The drone of a distant forager. The bang of enormous trailers on a stone road. The smell of freshly cut grass and the taste of a freshly opened can of caffeine-laden beverage.
These are the sights, sounds and smells that define silage season, considered by some to be the peak of human existence.
In just a few short weeks it will be upon us again, with farmers and contractors no doubt already sharpening blades, ordering spares and fainting at the price of diesel.
Perhaps the most difficult piece of the puzzle for many bosses will be getting sufficient bums on seats to quickly cover the many hectares ahead.
Despite what I said about the die-hards, tales abound among contractors of all types of staff shortages and it being an employee’s marketplace.
See also: FW Opinion: EU’s bailout set to undercut UK food production
Staffing shortfall
Business owners are having to put together ever more competitive packages of wages and perks to secure new staff as they are able to play various prospective employers off against each other.
Competition for good people is rife in our sector and many others, with a big upswing in the number of adverts placed in the Farmers Weekly jobs section in the past 12 months.
By the middle of last year there were an estimated half-a-million job vacancies in the food and farming sector, the Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee noted in a report this week.
This is exerting increasing pressure on the remaining employees, it said, as they are expected to put in more hours to make up the staffing shortfall.
While nearly everyone in farming will be accustomed to digging in and putting in extra shifts to get through seasonal peaks in workload, such as silaging, doing this in the long term takes a toll on mental health and other components of a happy life.
Safety
It also inevitably increases the risk of accidents.
When Farmers Weekly launched the Dying to Feed You campaign at the end of October last year, we revealed that 60% of farmers admitted to sometimes taking unnecessary risks – even though they knew doing so was wrong.
And one in five admitted to having had a workplace accident within the past 12 months, with 80% of those requiring medical attention.
In the year to 31 March 2021, 41 people were killed in agriculture, including 13 after being struck by a moving vehicle and a further six after coming into contact with machinery.
So here is my plea to employers and the self-employed ahead of the busy season: Please consider if there is anything more you can do to keep yourself, staff and the public safe this year.
And here is my plea to farm staff: If you are changing job soon, make attitude to safety one of the attributes you judge your next potential employer on.
You will be able to judge it not just by whether they expect you to treat regular 20-hour days as the norm, but also whether they regard routine safety checks of equipment as an essential or a tiresome extra that can be dispatched with on busy days.
It has never been easier to enforce daily machinery checks and other aspects of compliance, such as with MeritAgCheck’s farm safety app, but making it meaningful still relies on an attitude that must be adopted by everyone.
So ask for extra cash this season, by all means. But consider this too – in which workplace will you be most likely to leave in one piece at the end of each day to spend your cash?
