Flying Tacos & Farm Hands

Confessions of a Reformed Hothead

Sep 09, 2023

We’d love to do more on the farm, but we can’t find any help.

We stopped looking altogether. We don’t even advertise for help anymore.

Nobody wants to work these days. Reeeeee!

a sign that says we are hiring and apply today — Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Since the 2020 bat virus uprooted our lives and changed how we think about work, I haven’t heard a complaint more often than “Where did all the workers go?”

Whether it’s farm help, truck drivers, or cake makers, it doesn't matter. Companies are struggling to attract and retain quality employees.

Robotic Replacements

From 1972 to 2012, the percentage of people employed in agriculture dropped from 4.5% to around 1.5%. It got so low in 2012 that the Feds got fed up with tracking it and scrapped the practice.

Are the boomers right when they say our younger generations are a bunch of spoiled, lazy bums? Or is there something else going on?

Many companies have given up and stopped advertising for help. Instead, they have taken other measures, dipping into talent pools from overseas via a foreign exchange worker program.

Chart of H-2A Temporary Work Visas in Agriculture 2005-2022 — Overseas hiring has taken off in the last decade. Source: USDA

Other companies are turning to robots and automation, something that’s been prevalent on farms for a hundred years.

New agriculture innovations have clipped most bodies from the workforce, from the invention of the plow to the threshing harvester to cabs to autosteers to driverless tractors.

Companies like American Crystal Sugar Company experience the same problem every year. They are looking to combat the worker shortage with automation as well. Starting this year, the sugar company will experiment with unmanned pilers at a few trial stations around the Red River Valley.

Videos of unmanned John Deere and Case IH tractors continually surface on social media. It may seem like we’re living in a dystopian future, but these realities are closer than most expect.

So where did all the workers go?

It's the same place they’ve always gone to. Away from farming. Elsewhere. Tyler’s not home right now. Please leave a message after the beep.

Years ago, while sitting around the fire with family and friends, somebody chimed in about something she realized in her early forties.

“Yep, you go to work, come home, watch TV, and then go to bed. One day, you’ll realize that’s all there is, Adam. The goal is not to get too depressed about having to do it all again tomorrow.”

Ummm, thanks. But no thanks. No matter how shitty life seems, we always have a choice to change. I refuse to follow her depressing logic.

Sadly, I think far too many agree with her. The good news is, while my friend’s generation believed that there is nothing you can do to break up the monotony of life, millennials, and younger generations are saying to hell with that noise.

While previous generations sucked it up and did what they felt was right, young folks have a different philosophy. They aren’t going to spend their time in a job that makes them miserable.

Finally Fed Up

Younger generations have come to understand something that older generations didn't: there's nothing honorable about working in a job you despise for an employer who pays you just enough to survive and treats you like a disposable asset.

People want to matter. It’s human nature. They understand that time is our most valuable (and finite) resource. Why waste it on an employer who doesn’t give a damn about them? The difference between young generations and those before is that today’s youth isn’t too chicken-shit to stand up to terrible treatment.

When faced with the decision of living a less-than-ideal life on the government dole or a piss-poor life of being employed but barely scraping by, people will often choose the welfare lines.

I don’t blame them. I, too, decided not to work for unappreciative a-holes years ago. Life’s too short to be miserable while filling somebody else’s pockets, primarily when they treat you like Red River clay.

It was the best decision I ever made.

It’s not the 1950s anymore. We’re so far removed from The Great Depression that most people who were just “happy to have a job” are dead and gone. Nowadays, there’s a crappy job on any corner for those who want it.

The days of people sucking it up and doing the supposed “noble” thing are behind us. The proof is in the data. The workers aren’t coming back until some things change.

It reminds me of a quote from the 1999 flick Fight Club.

“Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us.”
―Chuck Palahniuk,Fight Club

If you’re having difficulty finding and keeping help on your farm or business, it’s best to take an honest assessment of how you run things.

Chill Out, Broseph

Are you a hothead who flips out any time things go wrong? If so, you might want to take an anger management class and tame that down.

I used to be one of these in my younger days, and I can tell you it makes people very uncomfortable when you’re whipping wrenches across the shop because of a stuck and stripped-out bolt.

Communication is Key

Do you give your workers a hard time when they don’t do something the same way you would? It’s easy to forget that not everybody grew up on a farm, and hardly anybody received the same training as you.

