Farm Worker Job Description Template
A farm worker plants, tends and harvests crops or cares for livestock, outdoors, in whatever the weather is doing. It is one of the few occupations on this site that is shrinking — BLS projects −2% through 2035 — and still turns over about 111,500 openings a year. That combination means every opening you post is a replacement, and the strongest lever you have is the $6,070 premium BLS records for running the equipment. What reaching farm workers costs on social, in Boostpoint's published agricultural campaign data, is below.
What a farm worker does
A farm worker does the physical work of growing food. On the crop side that is planting, irrigating, weeding, applying treatments, harvesting, grading and packing; on the animal side it is feeding, watering, moving stock, cleaning housing, monitoring health and assisting at calving or lambing. BLS is explicit about the conditions: outdoor work in all weather, frequent bending and crouching, heavy lifting, and hazards from pesticides, tractors and other machinery, and animals. Early mornings, weekends and holidays are normal, and many jobs follow the season.
The occupation held 831,900 jobs in 2025 and is projected to decline 2% through 2035, with about 111,500 openings a year. Read those two figures together: there is no growth to hire into, so effectively every posting is replacing somebody who left. That is a retention problem wearing a recruiting problem’s clothes, and it changes what the ad should say.
The median is $17.25 an hour, $35,890 a year, but the detailed occupations spread widely. Animal breeders sit at $51,130 and agricultural equipment operators at $41,730, while farmworkers with farm, ranch and aquacultural animals are at $36,670 and crop, nursery and greenhouse laborers at $35,660. The gap between a general laborer and an equipment operator is $6,070 a year for work done on the same farm — which is the most useful sentence you can put in a posting, because it is a career path a candidate can see.
Farm worker job description template
Copy this, replace everything in brackets, and delete any line you cannot honestly stand behind. Be specific about hours and season — vagueness costs you the experienced candidates first.
Job title
Farm worker
Summary
[Farm] is hiring farm workers for [crop / livestock] work in [county, state]. The work is outdoors, [seasonal from month to month / year-round], [X] hours a week with [overtime in peak weeks]. Pay is [$XX.XX an hour], with [housing / transport / equipment training] provided.
Responsibilities
- Plant, irrigate, weed and harvest [crop] by hand and with [equipment]
- Grade, sort and pack product to [buyer specification]
- Feed, water and move [livestock]; monitor condition and report concerns
- Clean and maintain housing, pens, equipment and work areas
- Operate [tractor / loader / ATV / harvester] once trained and authorized
- Follow all pesticide, chemical and machinery safety procedures
- Assist with fencing, irrigation lines and general property maintenance
- Record [yields / treatments / animal records] in [log or system]
Requirements
- 18 or older and legally authorized to work in the United States
- Able to work outdoors in heat, cold and rain for a full shift
- Able to lift [X] lb repeatedly and bend, crouch and stand for long periods
- Reliable transport to [location] for a [5:30 am] start
- Willing to work early mornings, weekends and holidays in [peak period]
- No formal education required — we train
Preferred
- Prior [crop / dairy / livestock] experience
- [Tractor or equipment operating experience]
- [Pesticide applicator license] — or willingness to earn it, paid by us
- [CDL] for [grain or livestock hauling]
- Spanish and English
Schedule and pay
- [Year-round position — not seasonal] / [seasonal from month to month]
- [X] hours a week with [overtime at time and a half in peak weeks]
- [Housing available on site] / [transport from town provided]
- [Weekly pay]; [end-of-season bonus of $X for completing the season]
- [Paid training on equipment, with a pay increase when you are certified]
Benefits
- Health, dental and vision from day [1 / 30 / 60]
- Paid time off outside [peak season]
- [401(k) with X% match]
- [Equipment and applicator certification paid for — and a raise when you hold it]
- [Beef, produce or milk allowance]; [boots and gear allowance]
What the role actually requires
Six things to settle before the posting goes live, and one of them is a pay path rather than a requirement.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Education | BLS records that most positions require none; animal breeders typically need a high school diploma. Saying “no experience needed, we train” plainly is worth more than a requirements list nobody reads. |
| Legal authorisation | Say how you handle it. If you run an H-2A program or provide housing, that is a material fact for the candidate and it belongs in the posting rather than in the interview. |
| Physical demands | BLS names bending, crouching and heavy lifting in all weather. Give the real weight and the real hours — a posting that hides the physical reality fills fast and empties faster. |
| Safety | Pesticides, tractors and machinery, and animals are all named by BLS as hazards. Naming your training and equipment in the ad reads as a serious employer to exactly the experienced candidates you want. |
| Hours | Early mornings, weekends and holidays are normal in this occupation. State the actual start time. Candidates who cannot make 5:30 am self-select out before you have spent an interview on them. |
| Equipment | This is the career path. BLS puts agricultural equipment operators $6,070 a year above crop and nursery laborers, so paid training toward that is a retention offer with a published number behind it. |
How to customize it for your setting
Row crop and grain
Work concentrates around planting and harvest with quieter months between. The supply and wage picture behind that seasonality, including H-2A certifications and the 2026 rate rules, is on our farm labor shortage page. Be honest about the shape of the year and pay for completing the season rather than pretending the hours are flat.
