The number of people who left your farm in the last 24 months is in your payroll records, the first number to check before the next raise. At an example apple orchard in the Yakima Valley, Washington, a raise of $1 an hour for 26 workers costs $54,080 a year, and nine people left in two years. In a survey of California dairies, pay and benefits were the top reason for leaving, at 29%, and four reasons the employer sets day to day added up to 34%. Once the wage is at market, how you manage weighs as much as a raise, sometimes more. List each departure and its reason, then fill in a one-page sheet with four yes-or-no lines.
The sheet checks your management, not any worker’s performance. Filling it in promises nothing about the next worker.
What reasons did people give for leaving?
Gregorio Billikopf and Gustavo González, in a 2012 paper in the journal California Agriculture, interviewed 209 dairy workers in three San Joaquin Valley counties in 2009. The 114 who had left earlier dairy jobs reported 222 of them, and each gave a main reason for each departure. Pay and benefits led, at 29%, and most of the reasons below it were ones the employer sets day to day.
| Reason given for leaving a dairy job | Share of the 222 departures |
|---|---|
| Pay and benefits | 29% |
| The dairy’s own money trouble | 14% |
| A personal or family reason | 11% |
| Work schedule and time off | 11% |
| Housing and transport | 8% |
| The relationship with the boss | 8% |
| The job and its duties | 7% |
| Let go | 7% |
| Co-workers | 3% |
| Hurt on the job | 2% |
| Left to start their own dairy | 0.5% |
All 209 respondents were men, interviewed at dairies where the researcher stopped to ask, and the study left out workers who had left dairy work for good. On your farm the shares will land elsewhere. What carries over is the split: pay is one reason among several, and the four day-to-day reasons together were named a little more often than pay.
Open your payroll records, list the people who left in the last 24 months, and write the reason each one gave beside the name. Where nobody asked, write “unknown”. At the example orchard, whose figures are invented for illustration, two of the nine named pay, five named the schedule, the housing, the boss or the job, and two named family.
Does pay still matter, then?
Yes, and the research warns against reading what leavers say as proof that it does not. Sara Rynes and two colleagues reviewed the research in 2004, in the journal Human Resource Management. They found that pay matters more in people’s actual choices and behavior than in what they say motivates them, and that it is not equally important in every situation or to every person. Those were workers in general, not farm workers. A worker who says money was not the reason may have left over it. Keep the wage fair and at market first. The sheet is for what weighs beyond a wage that is already fair.
Malcolm Hobbs and two colleagues asked 611 vineyard workers in Napa County, California, to rate 11 parts of the job and say whether they planned to leave. Workers there were generally content with their pay. The analysis used 402 complete answers, and four parts predicted plans to leave: communication, pay, family commitments and the nature of the farm work. Each part got a score, and a higher score means a better predictor. Communication scored highest and pay came second, close behind.
The authors conclude that better communication, more variety in tasks and consideration for family commitments can influence turnover more than further pay increases alone. Mallika Roy and colleagues, in a 2026 paper in PLOS ONE, surveyed 1,202 current and potential workers in Queensland, Australia, about banana work. They report that its appeal is driven more strongly by the conditions of the job than by purely economic incentives.
Read all of this as what people said, not what they did. Hobbs states that the analysis cannot show cause. The banana study was one crop in one country, in an online survey of people who had not necessarily left. The honest reading is that management weighs heavily and pay still counts. Each departure also has a cost, and how much turnover costs your farm puts a yearly number on it from your records.
What goes on the sheet?
Four lines, each answered yes or no, and a document to write for each no. Stanley Moore and colleagues, in a 2020 study in the Journal of Dairy Science, collected the views of 168 employees on 12 large US dairy farms. Employees reported a higher intention to stay when their employer scored higher on questions about the relationship between employer and employee. The authors also note that farms adopt human resource practices very unevenly. How people are managed differs from farm to farm, and that part is yours to change.
| Line | The question you answer yes or no | If the answer is no, write | Where to learn how |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job | Does each person have in writing what their job is responsible for? | A list of duties for each job | what each job is responsible for |
| First day | Did the last new hire get a planned first day? | A first-day list | the first-day list |
| Praise and raises | Do praise and raises follow a written rule? | A recognition rule, and pay bands (a pay range for each job) with a raise rule | the recognition rule and pay bands with a raise rule |
| Manager | Does your manager have in writing what they may decide without you? | A signed list of what your manager decides alone | what your manager decides alone |
Two of the four day-to-day reasons stay off the sheet. The work schedule has its own article, who else can do each job, and housing has no document in the people section yet. Check both apart: is the schedule known in advance, and is the housing fit to live in?
How do the four lines work on a farm?
The job line and the manager line ask one question about two people: does each know where their own decisions begin and end? With a page of duties, the worker knows. With a signed list of what the manager decides alone, the manager knows.
Mengfen Lan and colleagues studied 352 hotel employees in 2025, not farm workers. They started from the idea that clear job requirements give an employee enough information to act, which can reduce the uncertainty of deciding. They found that clear roles can increase taking charge, meaning workers who act beyond their assigned tasks. A tractor driver unsure what the job covers has to ask before each decision. The fix is a list of duties for each job, and what each job is responsible for shows how to write one.
If you never wrote down what your manager may decide, neither the manager nor the crew can see where it ends, and the first worker with a doubt comes to you. With a list signed by both of you, you can hand over decisions and still know what is settled. If you have no manager, the same holds for the foreman who runs the crew when you are away. What your manager decides alone shows how to write the list.
The first day is where training starts. In the Australian banana study, training and development, and supportive work environments, were the most consistent and influential factors in how attractive workers found the work. A new hire handed a truck key on the first morning and pointed at a block may conclude that you do not much care whether they stay. The fix is a first-day list, and the first-day list shows how to write one.
A crew usually sees who gets a bonus or a raise. With no written rule, the crew works out its own rule from what it sees, and it may not be the one you meant. Two documents fix this. A recognition rule keeps praise from riding on your mood that day, and the recognition rule shows how to write it. Pay bands give each job a pay range and a written rule for moving up it, so each person knows beforehand what earns a raise, and pay bands with a raise rule shows how.
At the orchard the sheet came out with two yes and two no. The raise would have reached every worker, and the two no lines point at documents the orchard can write itself.
What do I write first, and in how long?
A sheet of paper and about half an hour are enough to fill in the sheet. Each document has its own article in the people section of this site. If your list of departures names the boss or the job, start with the manager line or the job line. Otherwise start with the first no.
When a departure is put down to the labor market, nothing is left for you to change. The sheet looks for the cause in what you control. A line still at no after three months can cost you another good worker, so the date on the calendar matters as much as the first sheet.