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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: market-farming Apprentices Versus Hired Help
  • Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 08:09:02 -0400


Apprentices are not the same as hired help. Some places charge $400 per week for apprenticeships in organic growing and herbalism, and this fee does not include room and board. I also know of places that pay a tiny stipend, provide substandard housing, and allow apprentices to glean from the gardens -- and work them like slaves, sometimes 100 hours per week.

Anything between consulting people is okay by me, whether or not I choose to duplicate it.

When I work as a consultant, my skills are well compensated. I use that as my base rate for instruction since it's documented on my time sheet that somebody says that's what I'm worth. Apprentices mostly do work for which I could hire somebody at minimum wage. I use that as my base rate for the apprentice's time and labor swap for education. If I figured the exchange rate on a one-on-one basis, it would be eight hours of their time for every one of mine.

Housing here at the farm is a program separate from the apprenticeship program. Apprentices have the additional option of camping here for the term of their apprenticeship, with storm sanctuary in the house.

Part of the problem in hiring help is that most of the "help" I've found applying for minimum wage jobs aren't worth that much money. That is, their work isn't worth minimum wage. They themselves are of course as valuable as the rest of us.

I've just learned that a local labor development agency has an apprenticeship program that I might be able to take advantage of. They'll cover half of an apprentice's pay for 20 weeks if I commit to hiring that person. We're working it out now that my need for help is basically just 20 weeks per year -- but I could take a person on for one season with a guaranteed job for them the next season, when they will have had some training and they'll be worth a paycheck. Similar agencies are usually called something like "business development" or "labor development". It might be a worthwhile place to look for help.

I'm also dealing with volunteers, because all of our surplus is pledged to the local food bank and every week pulled results in more donations. This is a place where kids do very well, especially those in that strange year before they can get working papers for a paid job. Here they learn skills for life, perform a valuable community service (with formal official acknowledgement from us and from the food bank), and gain references to use when they look for a real job. Many of our most dependable and meticulous volunteer workers have been twelve and thirteen years old, so I can't agree with the blanket statement that kids don't make good workers. I do make it a special point to tailor jobs to their abilities and attention span.

My farm is different from many others in that I have never made a profit from it and have never intended to do so. I don't make a salary from my efforts here, and while I don't it's fair enough that others don't either. Anybody who wants to do so is welcome to work with me to set up any particular piece of the operation as a worker-owned co-op business. This whole system requires some thinking outside of the box.

Dori Green
Ash Grove Community Farm & Center for Sustainable Living
Corning, NY

http://www.ic.org/agrove

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