Dairy and livestock
Year-round, twice-daily and genuinely relentless — but that also makes it one of the few farm jobs with steady hours. If yours is year-round, put that in the headline, because most candidates reading farm postings assume seasonal.
Orchard, produce and greenhouse
Hand-harvest work at pace, often with piece-rate elements. If you pay piece rate, publish what a competent worker actually earns in a shift; an hourly minimum with an unexplained bonus reads as a trick.
Agribusiness and co-ops
You are often hiring for the equipment and applicator end rather than general labor, which puts you in the $41,730 bracket and against very different competition. Our agribusiness and co-op recruiting page covers that side.
What it costs to reach farm workers on social
Our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark publishes fifteen role families and none of them is agriculture, so this page will not quote one. What we do publish is a breakdown of our own agricultural campaigns by role, and it is the closer reference: seasonal roles at $5.93 per applicant across 1,066 applications, plant and grain operations at $5.56 across 951, and mechanic and service technician roles at $9.19. Those are advertising costs only.
For context against the whole study, the median campaign across all 891 campaigns cost $13.88 per applicant and the volume-weighted average was $8.02. Agricultural seasonal roles sit comfortably below both, which is the same pattern as caregiving and warehouse work — high-throughput frontline roles where plenty of people apply. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire, and on a farm the distance between them is the number of applicants who turn up for a 5:30 am start in February.
The hiring side of this role — how agricultural campaign costs move across the year, and what rural markets change — is on our agricultural recruiting costs and rural and co-op hiring pages.
Writing the ad version
The description above is a document. The ad is forty words, and the two that matter most are the start time and whether the job is year-round. Most candidates reading a farm posting assume seasonal and assume dawn; if yours is year-round, or starts at seven rather than five, that is your headline and almost nobody else is using it.
The second lever is the equipment. “We train you on the tractor and you get a raise when you are certified” is a $6,070 career step with a published BLS figure behind it, and it reads as a future rather than a season. Where applications leak after the click is covered in our candidate conversion rate guide, and fifteen worked examples sit in our help wanted ad examples library.
Frequently asked questions
What does a farm worker do?
A farm worker plants, irrigates, weeds, harvests, grades and packs crops, or feeds, waters, moves and monitors livestock and maintains their housing. The work also covers cleaning and maintaining equipment, fencing and irrigation, following pesticide and machinery safety procedures, and keeping yield, treatment or animal records. BLS describes it as outdoor work in all weather with frequent bending, crouching and heavy lifting.
How much does a farm worker make?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for agricultural workers at $17.25 an hour, or $35,890 a year (May 2025 data; the occupational page was modified August 27, 2026). The detailed occupations spread widely: animal breeders at $51,130, agricultural equipment operators at $41,730, farmworkers with farm, ranch and aquacultural animals at $36,670, and crop, nursery and greenhouse laborers at $35,660.
What qualifications does a farm worker need?
Most positions require no formal education, though animal breeders typically need a high school diploma. What the job really asks for is the ability to work outdoors in all weather, lift repeatedly, and start early — early mornings, weekends and holidays are normal in this occupation. Pesticide applicator licenses and equipment training are usually provided by the employer and are the route to higher pay.
Is farm work seasonal?
Often, but not always, and the distinction is worth stating in the posting. Row crop and produce work concentrates around planting and harvest, while dairy and livestock operations run year-round with steady hours. Because most candidates reading a farm posting assume seasonal, an employer with a year-round position gains more from saying so in the headline than from almost anything else in the ad.
Other job description templates
See all job description templates — free, editable templates for frontline, trades, healthcare and warehouse roles.
Hiring for the season?
The job description is the document; the ad is the thing that gets read. We write it, run it where rural candidates are actually scrolling, and report what each applicant cost — cost per applicant, not cost per hire.
Pay, employment, outlook, education and working conditions: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Agricultural Workers (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 employment and May 2025 wage data, including medians by detailed occupation), read August 29, 2026. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint agricultural campaign data as published on our agricultural recruiting costs page, and the 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark all-campaign distribution; advertising costs only. No agriculture role family is published in the benchmark. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.