Labor Management on Dairy Farms: The Interface Between the Employer and the Employee

摘要

Dairy farming is a multi-faceted enterprise wherein producers confront a myriad of challenges as they seek to maintain sustainability and grow in operations and profitability. Among the top challenges facing dairy producers is the difficulty of hiringand retaining qualified employees (Timms et al., 2012). An additional challenge is the increasing cost of labor - a dairy farm's second greatest expense (behind feed expense) - which continues to rise (Laughton, 2014). Overall, dairy farm profitabilityis impacted by the close relationship between labor productivity and cow productivity; in other words, those operations that increase labor productivity see increased profits (Laughton. 2014).