Dreaming of a $70k pay cheque? Here’s where you can get it
Southland and Canterbury are the places to be if you work in dairy, and the West Coast and the top of the South Island is where workers get the best wages for their sheep and beef work, data from Federated Farmers and Rabobank shows.
Salaries have increased in all farming sectors, but what you can expect to earn varies around the country.
Farm salaries are different to what most people earn in urban areas. Most include money in the pocket as well as other benefits such as phone allowances, fuel, some food and a house to live in. This makes up a total package value.
The Rabobank survey showed a dairy operations manager in Southland earned the highest total package value of all regions, at $137,240.
A sheep and beef farm manager on the West Coast and top of the South Island earned the highest total package value for this sector at $113,000.
Southland sheep and beef farm managers earned the least, with a total package value of $80,841, the survey showed.
Richard Mcintyre, dairy industry group chairperson for Federated Farmers, said a number of factors contributed to increased salaries in specific regions.
Southland was one of the best places because salaries were relatively high and the cost of living was lower than other parts of the country.
The demand for similar skill sets in other industries pushed wages up, Mcintyre said.
Mcintyre lives in Levin, in the Manawatū-whanganui region, where a number of market gardeners and factories needed labour. They competed with farms and the demand for labour pushed up salaries.
For young people, internet access and cellphone coverage were important. Salaries had to draw them to remote areas where connectivity was an issue, he said.
The increased cost of fuel also made remote farms unattractive, and salaries had to respond to that, Mcintyre said.
Farmers had to consider all these factors when trying to attract labour, he said.
Mcintyre said the survey showed that the scale of farms and herds played a part in farm salaries. Regions with large average herd size or large farms paid more.
Northland paid decent wages despite having higher unemployment.
Farm sizes in Northland were average and the fact that scale influenced wages did not make sense when compared to other regions, he said.
Northland farms tended to pay more than normal across many of the salary ranges, he said.
In the dairy sector nationwide, the average salary was $64,657, a $10,000 increase last year compared to 2020. The average total package value was $67,251, a $10,125 increase from 2020, the survey showed.
Across all worker categories for dairy, Canterbury had the highest average total package value at $70,047, followed by the lower South Island at $68,016. Taranaki had the lowest total package value at $63,320.
In Canterbury, a dairy farm assistant earned a total package value of $57,660.
Southland dairy farmer Nigel Johnston said the industry had a challenge with upskilling workers.
In the current employment environment where farms were already short-staffed, farmers could mostly not take the time off to train workers who had no experience, Johnston said.
In many cases farmers simply decided to work harder themselves, rather than employ someone they could not find the time to train, he said.
When employees were stepping up into management roles, training was also essential as someone who was good at managing cows and grass was not necessarily good at managing people, Johnston said.
In the sheep and beef sector the average salary was $62,351, a $10,173 increase from 2020. The average total package value for sheep and beef farm workers in the West Coast and top of the South Island trumped other regions at $77,916.
A general farm hand in this region earned $61,918, the survey showed.
Waikato, Bay of Plenty workers had the lowest total package value of $52,052.
Data for arable farming was insufficient to determine salaries across regions.