To find out who does each job on your farm, and which jobs nobody does, write the jobs down on a sheet of paper in four columns. The columns are the job, who does it today, since when, and who else could do it, meaning anyone who has done it before and could step in. Put one job on each line: tractor driver, milker, foreman. Mark every job with no name beside it. Then circle any name that appears on two or more jobs the farm can’t do without, such as milking or feeding the stock. That sheet is your map of who does what, and it takes an afternoon.
If you already have written job descriptions, one page per job with what that job is responsible for, copy the job names from them. If you don’t, write the jobs down the way your people name them: the map needs only the names. Include your own job, your family’s jobs, and any job the farm needs that nobody holds today.
On many farms, one person ends up as the milker, the stockman and the only one who can fix the pumps, and none of it is written down. The morning that person calls in sick or quits, you find out how many jobs hung on them. Meanwhile another job the farm needs, being in charge of the spray records, may have nobody in it, and you find that out only when a record is missing. The person who holds the most jobs is the hardest to replace, and the problem stays out of sight for as long as they keep turning up.
Why does nobody notice when one person holds several jobs?
Nobody notices because nothing breaks while that person is at work. Every job that depends on them still gets done, so a farm that would stop without them looks like it runs smoothly. Most owners keep who does what in their heads. For day-to-day farm management that is usually enough, right up to the morning that one person doesn’t turn up.
It is even easier to miss when that person is you or someone in your family. The USDA Economic Research Service, the US government’s farm economics agency, counts self-employed farm operators and their family members as part of the farm workforce, alongside hired workers. So you and your family go on the map too. If only you do the books, or only your son runs the combine harvester at harvest, those jobs depend on one person just as much as the milking does.
Why write down the date each person started?
From the start date you can see how long each person has held a job. Read it together with the “who else could do it” column. If the date is old and that column is empty, one person has done the job alone for years, and much of what they know may never have been written down.
“Tom runs the dairy” is a fact about today. “Tom has run the dairy alone since 2019, and none of it is written down” means years of know-how may sit in one head. A job someone took on last month and a job one person has done alone for ten years carry different risks, and on the map you tell them apart by the date.
Why is the person who holds several jobs the hardest to replace?
You can hire someone for the job, but you cannot hire what the last person knew and never wrote down. Much of what a worker knows comes from doing the work: which paddock floods first, how the old pump has to be primed. Matt Lobley and two co-authors, researchers who compared farm succession in several countries, write that when a farm passes to the next generation, knowledge passes along with the land and the machinery. That detailed and locally specific knowledge, they add, can be vital to running the farm well.
They are writing about families handing on a farm, but a worker who has milked your herd for ten years carries the same kind of knowledge. Finding someone for the job may be quick. Teaching them what the last person knew can take far longer, and whatever nobody wrote down may be lost when that person leaves.
What three problems can you spot on the map?
Read down the columns and three problems stand out, each easy to miss when you think about one job at a time. The first is a name that repeats on jobs the farm can’t do without. The second is a job with no name beside it. The third is a job with one name, an old start date and nothing in the “who else could do it” column.
| What you see on the map | What it means | What goes wrong if you leave it |
|---|---|---|
| One name on two or more jobs the farm can’t do without | Several jobs depend on one person being there | One absence stops several jobs at once, with no warning |
| A job the farm needs with no name beside it | Work nobody was ever given | You find out only when something is missed, such as spray records nobody kept |
| One name, an old start date, nothing in the “who else could do it” column | Only one person knows how to do the job | Some of that know-how can leave the farm the day that person does |
How do you stop a job from depending on one person?
Start with the circled name that appears on the most jobs, and get what that person knows onto paper. Pick one task only they can do today, and write down each step while they do it in front of you. Phil Tocco, of Michigan State University Extension, the university’s advisory service for farmers, counts the steps finished when a new employee could pick up and perform and be about the same as an existing employee.
One set of written steps does not fix everything, because that person may still hold other jobs alone. Each task you write down and teach to someone else is one less thing only one person knows. When a second person can do the job, write their name in the “who else could do it” column. In a separate guide on who else can do the job, you pick a second person for each circled job and list what they would still need to learn.
How can you misread the map?
You misread the map if you take it as a verdict on a person rather than a picture of the farm. A circle around a name is not a complaint about that person. It is a warning that, over the years, too many jobs came to depend on one pair of hands. Keep pay and opinions about people off the map for the same reason: with only who does each job and since when on it, you can go over it with your crew without anyone feeling judged.
The map is also not a succession plan, which settles who takes over the farm and its decisions when you step back. That is a bigger piece of work than this sheet. Alison Earls and a co-author, researchers who reviewed farm succession plans in Ontario, Canada, warn that without such a plan an owner can fail to pass down knowledge about the business, including important managerial and leadership skills. The map covers something smaller: who does each job today.
A name beside a job means someone is responsible for it, not that the milking got done this morning. To check the work itself, you need another list: for each job, the record the person in it should keep, such as the milk records or the spray records, and whether it gets kept. A separate guide on whether each job leaves a record walks through that check.
If you keep a sign-off record, with one line per person and the date they received and signed their job description, you can also see on the map whose signature is still missing. You find a guide to each of these in the people section of this library: the job descriptions the map starts from, the sign-off record and the record each job should leave.
The map also goes out of date. People leave and jobs move, so a map written once can be wrong within a year. Date it, and go over it again at least once a year and whenever someone leaves or starts.
Where to start
One afternoon, a sheet of paper, and no software. A list of the farm’s jobs is enough to begin.
While that person is still at work, you can sit beside them, write down what only they know, and teach it to someone else. The day they call in sick or leave, that gets much harder.