9 Important Farming Skills You Need to Know

What skills should I have before I start farming? If you want to get into agribusiness, having the right farming skills will go a long way toward your success. Read on to see exactly what is required of you.

Agriculture is not only the main source of our food but also a key pillar in many world economies. Farming has requirements, challenges, and benefits like any other business or career. While many people might not consider it a worthwhile career, this sector has made a lot of money for some of the richest guys globally.

So, what farming skills does a person intending to start an agribusiness need? Besides raising the necessary capital, is there a specific agricultural skills list that one should fulfill? Certainly yes! Like any other career, you must possess certain farming skills to succeed.

If you don’t possess the skills, you should research widely to learn and understand things before diving in. What are these specific requirements you should have to become a successful farmer?

Agricultural Skills Checklist

If you are a novice farmer starting on the farming path, these are some crucial farming skills you need to acquire.

1. Organizational skills

As mentioned earlier, farming is like any other business. It has all the business dynamics, including cash flows, paperwork, machinery, employees, daily activities, etc. Organizational skills thus become a must-have to help you maintain the smooth running of every operation.

Even a simple farming business can be challenging if you can’t keep organized records or plan the day’s activities. A good farmer must know where every document concerning the farm is and make it easy to locate them.

This includes insurance records, payroll, certification paperwork, labor contracts, machinery service, repair schedules, etc. If you want to be a successful farmer, this is a skill you must possess, especially for beginners or small-scale farmers.

For the big farms, however, you can certainly afford to employ a professional to do all your record-keeping and help keep everything in order. 

But be careful; when hiring, only use reputable agriculture executive recruiting agencies to ensure you get qualified personnel. This will guarantee that all your farm’s records are safe and filed in an easy-to-locate manner.

However, when starting your journey, you’ll most likely be doing this yourself; thus, you must have this important skill.

2. Farm Operations Skills

Now that you have the farm and have started your operations, how do you manage what goes on in the farm?

For starters, farming is not automatic. This means that someone must be rolling up the wheels to ensure that everything is running properly.

Whether it’s land preparation activities, planting, harvesting, or animal vaccination, daily activities on the farm must run smoothly. As a farmer, you must plan and know daily activities and how they are carried out.

This will be crucial to your short-term and long-term goals and achievements. If you can’t manage the farm’s activities, you might not accomplish your goals or hit those farming targets.

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3. Animals and Crops Management Skills

Farming includes dealing with crops and animals. And whichever kind of farming you’re engaged in, whether animal rearing, growing crops, or both, you must understand it well.

This will ensure you can raise healthy plants or animals to generate profits for your business. In the long run, all we are targeting is to maximize profits.

Let’s say you are into crop farming; you must know the best types of seeds, where to get them, how to prepare the best-growing conditions for them, etc.

As I pointed out earlier, farming is not all easy. It requires more than just putting the seeds on the ground and watching them grow.

For example, imagine you are doing aquaponics farming. You’ll need to choose the best aquaponics kits, know the best aquatic animals for maximum production, and identify the ideal crops for the project.

Better still, if you want to start a greenhouse farm, what types of crops will you grow, or which type of greenhouse best fits your farming needs? 

In essence, you must know how to farm before diving all into the farming business.

See related: Best Aquaponics Greenhouse Kits

4. Technical/Mechanical Skills

While there are numerous examples of farming skills, this one is crucial, especially for small-time farmers. You might not have a department specialist with a small farm, from IT specialists to farm managers, drivers, mechanics, etc.

This means that you must be ready to handle some of these tasks personally when they occur. For instance, if your greenhouse grows lights broke down, can you repair them to prevent plant damage?

Also, if it’s a big farm and the mechanic isn’t around, can you do simple maintenance on your farm’s machinery?

Better still, are you savvy with computers and can feed in some records or even make some purchase orders?

Having some technical skills will help ensure that simple breakdowns don’t bring the entire farm’s operations to a standstill. This way, you can protect your profits in the long run.

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5. Interpersonal/Communication Skills

Excellent interpersonal skills are vital for the success of any business, and farming is not an exception. As a farmer, you should know how to deal with and relate with different people who affect your business in one way or the other.

