Farm / Ranch Manager

Career Area: Agriculture, Horticulture, & the Outdoors

Occupation Group: Agriculture Managers

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Farm / Ranch Manager earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $42,400

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $40,884

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Manages operations at a farm or ranch. Directs crop production and management of livestock herds, and supervises farm workers who grow and harvest crops or tend to farm animals. Purchases supplies such as seed, fertilizer or animal feed, operates and repairs farm equipment, and maintains facilities. Monitors prices and adapts production as needed due to market changes, weather conditions or other factors.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Farm / Ranch Manager is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Physical Abilities: Physical Abilities, which refers to the ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with the body, arms, and/or legs. These abilities often require strength, endurance, flexibility, balance and coordination.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Farm Management: farm management is the science (and art) of optimizing the use of resources in the farm component of farm-households, i.e., in systems of Order Level 10 (see Figure 1.2), and of achieving the optimal functioning of these systems in relation to household-specified objectives;
• Cleaning: Cleaning is the process of removing unwanted substances, such as dirt, infectious agents, and other impurities, from an object or environment.
• Repair: Restoration of a broken, damaged, or failed device, equipment, part, or property to an acceptable operating or usable condition or state.
• Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
• Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Farm / Ranch Manager that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Agronomy: Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, fiber, and land reclamation.
• Farm Equipment: Agricultural machinery is machinery used in farming or other agriculture.
• Fertilizers: A fertilizer (American English) or fertiliser (British English; see spelling differences) is any material of natural or synthetic origin (other than liming materials) that is applied to soils or to plant tissues (usually leaves) to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants.
• Crop Production: A crop is a plant or animal product that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. Crop may refer either to the harvested parts or to the harvest in a more refined state.
• Precision Agriculture: Working experience of Precision Agriculture. Precision agriculture (PA), satellite farming or site specific crop management (SSCM) is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. The goal of precision agriculture research is to define a decision support system (DSS) for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Farm Manager
• Climate Research Farm Manager
• Farmer Market Vendor
• Assistant Farm Manager
• Farmer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Nursery / Greenhouse Manager
• Food / Agricultural Technician
• Soil / Plant Scientist
• Production Plant Manager
• Meat and Seafood Processor / Packager
• Food / Agricultural Inspector