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Wow! What an insightful trip. Here are a few lessons that we learned. (Short thread!)
First, farm labor: this farm found that decentralizing the recruitment of casual labor made it much easier to find workers, and to hold them accountable to the work. Rather than having HR source the labor, the people who need them to get their work done should be responsible.
When you have KPIs linekd to how many people you can recruit (and whether you can recruit enough people to get your work done), you are much more likely to successfully recruit the labor that you need.
On a related note, make sure you understand (and have measured) what is a reasonable amount of work for someone to do in a day. This farm used meters as their measuring stick. A worker should be able to fertilize X meters in a day, or weed Y meters. Why use meters, you might ask?
Well, if you use standard spacing on your farm, you can calculate many meters make up 1 hectare. At TJ, we use 1.5 meter spacing. 10,000 square meters divided by 1.5 meters means head hectare has 6,667 meters worth of tomatoes.
If we want someone to weed for us, for example we should first observe 2 or 3 people weeding to see how many meters they can do when someone is closely supervising them. Not just for the first hour, but for a full 4-5 hours, because of course they will slow down over time.
From watching 2-3 people in this way, you can estimate what a fair amount of weeding is (and even take 80-85% of what you see being done) Maybe someone should be able to weed 500 meters in 5 hours, for example.
So you set 1 day of weeding at 400 meters and tell the workers they have to spend at least 5 hours doing the work, but can take up to 7. This way you can be sure you are offering a fair price, and you are paying by the day (which workers like) while costing the work by the job.
Giving a flexible amount of time also allows for better quality of work (sometimes people want to rush and they do a bad job). Knowning that your expectations are reasonable, and clarifying that the work will cost the same thing each time, makes it much easier to negotiate!
Second, records are BAE, and discipline is imperative! This farm sticks to its timetables. The gates close at 6:40 and all supervisors are expected to report a labor “roll call” before 7am when the work starts. If you start on time, you can end on time!
If you document well, you can use that information to make changes down the line, reward people who are meeting or exceeding targets, and quickly respond to anything out of the ordinary.
Third, connectivity. The farm we visited is very big, so the team uses walkie talkies to communicate. The security team, agronomy team, and irrigation team each have their own channels but of course anyone can tune into any channel, and the managers listen to all the channels.
Fourth, know what to buy versus what to outsource. Heavy equipment like excavators and bulldozers are VERY expensive to repair if they break down. Unless you need to used this equipment a lot (like more than 200 days per year), it’s probably not worth owning this type of machine.
On the topic of heavy equipment, if you are buying BEWARE of used equipment. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. A tractor or implement might be only 1 year old but if it’s been used to farm a 20,000 hectare estate, it’s probably being sold for a reason.
Fifth, put tight controls around the things that can “walk away” like diesel, herbicide, etc. If the opportunity to steal doesn’t present itself easily, theft will to down. (Think about the goat and the yam.) Again, this is where documentation helps.
Finally, plan for worse than the worst weather even you’ve seen. If the highest wind speed on record is 100km per hour, plan for winds of 125km/hour. If the highest flood point you’ve seen is 4 meters above the river basin, plan for a 6 meter flood. A stitch in time saves nine!
From all of us to all of you, have a great Sunday! 
