Farmers work hard and in challenging conditions. Farming is demanding physically, mentally and emotionally. It requires resilient people, but that resilience can take its toll. Concern over farmers’ mental health has increased in the last few years.

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.

“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.

“The process of ensuring the new employee has a great start, becomes engaged and stays is called onboarding.” Onboarding is more than just the orientation and training that have traditionally been our focus for new employees.

Yes, employees do need training, accountability and incentives to stay on track. However, I generally find the core of most employee problems to be a lack of clear, intentional leadership.

Are you evaluating the prospect of adopting robotic milking on a large scale? Are you curious what the team for this facility will look like?