COLUMBUS, Ohio – Jobs continue to outnumber job seekers in many sectors of the economy, and agriculture is not immune. As a service to its members, the Ohio Farm Bureau is providing farmers with the tools integral to finding and retaining skilled workers.

Ohio Farm Bureau, in partnership with Nationwide, developed a slate of labor resources to help farmers deal with the labor shortage and provide solutions that allow them to attract and retain employees. These labor resources are part of a larger initiative called the Ag Intelligence Service, which continues to study trends, implications, and future effects on farmers.

The farm labor resources collection focuses on three areas: the Labor Intelligence Report, A Guide to Finding, Hiring and Retaining Farm Employees, and the Farm Labor Luncheon Webinar series.

The Labor Intelligence Report outlines the challenges farmers face when searching for skilled labor in a competitive high-wage market. The report also discusses alternative staffing solutions and provides strategies farmers might use to recruit and retain employees. “The report was our first general framework and set the stage to look at the broader trends, what’s happening out there,” said Mike Bailey, Ohio Farm Bureau’s vice president of strategic partnerships. The Labor Intelligence Report is available to anyone and may be downloaded from the Ohio Farm Bureau site.

The Guide to Finding, Hiring, and Retaining Farm Employees provides templates farmers might use to attract and retain employees. The Guide, which includes extensive information and more specific resources, is only available to Ohio Farm Bureau members. “There are several downloads in that guide, everything from skills assessment worksheets, a template job description, interview questions, and even an employee development plan,” Bailey said. “We wanted that to be more specific for our members.”

The Farm Labor Luncheon Webinar is a series of 30-minute lunch-and-learn webinars, featuring experts discussing a variety of labor strategies. The series of webinars will be offered beginning in August and run monthly throughout the remainder of this calendar year. “We’re going to bring in experts to provide our members a deeper dive on some of these topics,” Bailey said. “We hope that’s another valuable tool that can help provide the resources that farmers and farm business owners need to better implement some of these practices and tools.”

The idea for the Labor Resources collection was born from the Ohio Farm Bureau’s desire to identify and stay ahead of member and industry needs. Through a series of in-depth focus group sessions during the summer of 2022, member’s challenges became clear.

Bailey identified the frustration. “It was not super surprising, but we heard this clearly, labor was a tremendous need. We heard that through all our focus groups, ‘hey, I’m having trouble finding employees and keeping employees.’” As a result, farm labor became an issue that would be addressed through programming and ongoing support.”

The framework on how to offer farmers resources as part of the Ag Intelligence Service began to take shape earlier this year. “We started in-depth working on this to pull together the resources and provide very unique opportunities for our members to discuss trends, and identify potential implications,” Bailey said. “Also, we wanted to provide real tangible opportunities and resources to help our members navigate and respond to trends to put themselves in the best position possible.”

Nationwide was a perfect fit for this endeavor after a longstanding affiliation with Ohio Farm Bureau. “They are our oldest and greatest partner and they are America’s largest ag insurer, so they have a vested interest in the success of agriculture in Ohio, and nationally,” Bailey said. “We were excited about the opportunity to collaborate with Nationwide to provide this suite of resources to our members with the intent of solving real problems on the farm.”

The program was released at the end of June and dovetails with Ohio Farm Bureau’s July/August publication. “Our Ohio just came out and the entire publication is augmented with the theme of farm labor,” Bailey said. The issue focuses on the new resources just rolled out, as well as stories about how farm bureau members and businesses are using different strategies to find, retain, and develop talent.

Farm labor was the first topic, however, additional subjects will be addressed in the future. “We do have plans over the long term, through our intelligence service, to start looking at other topics that matter to our members and the Ohio agriculture industry,” Bailey said.  “We’re excited to see the response we get back from our members as to how they’re using these tools. And we’re going to take lessons learned and apply them to our next topic as we continue to develop timely tools that matter on the farm.”