Rising salaries for farm workers are due to a tight labour market, forcing farm managers to do more to retain staff, according to Rabobank.
File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
A report commissioned by Rabobank and Federated Farmers found salaries for farm workers have gone up by a weighted average of 14 percent over the last two years.
The survey of 729 employers and farm businesses found the average salary for farm workers was sitting just below $64,000.
Since 2020 salaries in the dairy sector have increase an average of 15 percent, while sheep and beef workers got an average raise of 14 percent.
Rabobank chief executive Todd Charteris said the border closure had put more pressure on farm managers to attract and maintain good staff.
"Farm owners have found it increasingly difficult to source skilled labour over recent seasons, and this is highlighted by the report, which found close to 70 percent of employers were now finding it harder to source good employees than 12 months ago," he said.
"Covid-19 border restrictions have, of course, contributed to this situation by limiting access to overseas workers, while New Zealand's low overall unemployment rate has also hindered efforts to get more local workers to take on new jobs in rural locations."
Charteris said it was clear the industry needed to do more to encourage young New Zealand into agriculture jobs.
"It's not just all about salaries, it's about creating the right environment and that excitement, where people can be part of a really thriving industry that contributes to the overall success of the country.
"We also need to think about how we continue to attract workers to the industry, but also to stay in the industry and continue to be given opportunities to improve their skills, to go up through the job, grades and those type of things, which I think we need to continue to work at."
Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard said competitive wages were not enough to attract some workers.
"The challenge, of course, is the remoteness, the lack of connectivity, those sort of factors play into it perhaps more than than the money side of the equation," he said.
"You know, for a lot of people that is their struggle, the money stacks up, but how do you entice someone to move away from their family, their friends, their support network - to, say, move from Auckland down to Southland?
"That's our big challenge I feel, and that's why the borders being closed has been really problematic for a number of regions, where they're not close to those big population centers, where there might be more young people looking for work."
Hoggard said the increase in salaries was great and hopefully would help attract more people to farming.
"Our survey shows that, on top of wages, adding in other factors that make up the total value of remuneration packages for farm staff, such as accommodation, meat, firewood and KiwiSaver, there's several thousand dollars of extra value to workers across all the sectors.
"In towns and cities, big chunks of workers' income are swallowed by accommodation costs."
But in the dairy sector 75 percent of employers provided accommodation for staff, as did 61 percent of sheep or beef employers and 41 percent in the arable sector, he said.
The average accommodation cost per week was $157 to $187.
"So as well as job security in a sector that has ploughed ahead through tough Covid times as the engine room of our economy, plus the satisfaction of working outdoors and growing quality food for families here and in scores of other countries, the survey makes clear there are solid pay packages available."