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Put yourselves in their shoes

For Cactus Family Farms, today’s farm employee stems from one of two main groups. The first being the local employees near their headquarters in Osceola, Iowa. According to HR Specialist Heather Vaughn, 80% of those local applicants are Hispanic. They often have little formal education or prior experience with pigs and sometimes speak traditional indigenous languages as well as Spanish.

The other side of that coin is a completely different pool of applicants. Through the North American Free Trade Agreement, they also have the option to hire employees with a TN visa. For this specific visa, applicants must either be from Canada or Mexico, however Vaughn says that the agriculture industry primarily relies on Mexican candidates.

Another specification to the TN visa is that they have to have some level of an advanced degree.

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You Never Want to Find This in a Feed Bin

Video: You Never Want to Find This in a Feed Bin



We found something in bin 12 that no pig farmer ever wants to see. Feed caked up solid in the boot, and when that line is feeding thousands of hogs, you fix it today, not tomorrow. That is just where the day starts. The pigs worked half the gates loose again, so Tork and I are going pen to pen putting them back together. Then it is the barn door repair, rebuilding the wash room, and a walk through a freshly washed barn getting ready for the next group. Pig farming is fixing the same things over and over and keeping the barns running no matter what.