The 29th Meeting of Dairy Club (Joint Venture of Alltech and UVAS) was held on Monday November 04, 2013 at Syndicate Room UVAS.

Following was the agenda of meeting:

23 participants attended this meeting.

Dr. Muhammad Zafar Ullah Khan opened the house and gave warm welcome to the participants. He introduced the speaker and explained the agenda of the meeting.

Dr. Amanullah presented lecture on Staff Management Practices in Dairy Farming
Does it Matter?

Bullet points of his presentation are as follows:

Management Issues in Dairy Farming:

1. Poor strategies for attracting and retaining skilled labour
2. Limited employee training
3. Lack of employee career development opportunities
4. Poor compensation and benefits provision
5. Neglect of occupational health and safety (OH&S)
6. Employee dissatisfaction with long working hours

Lower down the dairy farm performance:

1. Farm Profitability
2. Labor productivity
3. Herd Health

Use of HRM practices:

1. Recruitment & Selection
2. Training & Development
3. Compensation & Benefits
4. Career planning
5. OH&S
6. Flexible work hours

Better HRM outcomes:

1. Low Employee turnover
2. Low Employee absenteeism
3. Improved Dairy Farm Performance
1. Farm Profitability
2. Herd Health
3. Labor Productivity
4. Milk Quality

Practical Implications:

1. Offered conceptual map to the policy makers and farm managers to reflect in HRM practices and policies for dairy farm performance.
2. Implementation of HRM practices may benefit employees, and certainly the dairy farmers as well, and in turn, may contribute to national economic development.
3. Updates researchers and practitioners about the rare field of HRM in the dairy industry.

Questions Answers/Comments:

Note: PowerPoint presentation of the lecture is available on Dairy Club website. (http://uvas.edu.pk/society-club/dairy_club/useful-links.htm).

Hafiz Wasi Muhammad: Main issue at dairy farm is not about skilled labour. Its is about unskilled labour. We use to select labour having cultural wisdom. When wheat harvesting season starts, labour leaves farms and get involved in wheat harvesting. Such seasonal issues creats big problems in managing HR at dairy farms. Better practice is to higher few labour persons with their families at farm.

Dr. Haroon: In Latin America families are running the farms and they live in the vicinity of farms.

Sardar Zaid: Buffalo farming is more intensive than cattle farming. More labour and more HR issues.

Prof. Dr. Masood Rabbani distributed his book on disease diagnosis and their treatment to the participants.

Hassan Saleem: 55.5% of our livestock population is distributed in herd size of 1-10 animals. We have to look issue on that level as well. We have to focus on future research and action research.

Hafiz Wasi Muhammad: Awareness is increasing day by day and thing are getting better.

Imtiaz Zubair: In EU and US subsidies are going to taken off and cost of production will go up. In Pakistan land leasing expenses has increased enormously. While making feasibilities of dairy farm we have to consider all factors including HR cost.

Dr. Amanullah told that as it is established fact that HR is an issue at dairy farms, he will be designing more projects to dig out the issue.