Compliance and building a beneficial team culture are two of the greatest labor challenges observed by Michelle Kohls from Kohls Dairy Farm, Helen Korzec with GPS Nutrition and Evan Platte with Merck Animal Health.

Held Nov. 29-30, this year’s event focused on the past 20 years of dairy. The first day included two farm tours and a welcome dinner, while the second day featured formal presentations on topics ranging from precision feeding and on-farm technology to the evolving carbon credit and dairy markets.

While training takes many forms and varies greatly from one dairy to the next, two common goals among producers are to increase employee engagement and to grow employee skill sets.

As a nation that depends on immigrants and foreign labor to work in agriculture, the diversity of this population and their languages bring new challenges to the dairy industry.

An employee who has been with our team for nearly five years just turned in his resignation. He was the kind of employee that anyone would want. He does an excellent job in his role, works well with the rest of the team and doesn’t take a lot of oversight.

Feeding cows is one of the most important jobs on the farm. First, feed is the largest expense on dairy farms. Feeders handle large quantities of pricey ingredients every day, so any mistakes they make can be costly.

One of the biggest differences between farmers who struggle to be progressive and make changes and those who possess the agility to tackle change boils down to structure and clarity.

In this episode of the Progressive Dairy Podcast, host Kimmi Devaney visits with Kansas dairy producer Lee Holtmeier from Linn Willow Creek Dairy about their employee culture, what they do to mentor and empower employees, and how they keep employee turnover low. 

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” Since this quote is from Henry Ford, it is approximately a century old. If this was true for his assembly line workers, it certainly is even more true today.