EuroDairy – Working conditions of dairy farmers

Agriculture in general and dairy farming in particular are very demanding sectors in terms of work. The annual workload, the day-to-day activities and the physical aspect of the work all need to be considered. The size of dairy cattle is increasing steadily all around Europe, activities are diversifying, and administrative tasks are becoming more numerous and complex. However, workforce resources are not increasing as fast and are even decreasing in several countries.

As a result, dairy farmers are confronted with several challenges regarding their work organisation. On family farms, there is often less assistance from volunteers and wives/husbands work more often outside the farm.

At the same time, farmers aspire to have more free time and have a better work–life balance to be in harmony with their family and the society.

New technologies are developed to answer at least part of these challenges, but these also have limitations, like associated costs, not to mention the fact that the adoption of such new technologies often requires changes in a farmer’s mindset and habits.

To attract new candidates and, more importantly, make sure that they want to remain active for several years or even decades in dairy farming, it is essential to describe and build models of sustainable dairy farms with a promising future, i.e. from an environmental, economic and social point of view.

• An organisation structuring activities over a period of time
• A productivity factor essential for competitiveness
• An activity that builds the professional and personal identity

We usually identify three main frames connected to issues of work and/or labour in farming.

In the organisational frame, work is seen as a system of interactions between the workforce, livestock and crop management, equipment and buildings, and available financial resources. This system needs to be managed and organised.

In the economic frame, labour is considered as a production factor to optimise.

Finally, in the identity frame, the farmer receives a central position, and work is considered as an activity that builds the professional and personal identity of farmers.

These three ways of looking at work makes it clear that multidisciplinarity, where issues like economics, ergonomics, sociology or livestock farming systems engineering are all considered, is necessary to approach the labour-related challenges that farmers are facing.

To focus on your working conditions, you need to identify and deal with your professional and personal goals, and find a sustainable balance for your farm.

Based on this, you can identify and test possible options/solutions. In this way, you will build an organisation in line with your goals and expectations, often a source of compromise but essential for finding a sustainable balance.

• Get farmers to start thinking about the issue – raise awareness with a quiz, short surveys, meetings, etc.
• Analyse the system with the farmers, compare to benchmarks – individual/collective diagnostics
• Study solutions connected to their situation, use some benchmarks – project study/case study
• Act: trial and implement solutions – action plan

Simplify your practices

• 13 milkings per week (only 1 on Sunday)
• One milking per day (part or all the year)
• Block calving, closing milking parlour
• Forage purchase
• Simplify grazing/stop maize silage
• Reduce the daily feed ration delivery (cows/heifers/calves)
• Milk for calves: Yogurt milk, six deliveries per week
• Simplified cultivation techniques

Delegate or change workforce composition

• Shared employee
• Replacement association (employees)
• Mutual aid/job exchange bank
• Heifers reared away
• Farms merging
• Delegate seasonal activities (crops, administrative tasks, etc.)
• Equipment cooperative with driver, self-propelled mixer wagons with driver

Equipment or building investment

• Milking parlour/Milking robot
• Automatic feed station 
• Total Mix ration wagon feeder
• Building organisation
• High-water-pressure cleaning systems
• Precision livestock farming: sensors, automata, data analys, etc.
• Computer and hardware

Solutions are in most cases compromises and are selected in function of farm objectives, skills required, level of flexibility and reversibility, cost/time ratio, etc.

From labour issues discussed with farmers to socially sustainable livestock farms in your region

If you want to build a socially sustainable system, you need to evaluate the possible solutions for your farm and investigate the impact on six dimensions:

1. Concept of the farming profession
2. Territorial integration and services
3. Health (physical and mental)
4. Quality of life
5. Socialisation and sharing
6. Work time/workload organisation (physical and mental) 

Gaec Noury has created, with four farms in their neighbourhood, a group of employers to reduce the costs associated with hired employees.

Individually, working with hired employees, even part-time, would be impossible. However, by sharing the time and skills of their two employees with other farms, this is feasible and contributes to the overall sustainability of all farms in the alliance.

It does require careful organisation and planning, and a pro-active attitude, but professionally, they can combine their management strengths and the larger, easily and quickly available, workforce, thus increasing flexibility.

From a personal point of view, they have the pride of reinforcing the employment on their territory and strengthening the relationship with their neighbourhood and community.

This project has received funding from the European Union`s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 696364.