People are farmers' biggest concern

This article originally appeared on Dairy News

A recent survey undertaken by Dairy Women's Network (DWN) has revealed that people is dairy farmers' biggest concern. The results were quite surprising and provided a clearer picture about what is important to dairy farmers.

“When farmers were asked about the difficulties they faced on farm, issues like financial, weather or milk price, none of those things made the top deck of challenges,” de Villiers told Dairy News.

“The first group of challenges were people: having quality staff, onfarm communication, managing staff, time to work on their business and not in their business and management.

“People were very much the biggest challenges: finding the right staff, managing staff, keeping staff and ensuring they are managed in a professional way.”

After people, the next group of concerns was public perception and portrayal. “As a group they feel very much in the limelight right now. And it is not a pleasant place to be,” de Villiers says.

The next group of concerns was about more compliance and the administration and paperwork that entails.

“Those were the challenges. Then when we asked them why they are farming they said animals and being outside were number-one.

You can read the full article here.