By JENNY KELLY, The Weekly Times

Story Originally Published by The Weekly Times

Staff supervision: Farm manager Jurie De Wet from Shawe Beefmasters at Dundee and (below) a stockman moves cattle. Picture: Jenny Kelly

Traveling around South Africa, it quickly becomes apparent that staffing levels and people management are the eye-opening differences between farming here and in Australia.

Labour is so cheap that the classic Aussie story of multiple council workers leaning on a shovel to fill in a pothole is more like 20 people over here.

Soon after arriving here the tour bus ran into roadworks and, on my count, it took three people to move a little gate across the road like a stop/go sign.

And then you visit farms and find out details about labour and wages and the reaction is … “seriously?”

A dairy farm at Dundee milking 850 cows had 100 permanent employees.

A […]