Contract Milking Experience Survey 2025
If I’ve caused offence before to other farm consultants with my opinions that contract milkers need to be paid fairly, I am really going to upset them this month. And according to some, I only did this survey for the media spotlight and to make dairying look bad! However, for those that work in this space or have been a contract milker, the stats I am about to rattle off are not going to surprise you and may be lower than you expected. I did the survey because first and foremost, I care about people and I have worked with far too many sharefarmers who have been exploited and treated terribly for someone else’s gain, with no money left to cover legal costs needed to seek compensation they are entitled to as per their contract milking agreement.
For those that aren’t familiar with contract milking, it is niche when we compare it other industries. In most of the cases in other industries if someone isn’t paying you or is being abusive, you can down tools and walk away. As a contract milker, you must live where you work so to walk away would leave you homeless and you must carry on like everything is fine or risk not being able to get another job or being taken to court yourself. The power imbalance is real, and it is immense.
The survey was truly one of a kind, with 276 contract milkers responding, 200 of which are current contract milkers. These contract milkers make up 12.6% of current contract milkers in the industry so while there will be self-selection bias, this is up there with other industry surveys (which also have self-selection bias) and had a representative spread of those on Private, Farmwise and Federated Farmers agreements.
The “Stats”:
· 72.7% of respondents reported experiencing a contract milking role that caused them to go backward financially and/or mentally.
· 16.8% of respondents reported having their milk payments withheld, 20% of these were on Federated Farmers agreements where withholding milk payments is a hard no. This indicated that the problem doesn’t lie with who wrote your agreement (although the number was higher for private agreements at 34%), it lies with how it is completed and then adhered to.
· 40% felt somewhat or pressured to sign their agreement without seeking adequate advice. These respondents were 31% (pressured) to 42% (somewhat pressured) more likely to experience abusive behaviour from their farm owner amongst other metrics. This highlighted that the number one red flag of a role is any pressure to sign.
· Of the 55.1% who reported being employed in couple roles, 81.5% reported going backward financially and/or mentally, 32.5% reported that one partner needed to work for free and 41.7% to work for less than minimum wage. Startlingly, where farm advisors were involved in the signing only, no respondents reported the partner being compensated fairly and this was also lower where a farm advisor was involved in both management and signing and management only, than no farm advisor involved at all.
· Of those who experienced a role which caused a mental and/or financial setback, only 24.3% sought assistance from Rural Support Trust (RST) but 77.6% of these respondents reported that the support they received was adequate which is heartening. The majority of those who didn’t seek assistance from RST didn’t do so because they didn’t know who the RST were and that is a problem which can be solved.
· 38.4% of respondents who reported a financial and/or mental setback also reported staying in a role because they were worried about finding somewhere to live. A further 24.3% were worried they would have to but didn’t in the end.
These statistics might look bad, it might also “filter down to the careers advisors” but these aren’t stats that are new-to-New Zealanders. Careers advisors have long been cautious about advising farming as a career and parents cautious about allowing their children to enter the dairy sector. But now we now know the issues we need solutions for, we can start seeking legislative changes to make it a better, happier and safer place to work and I think that is rather positive. Watch this space.