These will include your employees, suppliers, consumers, other farmers, and partners if you have any.

You should be a good communicator to ensure that information is passed on well to whomever you relate with. And since you’ll be quiet with your crops or animals most of the time, you must sharpen your interpersonal skills. This will help you greatly when it now comes to talking to people.

Remember, you cannot do it all alone. The success of your farm will depend largely on how you relate to people. Those people will offer labor, assist you in getting the desired products (such as veterinaries), and finally consume your products.

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6. Practical Farming skills

Don’t be an all-theory person when it comes to farming. Possessing some practical skills in agriculture will come in handy in a big way.

For instance, can you use farm machinery and equipment, manage animals’ diseases, set up a greenhouse, or spray the necessary pesticides on your crops?

These vital farm skills will take your farming career a long way. For this reason, even having theoretical knowledge is not enough.

Before you dip both feet into farming, go for practical training on some of the main farming issues – depending on your type of farming.

Be sure you can take care of your animals even without the help of a specialist – except on major issues. If you are farming crops, ensure you can care for your plants in all aspects.

Be a hands-on farmer, whether it’s pesticide control, nutrient provision, cultivating, or harvesting.

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7. Value Addition Knowledge

When establishing any business, the end goal is, more often than not, getting a profit. It’s even unheard of for someone to start a business just for the sake of it – unless it’s a charity organization. Farming is the same!

Value addition is one way of ensuring that your products fetch you maximum profits. For this reason, having some value-added farming skills is quite beneficial.

This will help you understand what is needed to optimize each production phase for the best results. Every stage, from seed selection to disease control, nutrient addition, and provision of optimal environmental conditions, contributes to the final product’s success.

A clear understanding of this chain of events and what is required helps minimize losses and maximize profits.

8. Be a Quick Learner

While it’s important you possess most of the necessary farming knowledge before you start a farm, you certainly can’t have it all. Farming involves continuous learning as new farming methods and technology emerge daily.

This means that you must be able to grasp everything new that comes your way as you go on. One thing is for sure: you’ll encounter new and challenging aspects of farming that you never knew existed. If you aren’t flexible and quick to adapt, the competition might leave you behind or fail altogether.

This field will keep changing, and it doesn’t require anyone so rigid and unprepared to incorporate new knowledge.

Learn, learn, learn every day for a successful farming business. This is one of the most important qualities of a good farmer.

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9. Marketing Skills

This is a set of crucial skills needed for agriculture and any other field of business. But how? Anyone would ask! Now that you’ve done everything right and raised the best crops or animals, how do you get it to the market?

How do consumers get to buy your farm produce and leave the ones offered by your competitors? This is where marketing skills come in handy. While some might argue that good products will automatically sell, it’s not always true.

The assumption might work for a few small farmers, but if you do this as a business, you need your products to be known.

You must create market awareness if you don’t want to harvest impressive products that spoil in your granaries. Even the most ideal products may have minimal impact on the market if proper marketing is not done. This is especially true in intense competition.

So, polish up your marketing skills by learning more. Numerous online resources can help you with this.

See Related: How to Grow Vegetables Year-Round in a Greenhouse

Things to Know Before Getting Into Farming

• Farming is a Business

While some people do it as a hobby, pass-time, or simply for survival, farming can be like any other business. It is one of the most profitable businesses globally.

This is because almost everything we need for survival comes from farming. The clothes we wear, food, and shelter all come from agriculture. When done right, farming can fetch quite a good amount of money.

• Farming Can be Done Professionally

Farming is no longer the dirty job we once knew. Technology and education have come to turn this field around. With automated equipment, advanced technology, and change in perception, you can do farming like a professional.

Like being a lawyer, an accountant, or a doctor, a farmer is also a professional in their capacity. Farming is even more profound than most professions, especially with all the education and skills required for its success.

• Farmers Are Now Smarter

Unlike in the past, when farming was done on a small scale or just for sustenance, farmers have become more problem solvers. Most of them are smart, tech-savvy researchers and incredible entrepreneurs.

Around 70% of large-scale farmers are well-educated, with college diplomas, degrees, and trade certifications. This brings a completely new perception of farming. Many farmers have specialized in agronomy and animal science, although others have done business and other subjects.

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