Farm Manager Resume Examples & Writing Guide

Twelve years, from equipment operator to running a 3,200-acre operation with a cow herd. The person is fictional, but the numbers are the kind an owner or a farm management company actually asks about: acres, head, yield, cost per acre, and who you had working for you.

Farm manager jobs are trust jobs. The owner is handing over machinery worth millions, a crop that only happens once a year, and often their family's land. Five things settle it.

• Scale and enterprise mix. Acres, head, houses, greenhouses or barns, and what you produced. Managing 600 acres of hay is not the same job as 3,200 acres of irrigated corn.
• Production numbers. Yield per acre, pounds of milk per cow, feed conversion, weaning weight, pack-out percentage. This is your track record and it is checkable.
• The money. Did you hold a budget, buy inputs, sign leases, market grain or livestock? A manager who has only run field work is really a supervisor, and pay follows the difference.
• Labor. Crew size, seasonal hiring, H-2A experience, safety record and turnover. Labor is the hardest part of most operations right now.
• Compliance and records. Pesticide licensing and records, nutrient management plan, food safety audits, animal welfare program participation. An owner who has been through an inspection cares deeply.

“Show me acres, head and budget in the first three lines, then one production number I can compare to my own. After that I want to know how many people reported to you and whether you kept them. Anybody can run a tractor. Finding somebody who can hold a crew together through harvest is the hard part.”

Three lines that fit the operation you are applying to. A dairy will not read a row-crop summary carefully, so write the version that matches.

Every bullet should carry a size, a rate or a dollar figure. Farming is a numbers business and owners read it that way.

Group them into production, business, people and compliance. The mix tells the owner whether you are a production manager, a business manager or both.

• Production: cropping plans and rotation, agronomy and soil fertility, seed and trait selection, spraying programs, irrigation scheduling, harvest logistics, livestock health and nutrition, breeding and calving, grazing management, ventilation and housing for confined livestock
• Equipment and technology: tractors, planters, sprayers, combines, grain carts and semis; scheduled maintenance and repair; GPS guidance and auto-steer; variable rate and yield mapping; Climate FieldView, John Deere Operations Center, Granular or similar
• Business: operating budgets, cost per acre or per head, cash flow, input purchasing and negotiation, grain and livestock marketing, crop insurance and FSA programs, leases and custom work agreements, farm accounting in QuickBooks or a farm-specific package
• People: hiring, scheduling and training, seasonal and H-2A crews, bilingual supervision if you have it, safety programs, payroll and time tracking, keeping a crew through a 22-day harvest
• Compliance and records: pesticide licensing and application records, Worker Protection Standard training, nutrient management plans, food safety audits (Produce Safety Rule, Harmonized GAP, GLOBALG.A.P.), animal care programs such as BQA or the National Dairy FARM program, organic certification records

If you speak Spanish and supervise a Spanish-speaking crew, say so clearly. On many operations it is one of the top three things an owner is looking for.

There is no farm manager license in the US, but several real credentials carry weight, and one of them is legally required for most spraying work.

• Pesticide applicator license. Private or commercial, issued by your state department of agriculture, with categories for the work you do. This is a legal requirement for restricted-use products, so list the state and that it is current. Rules and categories vary by state.
• Certified Crop Adviser (CCA) from the American Society of Agronomy, which signals agronomy depth beyond field experience.
• Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) for cattle operations, and the National Dairy FARM program for dairies.
• National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) participation for poultry operations.
• Food safety training and audits for produce: the FSMA Produce Safety Rule grower training, Harmonized GAP, PrimusGFS or GLOBALG.A.P., depending on your buyers.
• CDL Class A if you haul grain, livestock or equipment. It comes up more often than people expect.
• Education: a two- or four-year degree in agribusiness, agronomy, animal science or ag economics is common for larger operations and farm management companies, but a long production record with numbers can outweigh it.
• Anything unusual that saves the owner money: welding, hydraulics, well and pump repair, or a private pilot certificate on operations that fly.

Most farm managers came off the equipment or out of the barn. If you have not held the title yet, the resume has to show you already do parts of the job.

1. 1List the decisions you already make: spray timing, breeding calls, harvest order, ordering parts, deciding when a field is fit.
2. 2Count the people you direct, even informally. "Directed a 4-person planting crew for six weeks" is management experience.
3. 3Show the money you touch, such as input orders you place, parts accounts you run, or a fuel budget you track.
4. 4Add the records you keep. Owners hire managers who document, because that is what an inspection or a landlord meeting turns on.
5. 5Get the pesticide license and a safety certification before you apply. They are inexpensive and they take an objection off the table.
6. 6Aim for assistant farm manager, herdsman, crop supervisor or farm foreman as the step in between.

• One page if you have under ten years, two if you have run several operations or multiple enterprises. No photo, no date of birth.
• Put acres, head and budget in the summary. Farm management companies and larger operations screen on those three figures.
• Use the exact title from the ad: farm manager, farm supervisor, ranch manager, herd manager, orchard manager, estate manager, production manager. They are separate searches and often separate pay grades.
• Say whether housing is expected, whether you will relocate, and whether you can be on call during calving, harvest or a weather event. These practical facts speed up an offer.
• Keep formatting plain. Many farm jobs are posted through co-ops, extension boards and family operations that will print the file or paste it into an application.
• Outside the US this is a CV, hectares replace acres and tonnes replace bushels. If you are applying in the States, convert the units and keep US conventions.