What does a farm manager do?
You run a business whose main supplier is the weather, and you make decisions in spring that you do not find out about until autumn.
Also called: farmer, farm business manager, herd manager.
A day looks like
- 1You walk stock or crop first thing, every day, because a problem found on foot is cheap and a problem found from the road is not.
- 2You check the forecast more seriously than anyone else in the country.
- 3You decide to do something a week earlier than it needs doing, because the window may close.
- 4Paperwork in the evening — movements, medicines, subsidies, all of it recorded or it did not happen.
Hardest part
You cannot control the one input that decides the year. You do everything right and a wet August takes it, and you have to be the sort of person who can carry that and plan the next one anyway.
Best part
Harvest, when a year of decisions comes back as a number and you find out you were right.
How you actually become a farm manager
- At schoolGrowing up on a farm, or a farming college and several years of working for somebody else.
- TrainingAgricultural college or apprenticeship; sprayer, telehandler and livestock tickets on top.
- How longSeveral years as a stockperson or tractor driver before running a unit.
- Your first jobFarm worker or stockperson — learning the ground before you decide anything about it.
Frequently asked questions
- Do farmers still need to know science?
- More than ever. Soil chemistry, animal nutrition, veterinary medicine, plant pathology and increasingly data from yield maps and sensors are all part of running a modern farm profitably.
- Will robots take over farming?
- Machines already do much of the repetitive fieldwork, and robotic milking is common. What has not been automated is judgement in unstructured conditions — spotting a sick animal, deciding when ground is fit to travel, reading a crop.
- Why is the paperwork such a big deal?
- Because traceability is what allows a disease outbreak to be contained and food to be tracked back to a field. An unrecorded animal movement or medicine can put a whole herd, and a farm's right to sell, at risk.
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