Social organisation of large herd dairy farms in New Zealand

Abstract

This research reports the results of interviewing 29 large herd dairy farmers (over 500 cows) in the North and South Islands of New Zealand and describes their social organisation of production. On average the farmers were 39 years old, their farms involved 6.0 full-time workers and milked 895 cows. In some cases the farms comprised a number of separate units so that there was an average of 3.7 full-time employees per case or 2.5 full-time employees per farm unit. Most employees (55 per cent) intended to own their own farm and were likely to succeed but 16 per cent planned a career as manager or milker. There were five distinctive types of large herds farms. Group 1 farmers were in a variety of pre-farm ownership situations and aspired to farm ownership with a smaller herd with few employees. Group 2 farmers had increased in size to get out of the milking shed and typically did not do the milking. Group 3 farmers were committed to the farm and involved in milking. Group 4 farmers had a home farm plus others and did little milking. Finally, Group 5 farmers had one very large farm and typically did not do any milking. As scale increases it is harder for each farm owner to have hands-on management of milking cows. The five groups described in this research show a sequence of increased scale (number of full-time workers, cows milked, and effective area) associated with increasing numbers of people not working full time. The challenge of managing increasing scale is to maintain contact with milking and production. There are four main ways of doing this. Group 3 farmers do it themselves (perhaps not with every milking but at least once per day) , Group 2 farmers use contract milkers, Group 4 farmers use sharemilkers or managers and Group 5 farmers use a tightly managed hierarchy with supervisors and herd managers. Group 3 and Group 4 farmers achieve best production per hectare. It is likely that they have achieved this because responsibility for production rests with those involved in milking. Work organisation on large herds dairy farms is characterised by routine work and extraordinary work coordinated by either close supervision or by delegation. Work typically is organised verbally, and farmers prefer to recruit competent employees who show initiative and respond to education. Staff relations are particularly important on large herds farms and some farmers have developed empathetic and sophisticated staff management practices. Regular time off from milking is the norm and on a few farms there are innovative work and milking schedules. Large herds farmers emphasise planning, organisation and attention to detail as some of the important key success factors in large herds farming. Compared to family farms, large herds dairy farms have more employees and they play an important role in success of the farm. Large herds farmers are forced to be efficient in their use of time and they believe they are well able to resist financial setbacks. Finally, the character of large herds dairy farming tends to preclude family involvement making it distinctive from family farming. The report concludes by arguing that the advent of large herds farming appears not to be precluding access to farm ownership and that the character of large herds farming supports meritocratic access to land. Further research is needed before the views and conditions of workers are fully known but the results here suggest that their conditions are satisfactory.