Agricultural Laborer and Farm Worker Resume Examples & Writing Guide

A one-page resume for a general farm worker with about six years on a vegetable farm and a corn-and-soybean operation. The name and farms are made up. Every job names the crops, the acreage, the equipment and a production or reliability number. In the UK and Australia this job is called an agricultural labourer; in the US it is a farm laborer, farm worker, field worker or farmhand, and postings use all four.

Farm resumes are read by the owner, the farm manager or the labor contractor's crew boss, often on a phone in a pickup. Many small farms never ask for a resume at all; when they do, or when you apply to a large grower, a packing company or a farm labor contractor through a job board, four things decide whether you get a call.

• Crops and seasons. Lettuce in Salinas, apples in Washington, corn in Nebraska and dairy in Wisconsin are different jobs with different calendars. Name the crops, the region and the months you worked, so the manager knows you understand their season.
• Equipment. Tractor horsepower and brands, implements, irrigation type, forklift, harvest machinery, ATVs and trucks. A worker who can run a tractor or a pivot without training is worth more per hour than a hand-only worker, and the resume should show it in the first five lines.
• Output and reliability. Boxes or bins per hour on piece rate, acres covered, bushels hauled, and missed shifts. Harvest is short and a no-show costs the crew. "Zero missed shifts in the 2025 season" is the strongest line a farm worker can write.
• Legal and safety basics. Driver's license class, pesticide certificate or Worker Protection Standard training, forklift card, food-safety training, ability to lift 50 pounds and work in heat. One line each; growers are audited on these.

“I want to know three things: what did you pick or drive, how much of it, and did you finish the season. If a resume tells me 50 boxes an hour and no missed days, the person is hired before I read the rest.”

Two or three lines: years and crops, equipment you run, one output number, one reliability or safety fact. Use an objective when you have no farm experience yet.

A good farm bullet gives the crop or animal, the scale (acres, head, bins, boxes, bushels, hours), the equipment, and either an output number or a clean record. Here is the usual "labourer job description" list rewritten the way it should read.

List 10 to 12 skills, equipment first, and keep them concrete. "Agriculture skills" that fit any farm are worth nothing; "center-pivot operation" or "ladder picking, 10 bins a day" gets you called.

• Equipment: tractors (give horsepower and brands), implements (disc, planter, sprayer, cultivator, mower), combines and grain carts, forklifts and telehandlers, skid steers, ATVs and farm trucks, platform pickers, mixer wagons.
• Field work: transplanting, hoeing and weeding, thinning, pruning, trellising, hand harvest by crop, ladder work, field packing, bin and box handling.
• Irrigation: drip, sprinkler sets, furrow, center pivot, pump start-up and shutdown, leak repair.
• Crop protection and nutrients: mixing and loading, calibration, application records, re-entry intervals, PPE, private applicator certificate if you hold one.
• Livestock: feeding, watering, milking, calving or lambing assistance, fence and water systems, animal handling, herd health record keeping.
• Food safety and compliance: field sanitation, harvest hygiene, Produce Safety Alliance training, GAP audit preparation, chemical storage.
• Maintenance: greasing, oil and filter changes, belts and bearings, basic welding, tire repair.
• Physical and practical: lifting 50 lb repeatedly, heat and cold work, 10 to 12 hour days in season, valid driver's license (say the class), reliable transportation, bilingual English/Spanish where you have it.

Most farm labor jobs require no license or certificate. A few things are legally required in specific situations, and several training cards make you the easier hire. All of these are real; check your state's agriculture department for the exact names.

• Pesticide handling: anyone applying restricted-use pesticides needs a private or commercial applicator certificate from the state (in California, from the Department of Pesticide Regulation; in most states, from the Department of Agriculture). Workers who enter treated fields must have EPA Worker Protection Standard (WPS) training, which the employer provides yearly. List the certificate with the state and year, or "WPS trained, 2026".
• Driving: a regular driver's license for farm trucks and tractors on the road; a commercial driver's license (CDL Class A) if you haul grain or produce over the weight limit on public roads. Many states have a farm exemption, so say what you hold rather than what you think is needed.
• Forklift: OSHA requires employer training and evaluation for powered industrial trucks. List it as "Forklift operator training, OSHA 1910.178, 2023", not "forklift certified".
• Food safety: Produce Safety Alliance Grower Training (the FSMA Produce Safety Rule course) and Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) audit training count for produce and packing jobs.
• First Aid/CPR, heat illness prevention training (required by California employers for outdoor workers), and tractor safety courses from a land-grant university extension program.
• Visa status: if you are an H-2A worker, do not put visa details on the resume. Employers handle that separately; the resume is about your work.

Farms hire people with no farm background every season. What they cannot teach in a week is showing up at 5 a.m., working outdoors for ten hours and lifting all day. Your resume has to prove those with facts from wherever you have worked.

1. 1Header: name, phone, city, then one line of practical facts: driver's license class, own transportation, available dates (say the whole season), willing to work six days in peak, bilingual if true.
2. 2Objective: two lines naming the job (farm laborer, field worker, harvest crew) and the physical work you have already done.
3. 3Work history: any job with outdoor work, heavy lifting, early starts or long shifts. Warehouse, landscaping, construction labor, moving, roofing, restaurant kitchens. Give hours per week, weights lifted, months without a missed shift.
4. 4Farm-related background: family garden or ranch, 4-H or FFA, hunting and fishing, small-engine repair, driving a truck with a trailer. Growers take this seriously.
5. 5Skills: tools and machines you have used, any forklift or driving experience, first aid, Spanish or English if the crew speaks the other language.
6. 6One page, printed copies in the truck. Many farms hire at the gate or through a labor contractor's office, and the resume is what you hand over.

Farm work is seasonal by nature, and a resume with eight short jobs in six years looks normal to a grower. It only looks bad if the dates are vague or the jobs overlap without explanation.

• Write seasonal jobs with months and the word "season": "Jun 2019 to Oct 2019 (cherry and apple harvest)". Two seasons at the same farm can be one entry: "Seasons 2021 to 2023, June to October each year".
• Group very short jobs under one heading if you moved with a crew: "Harvest crew, various growers through Valley Ag Labor (contractor), 2020 to 2022: strawberries (Watsonville), grapes (Lodi), almonds (Modesto)."
• Put your available dates in the header. A grower reading in January wants to know you can start in March and stay through November.
• One page. Plain layout, single column, standard font, no photo, no date of birth. Large growers, packers and labor contractors post on job boards and use applicant systems that read plain text; small farms print it.
• Save as PDF for online applications, and keep printed copies. Bring your driver's license, pesticide certificate and forklift card to the interview; they will be copied.
• Keywords from postings to mirror: "harvest", "tractor operation", "irrigation", "forklift", "pesticide application", "planting", "pruning", "packing", "livestock", "lift 50 lbs", "valid driver's license", the crop names, and "bilingual" where it applies.

Paste the posting and your resume into the cvplex ATS checker before you apply online. It flags missing equipment names, a license the posting asks for that you left out, and bullets with no output number.