Primary Roles
Almost all farms will have these roles.
Role | Exists for … | Description | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|
FarmerFarm Owner AKA Farm Farmer, Owner | All farms | The owner of the farm. In some cases, they are the sole owner/operator of the farm business. In others, they work with their spouse or other partner, possibly just occasionally bringing in temporary workers / WWOOFERS. Other farm owners are more removed from the day-to-day management, leaving that up to a Supervisor to tend to, while they are mainly involved with the planning stages, tracking price lists, financials, overall farm issues, payroll, weather monitoring etc. However, that said, most Farmers are pretty involved with monitoring daily farm activity.Supervisor | Full access. |
Farm Manager AKA Foreman, Farm ManagerSupervisor | More mature, larger farms | Responsible for enacting the day-to-day activities in order to keep on track with the farmers overall cropping plan for the year. Assigns tasks to workers and monitors their work as well as overall farm activity and fertility. Reports back to the farmer. This position is often year round. Depending on the size of the farm, there could be multiple supervisors - e.g. Greenhouse supervisor, Berry supervisor, etc. | Access to almost everything except financials. |
Worker AKA Farm Labourer, Farmhand | Almost all farms | Workers come in many permutations. Some work standard 8 - 5 type schedules for a season while others are hourly. Some workers are “floaters” that are assigned tasks for a specified time period, e.g. to help this person or that person while others are brought on for a specific activity, e.g. to harvest, to work in the greenhouse, to run or maintain machinery, etc. | Read on most things. Write on some items. |
Secondary Roles:
Not all farms will have this role OR an individual may have several of these roles, OR they may take on one of these roles in addition to their primary role.
Role | Exists for … | Description | Rights |
|---|---|---|---|
Sales Representative AKA Marketing Rep | Depends on preference of the owner | Responsible for activities relating to the sale of produce including marketing / invoicing of pre-sales, CSA box programs. Also may be responsible for bringing food to weekly markets, setting up display table-day sales. May be responsible for promoting and arranging sales with restaurants, wholesalers, and grocery stores. | |
Quality Control | May be the same person as sales. Determines 'pick sheets' (instructions to workers as to what crops to harvest in what amounts as needed for the day) then monitors the harvest to ensure it meets quality standards before delivery. More common on farms that raise livestock. | ||
Organic Manager | Role overlaps with Farm Manager or Sales. | Some operations have one person who is responsible for all things related to organic certification. These activities include certification renewal, maintaining compliance documentation, communication with their certifying body, and ensuring inputs are approved and used according to regulations. |
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Farm Manager walks around and discusses with Workers the weekly plan. Uses The Farm Manager uses verbal cues like, “Don’t forget tomorrow we have to do x.” Specific days are scheduled The Farm Manager schedules specific days in advance as harvest days for the season. The Farm Manager schedules special wholesale orders and they reoccur weekly. The Farm Manager uses an app called “To Do List” as a holding space communication tool for ad hoc jobs such as a fence repair, irrigation needing repair, etc. Everyone on the farm has access to the app, so the Farm Manager can assign jobs to employees and the Workers can report when they complete tasks in near real-time. Workers are long-term and knowledgeable. Workers are paid 8 hours per day, 5 days a week.
Use Case 2
This is a fairly large operation (0.5 million in sales annually). The Farmer often resorts to paper journal to track tasks and whether they are completed. They do The Farmer does this because it is simple and doesn’t require training Workers. They The Farmer verbally confirm things such as spacing depth, width, etc. the day of planting with Workers. Workers sign in and out on a daily basis for payroll. Each morning, there is a group meeting between the Farmer, Farm Manager, and Workers to assign the days tasks. The farmer sets Farmer and Sales Rep set days for harvest , market, and wholesale for wholesale and restaurants during the planning part of the season (e.g. November). Market days are less regimented and are usually dictated by how much can be brought to market that day. Each Monday the Farmer creates target harvest for the week. Workers then record actual harvests as they go.
Use Case 3
Role_X For this use case, Workers and Farm Managers don’t have a whole lot of knowledge. There is churn from season to season. Farmer or Farm Manager uses paper or large whiteboard in worker area that everyone can contributes contribute to. Everyone will jot down notes, checks tasks as completed, and list new tasks as needed. Oftentimes, info is lost week-to-week when the whiteboard is erased. Role_X Farm or Farm Manager wants all employees Workers to have a physical copy of the crop plan so everyone is on the same page. If the plan changes, the Role_X Farmer or Farm Manager will print a new plan and post it in the common area. Role_X The Farmer or Farm Manager performs a weekly walk around to discuss the to do list for that week. They’ll Farmer, Farm Manager, and Workers will use the crop maps and annotate as they talk. The visual plan. ID field name and Bed #, don't discuss. For example, the Farmer might say:
“Carrots go into Jupiter bed, row 3. They should be spaced at x, y, and z.”
These specifications don’t change much year to year - so the Role_X and Role_Y Farmer and Farm Manager tend to know what they are discussing. Harvest days are set which allows Workers to self-assign weekly tasks depending on who feels like doing what. From the perspective of Role_XFarmer, as long as the tuesday Tuesday list gets accomplished she doesn't care who does it. thursday which task. On Thursday, the Farmer will review the list of tasks to see what did not get hadn’t yet been accomplished and set priorities for Friday work. set Certain tasks such as flame weeding are always scheduled for 5 - 8 days after seeding a crop.
The Farmer prints out desired harvest 'pick list' weekly and gives physical copy to workers. precise, pre-ordered list as sells to Workers. Harvests for CSA Box program and restaurants . prints out seeding instructions depth/spacing or annotate plan mapsare very precise. Markets are more of a “whatever is left over” arrangement - though there are some exceptions if something sells really well at market. Sometimes, Farmers will coordinate with each other on what they bring to market as well.