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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Interns - Apprentices - Employees?
  • Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 09:50:44 -0500


On Mar 1, 2010, at 8:49 AM, TxBeeFarmer wrote:

I've been struggling with the employment classification of the people helping me around the farm.  These people usually only work for one growing season and have absolutely NO skills relating to the farm.  I "teach" them how to do virtually everything, as well as the "why" behind it all.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching, but I'm having a hard time thinking of these people as "employees".
 
I've heard of some farmers using "Interns" and "Apprentices".  Can someone tell me what the legal differences are between these and an "Employee"?  I've also heard of paying them with stipends.  Is that somehow different than paying as an employee?  Should I have Interns or Apprentices instead of Employees for my situation?  If so, how is this done and where can I learn about it?
 
Thanks for the help.
 
TxBeeFarmer (Mark)
The Coldiron Farm
West Texas Zone 7b

Legal situation may vary from state to state, and may be unclear and iffy. Consult with your state regulations.

The idea of internship programs is to train and encourage the next generation of farmers. Interns/apprentices are people who either want to learn how to farm so they can become farmers, or want to learn enough about farming to find out whether they might want to become farmers. People who are primarily just interested in getting paid for their time don't make good interns, and will generally just get mad if expected to work for stipend instead of standard by-hour rates: the information about farming itself is worth something to interns, but it isn't worth anything to people who just want a job, so it doesn't make up for possibly reduced income (many stipends do come out to minimum wage, sometimes even higher; and many interns are also housed and fed by the farmer; situations vary drastically from farm to farm).

Interns also expect to be taught about the whole farm operation, not just the portions they need to do the jobs you have them on; and this can be quite time consuming for the farmer. (Very few places have more than two or three interns at a time; larger places may have a few interns and also some regular hired help.) When you say you teach your employees how to do virtually everything, do you mean that you also teach them how to do work you intend to do yourself, or that you only have them do (instead of doing it yourself) because it's part of the deal that they learn how to do it? For example: if you hired people because you need help transplanting, harvesting, and weeding, but it's more efficient for you to run the tractor equipment yourself and you don't actually need to have the workers do so: do you nevertheless take your time and theirs to explain to all of them the basic equipment maintenance you're doing, why you chose the particular equipment you're using, and after they've been there a few weeks teach them to drive tractor and let them take a turn at tractor work? Do you teach them (for example, this is a partial list) about crop rotation, about maintaining fertility, about the many factors that go into selecting crop mix and particular varieties, about various possible marketing techniques, about pricing?

If you actually are interested in teaching people how to farm, NOFA-NY puts out a handbook for farmers on internships; some of the legal stuff is specific to New York State, but it would give you some good general basic information to start off from.

http://nofany.org/publications.html    (down at the bottom of the page)

If you're just trying to figure out how to better manage a standard work crew, while I'm no expert, the first thing I would look at is to try to figure out why almost nobody works for more than one growing season. Maybe there's something you can do to get the same people to come back year after year; that would drastically reduce your training time.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale






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