We are recruiting an experienced Farm Manager to take a key operational leadership role within a major commercial banana production operation.

This is a substantial, hands-on management position requiring an experienced agricultural professional with a strong background in large-scale commercial farming and banana production.

The Farm Manager will take responsibility for the planning, management and optimization of plantation operations, ensuring production targets, export-quality standards, operational efficiency, cost control and workforce productivity are consistently achieved.

The Role

You will have overall operational responsibility across the farm, including:

  • Planning and managing banana production from planting through to harvest
  • Developing annual production plans, forecasts and yield projections
  • Managing banana agronomy, including sucker selection, ratoon management, pruning, deleafing, desuckering, bunch management and crop nutrition
  • Managing irrigation and fertigation programmers, water utilization and irrigation infrastructure
  • Monitoring crop health and implementing integrated pest and disease management programmes
  • Managing harvesting programmes and ensuring fruit quality standards
  • Overseeing packhouse operations, including grading, sorting, washing, packing and dispatch
  • Driving yield, productivity and quality while minimizing crop and post-harvest losses
  • Leading and developing a substantial, multicultural agricultural workforce
  • Managing farm operating budgets, expenditure and cost-control initiatives
  • Ensuring effective utilisation and maintenance of agricultural equipment and resources
  • Maintaining high standards of health, safety, environmental and agrochemical compliance
  • Producing accurate production, labour, inventory and operational reports

The position has direct responsibility for production supervisors, clerical/store functions and the packhouse team. 

About You

We are particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate:

  • 7–10+ years’ commercial agricultural experience
  • Significant experience in banana plantation management
  • Experience within large-scale agricultural operations, ideally banana plantations exceeding 3,000 hectares
  • Strong practical knowledge of banana agronomy and plantation management
  • Irrigation and fertigation management experience
  • Crop protection and agrochemical management
  • Harvesting and packhouse operations
  • Experience producing crops to export-quality standards
  • Management of large and multicultural workforces
  • Budgeting, cost control and operational planning
  • Strong agricultural reporting and data-analysis capabilities
  • Agricultural equipment and resource management

A Bachelor or Master’s degree in Agriculture, Crop Science, Agronomy, Plantation Management, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Engineering

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to take a leading role within a major commercial banana operation, with clear accountability for production, yield, quality, labour productivity and operational performance.

The successful candidate will be expected to deliver against demanding commercial targets, including production volumes, export-quality acceptance, crop-loss reduction, irrigation and fertigation compliance, packhouse efficiency and workforce productivity. 

Interested?

Apply with a detailed CV outlining the size of operations managed, hectares under production, crops grown, workforce responsibility and banana production experience.