“The danger here might be that the sector might not live up to its potential,” said Nicholas Renzetti, research associate with Smart Property Institute, the group that wrote the report in partnership with the Future Skills Centre.

And that potential is enormous. Protein Industries Canada believes the plant-based protein sector could be contributing $25 billion annually to Canada’s gross domestic product by 2035.

“Manitoba alone wants to grow its protein sector by attracting $1.5 billion in investment and creating 1,550 jobs by 2025,” stated the report.

Major investments have already been made in the two prairie provinces.

Roquette opened the world’s largest pea processing plant in Portage la Prairie, Man., in 2021.

Cargill and Viterra have announced plans to build canola crushing facilities in Regina that will be operational by 2024.

Federated Co-operatives Ltd. and AGT Food and Ingredients are building a $2 billion canola crushing and biodiesel plant in the same city that will be completed by 2027.

Burcon NutraScience Corporation’s pilot protein ingredient plant in Winnipeg received funding in 2023.

But a survey of companies working in that space revealed that there are some significant hurdles to overcome for those plants to be successful.

“People are concerned that the persistent labour challenges might lead to a situation where the sector continues along but doesn’t expand to its full potential,” said Renzetti.

The case of Merit Functional Foods offers a cautionary tale along those lines, according to the report.

There were “sky-high expectations” when the company opened its 94,000 sq. foot processing plant in Winnipeg in 2021.

Two years later the firm declared bankruptcy despite receiving $116.5 million in federal and provincial funding.

“The company’s lack of success was attributed to factors ranging from the high costs of inputs to labour shortages to delays in new product development,” stated the report.

A survey by the Canadian Federation for Independent Businesses found that 63 percent of agri-food companies could not hire all the staff they needed.

“There is a lack of visibility and perceived attractiveness for food and beverage manufacturing careers,” stated the report.

Renzetti said that is odd given that it is the largest manufacturing sector in the country measured by employment and the second largest measured by sales.

It doesn’t help that wages paid in the food manufacturing sector are typically much lower than in competing sectors such as potash mining and oil and gas extraction.

Average pay in the food manufacturing sector was $21.20 per hour in 2020 compared to an average manufacturing wage of $30.36 per hour.

Another hurdle is that many food production facilities are in rural areas, which means there is a smaller talent pool to draw on and it is harder to convince newcomers to Canada to settle in those areas.

“We do think these are solvable challenges,” said Renzetti.

The first step is to create increased awareness of food manufacturing jobs starting at the educational institutes.

People training in information technology, engineering and data analysis might not be aware of these jobs.

One idea is to work with institutes to create job internships or to get them teaching specific technical skills unique to food manufacturing jobs.

Food manufacturers need to make better use of existing immigration programs, such as the Provincial Nominee Program, which he called a “standout” program.

The industry should also lobby hard to get plant-based protein manufacturing on the list of eligible industries for the federal Agri-Food Pilot program.

There needs to be better co-ordination and sharing of labour market data between provinces and with the federal government.

And there should be a wholistic approach to job creation that places an emphasis on quality-of-life aspects, such as providing adequate transportation, housing and child-care facilities to accompany the new job.

—Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer from Saskatchewan.

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However, large-scale grain farmers could also use the technology if they think about it differently.

“Let’s say my brother and me are growing 1,500 acres of corn,” said Baresich, who owns Haggerty AgRobotics and also operates Haggerty Creek Crop Inputs and Marketing at Bothwell, Ont.

“(So) why are we growing that corn instead of tomatoes instead of a higher-value crop?”

The answer is labour.

He cannot find farm workers or afford to pay labourers to kill weeds and manage a high-value crop such as tomatoes.

As a result, Baresich and his brother grow corn because it’s manageable.

“The weed control options for the vegetable crops… (it’s) too much labour and work,” said Baresich, who spoke at the Agriculture Enlightened conference held Thursday in Winnipeg.

The host and organizer of the conference was EMILI, which is trying to help Canada become a leader in digital and precision agriculture.

“EMILI works with producers, industry and academia to advance the adoption of intelligent technologies and provide people with the skills and training required to succeed in a digital economy,” its website says.

READ MORE: Think outside the agriculture box for labour

Baresich spoke at the event and was joined on stage by Rick Rutherford, who operates Rutherford Farms north of Winnipeg.

Rutherford doubts that robotic equipment to spray weeds and perform other field tasks are useful on a 7,000-acre grain farm in Western Canada.

“We’re definitely not into robots yet,” he said.

“The return on something like that, today, in broad-scale agriculture isn’t there.”

Baresich agreed.

Putting a small robot into the field can’t compete with a large and efficient piece of equipment.

“Rick is correct. On a broad-scale (situation), labour is your lowest cost. So, removing the driver out of the sprayer doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“If you’ve got a 60-foot seeder that can seed 400 acres per day, it’s hard to replace that with a robot. The ROI (return on investment) doesn’t work.”

However, getting back to his example of 1,500 acres of corn, Baresich said a robotic machine could change what a farmer grows.

Instead of seeding 1,500 acres of corn, Baresich could plant 1,400 acres of corn and 100 acres of onions or another high-value crop because the robot would do the work of a couple of paid employees.

This isn’t happening on his farm yet.

“We’re looking at it very closely,” he said.

“What we’re seeing in Ontario, we’re seeing a growth in the vegetable market and the higher-value crops.”

That sort of approach to robotic farm equipment could make sense in parts of Western Canada.

The region around Portage la Prairie, Man., for instance, is a major producer of carrots, onions and other vegetable crops. Maybe grain growers in the region could dedicate a portion of their acres to a higher-value crop if the robot was able to reduce labour and production costs.

