The labor shortage continues to pose a serious challenge for the U.S. pork industry. It’s no surprise this was one of the top opportunities discussed during a recent Farm Country Update on the “Top Five Opportunities for the Global Pork industry.”
Each day this week, we’ll highlight one of those challenges that could be an opportunity for the pork industry, according to these experts.
“It’s a real struggle to find people with good stockmanship skills,” explained Caleb Shull, director of research and innovation for The Maschhoffs, during the webinar. “There’s fewer and fewer people out there with that level of understanding. And there’s fewer people who want to work in livestock production.”
Ramp Up the Work Environment
From a production standpoint, Shull said the industry needs to look for ways to work around that challenge. One thing he thinks will help is to improve the work environment with technology, providing employees with more information to better manage pigs and help them be more successful. Technology will allow employees to manage more barns and more pigs with better decision-making tools.
“We also need to continue to think about ways to provide a better environment for our people,” Shull added. “We often talk about how to provide the right environments for our pigs, but we need to start providing the right lighting, clothes, cleanliness within our facilities for our people. I think there are many opportunities to improve there.”
The ability to find ways to make the job easier and more efficient is key, said Kent Bang, vice president of swine lending at Compeer Financial. “We need to find ways to use more technology, whether that be robotics in plants, or even robotics to some degree on the farm, to take some of those tedious jobs and make them a little more attractive.”
Put People First
Jimmy Tosh, owner of Tosh Pork in Henry, Tenn., believes it’s important to think outside of the box when it comes to attracting and retaining your farm’s workforce.
“We have a great set of employees, we just need some more,” Tosh began. “A program we’ve recently started is student loan forgiveness. If an employee comes here, we will pay their student loans off over the term of the loan if they will stay with us. That’s been very well received.”
Another possibility Tosh Pork is considering is opening up a daycare center and hiring an outside management firm to operate it.
“We’re going to take a look at this idea and see if it is something that would help our employees,” he said.
Culture is Critical
“Labor is going to be a long-term issue for our industry,” Bang said. “When you have a group of farm employees who work well together as a team they all feel part of, trying to accomplish something together, you can see it in their eyes. You can tell by the way they walk, by the way they go about their job.”
He said it comes down to making employees feel like they’re part of a larger team. It’s also about creating a culture of understanding they are part of a noble profession – taking care of animals and producing food for people, Bang added.
“It takes a whole combination of people feeling good about what they’re contributing to the company and to the industry and who feel that their job is important, which it is,” Bang said.
The ability to bring in people who want to work from other countries through the TN Visa program is a great opportunity, Shull added. But it requires additional effort on the operation’s part to figure out how to build teams that can communicate well despite language and cultural barriers.
“We need to figure out ways to embrace having different languages spoken on a farm,” Shull said. “How do we provide employees from other countries with tools and support for bilingual communication on a farm? These are important questions we’re asking and thinking about, to try to mitigate some of the challenges that we face from a labor standpoint.”
Click here to listen or watch the full Farm Country Update webinar.
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