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Human Resources & Labor

Valuing Sweat Equity and Adding a Person to the Farm, Ag Engage Conference

Michael Langemeier presented at the Ag Engage Conference in Bloomington on February 19, 2026, on valuing sweat equity and adding a person to the farm.

Are Autonomous Farm Machines Economically Ready Yet?

Are autonomous machines financially competitive on today’s farms? Purdue research analyzes the real economics — from labor costs to hardware and subscription fees — and what it will take for autonomy to make sense at scale.

Financial Stress, Labor Decisions, and Farm Resilience: Tools to Evaluate Your Operation

Adding a family member or employee to a farm is a long-term financial decision. These slides and self-assessment tools help evaluate financial feasibility, strategic risk, and business resilience before expanding labor.

Labor Standards

FINBIN data from 2007–2024 show that larger crop farms use significantly fewer labor hours per acre and achieve higher labor efficiency, highlighting clear economies of scale in labor use.

Benchmarking Labor Efficiency and Productivity

Labor costs are one of the most prevalent costs on a farm. As such, farm managers need to evaluate whether they are utilizing labor efficiently and productively. One way to evaluate this issue is to use benchmarks created using data from similar farms. Labor benchmarks should include family and operator labor as well as hired labor.

Agricultural Jobs & Labor Update

Labor availability and labor retention are big issues in the U.S. economy and that’s especially true for agribusiness firms and for commercial scale farm operations. According to the latest Purdue Agricultural Job Market Report, job postings are up by 50%. More employers are seeking entry-level candidates with higher levels of education. Additionally, it has become more common for employers to include salary information in their job postings as a way to encourage applications. In this episode of the Purdue Commercial AgCast, host Brady Brewer joins Josh Strine, a Ph.D. student in Purdue’s Department of Agricultural Economics, to discuss the Purdue Ag Jobs Dashboard.

Human Resource Risk Management & Contingency Planning

Farms and agribusinesses are confronted by many different types of risk, but consideration to human resource risk is overlooked by far too many. If critical functions cannot be completed due to a death, disability, disaster, divorce, or disagreement the farm

Agricultural Job Market & the Purdue Ag Jobs Dashboard

Wondering what the current agriculture job market is? 

In this episode Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture’s ag economists Brady Brewer and Nathan Delay discuss the agricultural job market and the Purdue University’s Department of Agriculture Economics Ag Jobs Dashboard from research conducted by grad student Doug Abney.

The dashboard is an overview of monthly data collected of the agricultural job market over time, starting the summer of 2021. Slides and a transcript from the discussion are available.

Benchmarking Labor Efficiency and Productivity

Labor costs are one of the most prevalent costs on a farm. As such, farm managers need to evaluate whether they are utilizing labor efficiently and productively. One way to evaluate this issue is to use benchmarks created using data from similar farms.

Precision Agriculture and Technology

Precision agriculture utilizes biotechnology and nutritional technology; monitoring, measuring, and information technology; and process control technology to increase resource efficiency, reduce input cost, and/or improve product value.  This series of articles will discuss precision agricultural technologies, potential payoffs of using these technologies, and the capabilities and skills that will be needed to manage these technologies.

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