“Labor Shortage!” scream the headlines in the national newspapers, the talking heads on the news shows, and the social media newsfeeds. It seems that the rest of the economy is just catching up to the labor challenge that agriculture has faced for the last 10 years.

Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development is conducting a 2020 Farm Employee Compensation Benchmark survey of all agricultural commodities to help farmers evaluate and offer competitive compensation packages to maintain high-quality employee teams. Participants will receive aggregate and anonymous reports customized by farm type (dairy, fruit, vegetable, greenhouse, etc.) and be invited to a webinar discussion of the findings.

Today’s consumer is increasingly aware and concerned about how the workers who produce the products they buy are treated. They want to know that farm owners and managers treat employees in a socially responsible way.

The U.S. is confronting an outbreak of a novel coronavirus that causes serious respiratory disease and may be deadly for older people and those with weakened immune systems. The World Health Organization is now calling the outbreak a global pandemic because it is affecting countries all over the world.

When I was a youngster, I had a hot temper and was involved in more than my share of fights. There’s a story in my family about the time an older, bigger kid took a donut from me.

We’ve been watching new technologies, especially digital ones, arrive – but things are about to get interesting. Robots are the obvious technology with the potential to disrupt the dairy industry as we know it, but there are many other technologies ready to adopt right now you probably never noticed.

“Hello…er…what was your name again? Yeah, Pete, that’s right. We’re sure glad to have you starting today, two guys left last week and I did most of the milking over the weekend. Put your stuff down over there, here’s a pair of gloves, let’s get in the parlor.