Farmer Focus: Sausage venture highlights farm staff challenges
Jack Bosworth © Tim Scrivener It has been a busy start to 2025. We all got the opportunity for a bit of time out over Christmas, which was important, and an advantage of working with a few more people than we have previously.
Our staff appraisals were purposely timed to be early in the new year.
This gave everybody a chance to come into the discussion refreshed and, more importantly, having had sufficient time to reflect.
See also: High-welfare approach attracts staff to award winner’s pig unit
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All our appraisals went well. They are as much about giving the time to listen to everyone in the team as they are to get our views across.
The past few months have been a learning curve for me, trying to manage the requirements and demands of two businesses across two locations 50 miles apart, so I was particularly interested to hear how they all thought that arrangement was working.
With this in mind, and some other changes we are making, we are actively recruiting to fill four full-time positions split equally across the two businesses – the farm and Procter’s Sausages.
The challenge of finding good people in farming has been magnified when going through this process.
For positions in Ipswich at the sausage business, we have received up to 100 applicants for each role.
Administrative support for the farming business has also been popular, with a lot of people to interview.
The position we have available for arable and contracting, however, has been really challenging.
It has been open since October and applications have only reached single figures.
I don’t know where we are going wrong, as the results from the appraisals show that when we get good people, they feel valued, well looked after, invested in and seemingly have job satisfaction.
I know this is an industry-wide problem. My concern grew after having developed recruitment experience in a different sector.
We need to do more as an industry, and I think this should include putting more levy into education and further development, as well as working conditions and hours.
We also need to get better at sharing the exciting opportunities there are in farming.
If you’re reading this with an interest in farming but have not been given an opportunity, then feel free to contact me.