Agricultural Labourer CV Examples & Writing Guide

A one-page CV for a general farm worker with about six years on a vegetable farm and an arable farm. The name and farms are made up. Every job names the crops, the hectares, the machinery and a production or reliability number. In the UK this job is usually advertised as agricultural labourer, farm worker, general farm hand or field operative, and adverts use all of them.

Farm CVs are read by the farmer, the farm manager or a labour provider's supervisor, often on a phone in a pickup. Many small farms never ask for a CV at all; when they do, or when you apply to a large grower, a packhouse or a licensed labour provider through a job board, four things decide whether you get a call.

• Crops and seasons. Lettuce in Lincolnshire, apples in Kent, wheat in East Anglia and dairy in Cheshire are different jobs with different calendars. Name the crops, the region and the months you worked, so the manager knows you understand their season.
• Machinery. Tractor horsepower and makes, implements, irrigation type, forklift, harvest machinery, ATVs and pickups. A worker who can run a tractor or set irrigation without training is worth more per hour than a hand-only worker, and the CV should show it in the first five lines.
• Output and reliability. Boxes or bins per hour on piece rate, hectares covered, tonnes hauled, and missed shifts. Harvest is short and a no-show costs the gang. "Zero missed shifts in the 2025 season" is the strongest line a farm worker can write.
• Legal and safety basics. Driving licence categories, PA1/PA2 or PA6 spraying certificates, forklift certificate, food-safety training, being able to lift 25 kg and work in heat and rain. One line each; growers are audited on these under Red Tractor and retailer schemes.

“I want to know three things: what did you pick or drive, how much of it, and did you finish the season. If a CV 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, machinery you run, one output number, one reliability or safety fact. Use a career objective when you have no farm experience yet.

A good farm bullet gives the crop or animal, the scale (hectares, head, bins, boxes, tonnes, hours), the machinery, 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, machinery first, and keep them concrete. "Agricultural skills" that fit any farm are worth nothing; "hose reel set-up and repair" or "ladder picking, 10 bins a day" gets you a call.

• Machinery: tractors (give horsepower and makes), implements (discs, drills, sprayers, cultivators, mowers), combines and chaser bins, forklifts and telehandlers, skid steers, ATVs and farm pickups, picking platforms, diet feeders.
• Field work: transplanting, hoeing and weeding, thinning, pruning, trellising, hand harvest by crop, ladder work, field packing, bin and box handling.
• Irrigation: trickle and drip, hose reels and rain guns, overhead sprinklers, pump start-up and shutdown, leak repair.
• Crop protection and nutrients: mixing and loading, sprayer calibration, spray records, re-entry intervals, PPE, PA1/PA2 or PA6 certificates if you hold them.
• Livestock: feeding, watering, milking, calving or lambing help, fencing and water systems, stock handling, herd health records.
• Food safety and compliance: field hygiene, harvest hygiene, Red Tractor and GLOBALG.A.P. audit preparation, chemical store rules.
• Maintenance: greasing, oil and filter changes, belts and bearings, basic welding, tyre repair.
• Physical and practical: lifting 25 kg repeatedly, heat and cold work, 10 to 12-hour days in season, driving licence (say the categories), own transport, a second language (Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian, for example) where you have it.

Most agricultural labouring jobs in the UK need no licence or certificate. A few things are required in specific situations, and several training certificates make you the easier hire. Course names and rules change, so check with the awarding body (City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra) for the exact names.

• Pesticide handling: to apply professional pesticides at work you generally need a certificate of competence: PA1 (the foundation module) plus the module for the kit you use, such as PA2 for boom sprayers or PA6 for knapsack sprayers, from City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra. Workers who go into treated crops must be told about re-entry times and PPE by the farm. List the modules and the year, plus NRoSO membership if you have it.
• Driving: a full car licence (category B) normally covers driving a tractor on the road (category F); a C or C+E licence with a Driver CPC card if you haul grain or produce by lorry. Some agricultural haulage has exemptions, so say what you hold rather than what you think is needed.
• Forklift: HSE guidance expects employers to train and authorise lift truck operators. List it as "Counterbalance forklift certificate (RTITB), 2023", not "forklift certified".
• Food safety: a Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene certificate and Red Tractor or GLOBALG.A.P. audit training count for fresh produce and packhouse jobs.
• Emergency First Aid at Work, ATV (quad bike) training from Lantra, and tractor driving courses from a land-based college.
• Visa status: if you are on a Seasonal Worker visa or another visa, you do not need visa details on the CV. A short "right to work in the UK" line is enough; the employer or scheme operator checks your documents separately.

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

1. 1Header: name, mobile, town, then one line of practical facts: driving licence categories, own transport, available dates (say the whole season), willing to work six days in peak, a second language if true.
2. 2Career objective: two lines naming the job (agricultural labourer, field worker, harvest operative) 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 labouring, removals, roofing, restaurant kitchens. Give hours per week, weights lifted, months without a missed shift.
4. 4Farm-related background: family smallholding or allotment, Young Farmers' Club, beating or gamekeeping days, small-engine repair, towing a trailer. Growers take this seriously.
5. 5Skills: tools and machines you have used, any forklift or driving experience, first aid, and any language the gang speaks.
6. 6One page, with printed copies in the car. Many farms hire at the gate or through a licensed labour provider's office, and the CV is what you hand over.

Farm work is seasonal by nature, and a CV 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 gang: "Harvest gang, various growers through Fenway Labour (licensed labour provider), 2020 to 2022: strawberries (Herefordshire), daffodils (Cornwall), potatoes (Lincolnshire)."
• 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, two at most. Plain layout, single column, standard font, no photo, no date of birth. Large growers, packers and labour providers advertise 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 driving licence, PA certificates and forklift certificate to the interview, along with your right-to-work documents; they will be copied.
• Keywords from adverts to mirror: "harvest", "tractor driving", "irrigation", "forklift", "PA1/PA2", "drilling", "pruning", "packhouse", "livestock", "lift 25 kg", "full UK driving licence", the crop names, and any language the advert mentions.

Paste the advert and your CV into the cvplex ATS checker before you apply online. It flags missing machinery names, a certificate the advert asks for that you left out, and bullets with no output number.