Articles
LABOUR ORGANISATION IN DUTCH THERAPHY AGRICULTURE
Besides that, some strong social trends have their effect in the agricultural sector as well, like urban agriculture.
In the Netherlands theraphy farming is a fast expanding form of broadening production.
From the year 1995 ca. 300 farms faced the challenge to combine a profitable agricultural enterprise with the care and support of a group of clients.
These clients may be mentally handicapped people, but also psychiatric patients, ex-convicts, ex-addicts or even stressed managers are target groups for the newly founded theraphy farms.
All farms have one goal in common; they promise to offer (easy) work to 1 up to 15 clients the whole year around.
Many enterprises have drastically changed their production scheme to create more manual labour.
Most of them grow a mix of biological, labour intensive crops, without much mechanisation.
The main problem is that the farmers have no experience with the complicated labour organisation they have to deal with.
Underestimation of the necessary support/supervision and of the amount of ‘more difficult’ work to be done has given many farmers a lot of overtime work, while on the other hand the clients may have too little work of a lower level.
In 1999 IMAG has developed a labour budgeting system for therapy farming with the goal to give insight in the amount and level of the available work, the labour peaks, the bottle necks (in terms of too much high level work for the farmer himself) and periods of under-utilisation (not enough work for the clients).
The labour budgeting system consists of:
- Basic information of an enterprise;Description of operations (with time of the year, task time and level of the work)
- Planning form;Method for calculation of the labour budget
Compared to other labour budgeting systems the work levels added to each operation are newly developed, specifically for therapy farming.
The system has been applied to two cases in practice, a chicken and a vegetable farm.
The resulting labour profiles clearly show the labour demand linked to the work level and for the vegetable farm labour peaks and periods of under-utilisation can be detected in an early stage.
In a future study the system will be extended to other farm types and a tactical planning system will be added.
Next to the practical issue of daily labour planning two courses for ‘labour training were developed.
For the entire enterprise and for the farmer himself it is important to acquire a certificate to demonstrate his quality as a therapeutic supervisor.
IMAG is now in discussion about the possibilities of a specific ‘Accreditation of Prior Learning’ (APL) certificate for therapy farmers.
Though it may be on a low level, it is very important for the clients as well to be able to obtain a certificate for the skills they learn.