get into a trade that’s a different game. Lots of demand and a significantly lower cost to get qualified. In school though this route is seen for the “dumb” kids and in most areas is looked down upon. I have friends from school on six figure salaries working in a trade with no student loans who were seen as ignorant hillbillies in school. They just wanted to be out doing things and not stuck inside a classroom.

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A lot of tertiary education is nothing more than a sausage factory that happily props up the local property market I am afraid. It is also fast becoming a mainstay of wealthy families now.

Trouble with farming as a career is that there's no real chance of job progression.

For instance, the OP is on (IMHO) shyte wages for his skills and the hours he puts in. He could change job and get better pay for looking after cows, but whatever he does and wherever he goes, if he stays in farming, he'll still be doing the same thing in 25 years.

What 18 year old wants to start a career knowing that whatever she/he is doing at 22, they'll still be doing at 52?

betweenthelines said:

Trouble with farming as a career is that there's no real chance of job progression.

For instance, the OP is on (IMHO) shyte wages for his skills and the hours he puts in. He could change job and get better pay for looking after cows, but whatever he does and wherever he goes, if he stays in farming, he'll still be doing the same thing in 25 years.

What 18 year old wants to start a career knowing that whatever she/he is doing at 22, they'll still be doing at 52?

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I don’t think anybody starts a NVQ day release in agriculture expecting to be MD of velcourt by the time their 40. What’s wrong with doing the same thing, you go into farming because you want to farm.

Should there be a progression into share milking and onto renting your own place @Jdunn55 would know

betweenthelines said:

Trouble with farming as a career is that there's no real chance of job progression.

For instance, the OP is on (IMHO) shyte wages for his skills and the hours he puts in. He could change job and get better pay for looking after cows, but whatever he does and wherever he goes, if he stays in farming, he'll still be doing the same thing in 25 years.

What 18 year old wants to start a career knowing that whatever she/he is doing at 22, they'll still be doing at 52?

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I'm sorry, I completely disagree with this. As an 18 year old in the 1980's, I was working for £10/week + board, working long hours on a pre-Uni year, with no previous farming experience.

In my Uni holidays I took every opportunity to further my knowledge, milking cows/calf rearing/haymaking/working with sucklers/lambing/harvest & cultivations/hop-picking/preparing Christmas poultry.

For some of these jobs, I got a wage and/or board eg £40/week + board for summer milking/gfw/haymaking; £50 for the month + board for lambing (with no previous experience), or the normal adult piece rate for the poultry because I was as good as anyone else at plucking and dressing (having done it on my pre-Uni year). Harvest/cultivations etc I was on AWB rates + board (with no deduction for the latter).
On graduating, I took a year's 'improver' as assistant herdswoman on Craftsman's Rate (due to my qualifications) + free house, about £13,000 wages in 1988/89.

From there I moved to trainee farm manager on about the same as a salary but with the prospect of replacing the retiring farm manager in the next 5 years. I left due to health issues and switched via accountancy to agricultural consultancy and left ADAS after 14 years on £33,000 about 12 years ago now. I choose to work in my husband's business but have continued to do some off-farm agricultural strategic work on a consultancy or non-exec Board member basis, which has involved some international travel.

People with good practical farm skills and knowledge of the industry can move widely within it and continue up the salary scale particularly if they have academic qualifications or managerial skills as well. It doesn't necessarily mean milking cows your whole life. A family member, also with no farm upbringing, has worked his way up from student / GFW in a similar way to myself and now manages several '000 ha in East Anglia across three farms in a well paid and respected position.

Scholsey said:

I don’t think anybody starts a NVQ day release in agriculture expecting to be MD of velcourt by the time their 40. What’s wrong with doing the same thing, you go into farming because you want to farm.

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It’s pretty much how the current MD of Sentry Farms started, although he is in his 50s

This is the problem with farming poor return on what you have to do so when it comes to staff we can’t compete with other industries that can pass their costs on. We have a loading shovel driver on non farming work on £15hr only the odd Saturday 5 times a year. Starts 7.30 to 17.30 . You can’t get good lads for less money and keep them. It’s only going to get harder now bps is going.

Sorry @Princess Pooper but i think you actually prove my point, you (through circumstances) had to change direction to get advancement or else you may well have spent years tied to a cow's tail before spending the rest of your working life in the same managerial position.

The truth is that in relation to the number of entry level positions in farming there are very few supervisory or managerial positions for the simple reason that nearly every farmer "manages" their farm themselves. Most of the time they won't even stand aside for their own heirs!

WOODCHIP said:

This is the problem with farming poor return on what you have to do so when it comes to staff we can’t compete with other industries that can pass their costs on. We have a loading shovel driver on non farming work on £15hr only the odd Saturday 5 times a year. Starts 7.30 to 17.30 . You can’t get good lads for less money and keep them. It’s only going to get harder now bps is going.

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thats quite a cheap rate for a decent operator. yet some agri outfits will chuck a sub £10/hour monkey driving £150k of machine. good job people love the farming lifestyle

WOODCHIP said:

This is the problem with farming poor return on what you have to do so when it comes to staff we can’t compete with other industries that can pass their costs on. We have a loading shovel driver on non farming work on £15hr only the odd Saturday 5 times a year. Starts 7.30 to 17.30 . You can’t get good lads for less money and keep them. It’s only going to get harder now bps is going.

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The ag industry at large needs to dig it's heels in and start saying: 'the price has to go up or we won't produce it any more'. It's that simple but too many people out there are farming for the hell of it or to avoid inheritance tax. How many woodchip operations would you estimate are being run solely because the owner likes it or because it is a way of negating any inheritance tax liability?