Farm Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This CV is for a farm worker with 9 years across arable, dairy and fruit farms who now runs machinery on a large arable and root crop farm. The name and farms are made up. Notice that every job gives hectares or head count, the machines he runs and the hours he works in season. A farm manager reads for exactly those things, because they say what you can be put on tomorrow morning.

Most farm jobs are filled by the farmer or a farm manager, not an HR department. They read fast and they read for practical things. Four items decide whether you get a call.

• What you can run and drive. Tractors (with horsepower range), sprayers, combines, balers, loaders, telehandlers, diet feeders, grain trailers and lorries. A C or C+E licence is a big plus on any farm that hauls its own crop.
• What you have reared or grown, in numbers. "Worked on a dairy farm" means little; "milked 900 cows in a rotary parlour" or "grew 1,900 hectares of wheat, barley, beet and potatoes" tells the manager where you fit. Poultry, pigs, beef, sheep, dairy, arable, fruit and vegetables are different jobs.
• Hours and seasons. Farms need people who will work drilling and harvest weeks of 60 to 80 hours, early milking shifts, weekends and bank holidays. Say it plainly and give proof (shifts missed, seasons completed).
• Certificates and safety record. PA1/PA2 or PA6 spraying certificates, licence categories, telehandler training, and no accidents or injuries with machinery. Farming has one of the highest fatal injury rates of any UK industry, so a clean record is worth a line in your personal statement.

“A good farmhand CV is short and full of numbers: acres, head, horsepower, seasons. What gets read twice is a line like 'ran a 300 horsepower tractor with auto-steer and hauled 400 loads of beet on a lorry licence'. What gets skipped is 'hardworking team player with a passion for agriculture', because every applicant writes that and none of it tells the farmer what to put you on on Monday.”

Three or four lines at the top: years and type of farming, the machinery and livestock you know, your certificates, and one line on hours and reliability. Use a career objective only when you have not yet worked on a farm for pay.

Farm work is easy to undersell. "General farm duties" hides the fact that you ran a £350,000 machine, kept 900 animals healthy or got a whole season's straw baled. Give the number, the machinery and what went right.

List 10 to 14 skills that match the farm you are applying to. A dairy farm does not care about your combine hours, and a vegetable grower does not care about calving. Read the advert and lead with what they grow or rear.

• Machinery: tractor operation (give the horsepower range), GPS auto-steer, drills, sprayers, combines and forage harvesters, balers, loaders, skid steers, telehandlers, diet feeders, grain trailers and lorries (C or C+E licence).
• Crops: drilling and planting, cultivations, fertiliser and pesticide application (with PA certificates), irrigation (hose reels, drip, trickle), crop walking for weeds and pests, harvest, grain drying and storage, hay, haylage and silage.
• Livestock: milking and milk quality, calf rearing, feeding and TMR, herd health checks, calving and lambing, vaccinations and treatments under vet direction, foot trimming, low-stress stock handling, biosecurity.
• Poultry and pigs: shed walks and mortality records, ventilation and temperature control, feed and water line maintenance, litter and slurry management, catching and loading, biosecurity procedures.
• Maintenance and building: greasing and servicing, hydraulics and belts, tyre changes, welding and fabrication, fencing, shed and workshop repairs, plumbing for water troughs.
• Work habits farms hire for, with proof: long seasonal hours, early shifts, weekends, working alone without supervision, turning up in bad weather, and a second language spoken on mixed teams (Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian, for example).

No licence is needed to work as a farm worker in the UK. A few certificates make you cheaper and safer to hire, so farms pay more for them or hire you first. Course names and rules change; check with the awarding body (City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra) before you list one.

• Pesticide spraying certificates: PA1 (the foundation module on safe use of pesticides) plus the module for the kit you use, such as PA2 for mounted or trailed boom sprayers or PA6 for hand-held (knapsack) sprayers, from City & Guilds NPTC or Lantra. You generally need them to apply professional pesticides at work. High value on arable, fruit and vegetable farms; NRoSO membership shows you keep up to date.
• Farm health and safety induction and COSHH awareness: farms must give you information and training on the chemicals, machinery and livestock you work with. List any farm safety or COSHH course with the year.
• Driving licences: a full car licence (category B) normally covers driving a tractor on the road (category F), and a C or C+E licence with a Driver CPC card makes you far more useful at harvest. Some farm haulage is exempt from Driver CPC, but holding the card still widens what you can drive.
• Telehandler and forklift: a Lantra, RTITB or similar certificate for the machine you operate; list the year and the equipment.
• Livestock: training in the responsible use of veterinary medicines (Red Tractor dairy and livestock farms ask for it), foot trimming and AI (artificial insemination) courses, and a Certificate of Competence for transporting animals on longer journeys all count.
• Fresh produce: food safety and hygiene training on a Red Tractor or GLOBALG.A.P. assured fruit or vegetable farm, if you have worked on one.

Farms hire people with no farm experience every season, especially for harvest, packing, calf rearing and general labouring. What the farmer needs to know is that you can handle the physical work, will turn up at 5 am, and can learn machinery safely. Show that with what you have already done, even if it was not on a farm.

1. 1Header with the practical facts: mobile, town, driving licence (and categories), own transport, and "available for seasonal or full-time work, any shift".
2. 2Career objective, 3 lines: your physical work background, any contact with farming (family farm, Young Farmers' Club, lambing help, stable or gamekeeping work), and the position you want.
3. 3Experience: any job with long hours, outdoor work, machinery or animals. Grounds maintenance, construction labouring, warehouse, meat processing, stables. Give hours, weights and equipment.
4. 4Farm experience section if you have it: family farm chores with numbers (80 cows, 80 hectares), Young Farmers' projects, a lambing season, a summer on a relative's dairy farm.
5. 5Skills you already have that farms use: driving a manual car, towing a trailer, basic mechanics, welding, power tools, a second language.
6. 6Certificates you can get in a week: Emergency First Aid at Work (one day), a telehandler or ATV course from Lantra or a land-based college, and PA1 if you may work near spraying.

A farm worker CV is one page, two at most. It is often read on a phone in a tractor cab. Plain text, big enough to read, numbers first.

• Order: header with certificates, personal statement, experience (hectares, head, machinery, hours), skills, certificates, education last. GCSEs are enough; list an agricultural NVQ or diploma, an agriculture apprenticeship or an HND if you have one.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. UK employers do not expect them, and larger farm businesses with HR departments remove them.
• Seasonal work: group it. "Seasonal Farm Hand, 3 harvest seasons (2016 to 2018), two fruit farms in Kent" reads better than three short entries.
• Words to mirror from the advert: the crops and livestock they name, the machinery brands they run, "drilling", "harvest", "milking", "calf rearing", "PA1/PA2", "telehandler", "accommodation provided" if you need it.
• Many searches for farm worker CVs come from people applying to UK farms from abroad, or from the UK to Canada or New Zealand. Overseas workers in UK horticulture usually come on the Seasonal Worker visa (placements of up to 6 months) through an approved scheme operator rather than straight to the farm; add one line on your visa status and dates. Canada (where the document is a resume) and New Zealand use the same one-page, no-photo format; there too the employer or scheme handles the work permit, so put your status line near the top.
• Applying through a large farm's online form or a recruitment agency? Run the file through the cvplex ATS checker; it catches a missing machinery or crop word the advert uses.