No offense but working for a farmer or rancher is pretty much a dead-end deal for the non-family employee, from what I see in these parts.
Sometimes housing is included and free beef, but retirement, medical, dental, eye, vacation, sick time aren't part of the deal. Usually a monthly paycheck that stays the same no matter the amount of hours. You just just don't see anybody in these parts doing well working for a farmer/rancher. Those that do may well enjoy it and like the lifestyle, but you can't ever get ahead in life when compared to other jobs.
Sad but true.
I'll be serious for a minute..... I know there are 2 main ways it's done in my local. Most of this is for farmers who raise crops, cattle, hay, and usually have several chicken houses....almost all of them here do all of these in combination. The chicken houses provide excellent fertilizer for the hay, crop, and grazing land. They'll supplement it as needed after soil testing but it's a $ saver for them. They also sell/spread it for other folks and make $ that way.
1. Bring in "undocumented immigrant" workers. I don't know if they bring them in or find some locally. Perhaps some of them are "documented", I'm not sure. Provide housing for them...I'll make mention of something related to this below. I don't know what the pay rate is.
2. Use local folks that aren't going to work in any other setting. Usually pretty rough. Same deal as above, provide housing and payment....again, no idea of the rate.
About the housing....there is a rental assistance program from the USDA Rural Development department. The guy who rented some of our land for crops told me about this. He passed away a while back and his grandson runs it now. Anyhow, he set up a row of run down trailers and built several small/cheap houses and houses his workers and their families in them. .gov sends him a check for housing for each of them every month. He said it's the best thing he's ever done.....check from .gov every month and no hassle of collecting from renters. The housing has to pass certain standards but it can't be much as he did it (grandson doing it now) with rough looking trailers. They do this for the families that work for them as well as other low income families.
In all of these cases, sons, daughters, grandsons, etc of the farmer are working as well so family is a big part of the labor/help.