If you would like things done a certain way, make sure to communicate that to your employees.

Remember, nobody can read your mind.

Step Up the Pay

I said pay isn’t everything, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.

You likely write the checks on your farm. It’s no secret that the cost of everything has gone completely bonkers. Fertilizer, seed, fuel, land rent, machinery, you name it. Inflation is kicking our asses.

We have to remember that inflation is not only ravaging our checkbooks. Employees are feeling it, too.

Just because their costs don’t run in the hundreds of thousands or millions like on a farm doesn’t mean they don’t have costs like the rest of us.

Recognize that wages have flatlined since sometime in the 1970s. It’s been long since the working man and woman in America has caught a break. If you want to keep quality help around, get creative with your pay and the incentives you offer.

Give them a financial reason to keep returning to mow your grass or drive your beet truck.

Writing bigger checks will sting, but it won’t take long to reap the rewards of attracting better talent.

Though challenging, finding and nailing down better help is not rocket science. It just takes honesty with yourself mixed with a bit of creativity.

Having worked on more farms than Samuel L. Jackson has done TV commercials, I can tell you...look at your operation. Be aware of how you’re treating people. If you’re honest with yourself, there’s usually something you can change to attract a hand.

By following the above advice, you will set yourself apart from the other saps who can’t seem to find a helping hand.

Before long, people will beat down your doors, begging you for a job.

Big Iron XLIII

It's still the meanest tractor Deere ever made. Don’t @ me—photo by Author.

Next week, West Fargo will host the annual Big Iron Farm Show for the 43rd consecutive year.

Since I was a kid and spouted out my first word (tractee) on my first birthday, Big Iron has always been like Mecca to my old man and me. He even pulled me out of school a time or two, so I could get a look at the new equipment offerings of the day.

Big Iron offers something for everyone, whether you're into beer gardens, bale handlers, or baked beans. It combines the Super Bowl, the World Toe Wrestling Championships, and the East St. Louis Roller Derby.

If you’ve never been and have a day to spare, I can’t encourage you enough to make the trek to Fargo next week.

You won’t be disappointed.

The Great Taco Toss of 2012

taco with vegetables — Photo by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

Speaking of Big Iron, it’s time for a little story.

I mentioned earlier my old hotheaded ways of my younger days, so I best give a little example and embarrass myself before I let you go this week.

2010 was one of those years where we got a mid-September two-inch blast of rain to finish the beans and bulk up the beets, just in time to give us a day off and hit the 32nd annual farm show in Fargotown.

That fall, a five-year experiment with a girl had recently ended, and I was hitting the bottle pretty hard to avoid feeling the pain that comes with a breakup.

We recently picked up some new ditching software from John Deere and an RTK system to drain the waters in our fields with expert precision. For months, I had been lobbying the boss to cough over twenty grand for this equipment.

Having worked for him for nearly a decade, the bossman and I had a strange relationship. When he and I drank a few wobbly pops together, we tended to bicker like a married pair in their seventh season of marital misery.

Honestly, I wasted a lot of time after the breakup and could’ve moved much more dirt than I had been. Bossman wasn’t pleased and ragged on me most of the day we spent at the farm show.

Having my buttons pressed doesn’t usually bother me a ton, but after seven hours of provocation, I’d had enough.

In his King Ranch with a sober driver on our way home, it was after one a.m., and I clutched a precious taco when I warned him for the last time.

“Bossman, I’m telling you one more time, that’s enough,” I barked while hot-saucing my softshell.

When he didn’t receive the message, I snapped.

I lost it.

Riding shotgun with a fully loaded Spanish Greaser, I turned around, cocked, and hurled a taco fastball into the backseat.

Like Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson in his younger days, my aim was rather wild. Time slowed to a creep as the taco slider veered off-course.

Lettuce, cheese, and meat inched through the air as I watched the wild pitch go sideways, missing bossman altogether but directly plunking his young nephew square in the jaw.

Splat.

The last forty minutes of that drive were one of the most awkward experiences of my life. It was right up there when I accidentally got into a car that I thought was an Uber but turned out to be a crackhead posing as an Uber driver in downtown Minneapolis a few years ago.

We can get into that story another time.

Until next time, have a great week. I hope to see you walking the aisles of Big Iron.