This sort of innovation and adoption of technology could become more critical for Canadian farmers.

However, producers may be hesitant to take the risk and test it out on their farms.

That’s the benefit of groups like EMILI, which operates Innovation Farms on Rutherford’s land north of Winnipeg.

Innovation Farms is part of a network of similar farms across the country, called the Pan-Canadian Smart Farm Network.

At these locations, innovators and entrepreneurs can test and refine their agricultural technologies at scale or demonstrate the value of more established technologies.

These farms are critical because Canadian farmers want to see something that works under real-world conditions.

“It’s fun to look at those things (new technologies like robots), but you’re not moving the needle by saying, ‘I did this on 200 square feet,’ ” Baresich said.

“You’re going to move the needle by saying, ‘I did this on 70 acres.'”

— Robert Arnason reports for the Winnipeg bureau of the Western Producer.

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“I’m one of the lucky ones,” said Brenna Mahoney, general manager of Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP). 

Mahoney entered the industry with no agriculture experience. She had training in human resources and got a term job at Cereals Canada. “I just happened to have a boss who saw potential and connected dots for me.” 

Mahoney spoke during a panel discussion on agriculture technology, education and labour during the Agriculture Enlightened conference in Winnipeg, Oct. 26. 

“When you write your next job description, are you putting agriculture as the number one requirement?” Mahoney asked. “Or are we looking at some of the soft skills?” 

“When we put out a job ad, you know, five to six years working in agriculture is usually the prerequisite so, you know, we automatically have to cancel people out,” she added. 

“We’re really trying to change that conversation around our table,” Mahoney said. 

The panelists discussed how Agriculture in the Classroom plants the idea of agriculture careers in the minds of young people. 

Mahoney told a story about how, at the diner in her small town, the young waitress told her she wanted to become a plant geneticist. When asked where she got that idea, the young woman said that Agriculture in the Classroom had come to her school. 

“And I saw whoo!” Mahoney said. “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.” 

Panel host Jennifer Flanagan, the CEO of Actua — a firm that connects students with the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields — said her organization recently partnered with EMILI and Agriculture in the Classroom Manitoba (AITC-M) to bring agriculture technology to young people, particularly Indigenous youth in the Prairie provinces. 

The project added agriculture technology jobs to a career exploration package Ag in the Classroom provides to teachers AITC-M executive director Katherine Cherewyk said in an interview after the panel. 

Technology is changing quickly, Cherewyk acknowledged. However, she said in her experience, when kids know what they want to do, they begin connecting how they can use new technology to reach their goals. 

For more coverage of Agriculture Enlightened, see future editions of the Manitoba Co-operator, the Western Producer and Grainews.

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Federal Employment and Workforce Development Minister Randy Boissonault last week launched a three-year pilot meant to “help to address labour shortages and reduce the administrative burden for repeat employers participating in the (TFW) program who demonstrate a history of complying with program requirements.”

The pilot program, dubbed the Recognized Employer Pilot (REP), was telegraphed in the federal budget in April last year with a funding envelope of $29.3 million over three years.

Canadian employers who want to import TFWs must today fill out labour market impact assessments (LMIAs) every year, documenting an employer’s need for a TFW and that no Canadians or permanent residents are available to do the job in question.

Under the REP, however, eligible employers would have access to LMIAs valid for up to 36 months, and would also get a simplified LMIA application if they need to hire additional workers from the same occupation during the pilot.

Recognized employers under the REP would also get a Job Bank designation that confirms their “recognized” status to prospective workers.

It’s expected the pilot “will help employers better plan for their staffing needs and reduce the number of different LMIAs they need to submit over three years,” the government said in a release Aug. 8.

Under the first phase of the REP, employers in the TFW program’s primary agriculture stream can apply starting in September this year, in time for the 2024 production season. All other employers will be eligible to apply in January 2024. The window for all employer applications for REP would close in September next year.

In short, Boissonault said, the REP “will cut red tape for eligible employers — those who demonstrate the highest level of protection for workers — and make it easier for them to access the labour they need to fill jobs that are essential to Canada’s economy and food security.”

“It is vital that Canadian employers, including farmers and food processors, are able to hire the workers who are critical to food production and food security in Canada,” federal Ag Minister Lawrence MacAulay said in the same release, adding the REP should cut the “administrative burden” for eligible ag employers “while ensuring the safety of workers.”

An employer’s eligibility for REP would be assessed and determined by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), the government said.

To take part in the REP, an employer would need to have at least three positive LMIAs for the same occupation over the past five years, from a list of occupations designated as “in-shortage” as per Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS) data.

If an employer doesn’t get recognized status under REP, he or she will still be eligible to use the TFW program and the department would continue to assess his or her LMIA.

‘Long been asking’

Several ag groups have since hailed the launched of the REP. Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada president Jan VanderHout said the pilot “brings us one step closer to our goal of reducing the administrative burden faced by Canadian growers.”

Bill George, chair of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association labour section, said last Thursday that group’s members “have long been asking for a streamlined application process for employers with a strong history of program compliance, which makes this announcement a particularly welcome step forward.”

Chronic labour shortages in the past several decades have left some farms reliant on TFWs, “many of them working with the same people for years, if not decades, on end,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Keith Currie said last Thursday in a separate release.

“While we look forward to getting further details on the program, this program looks like it will reduce the administrative burden on those farmers who can demonstrate a history of compliance and years of reliability as employers.”

The REP plan follows the launch in April of a new online portal as the “primary method” for TFW employers to submit LMIAs. Moving that process online “will further improve processing and is helping employers address their labour market needs quickly,” the government said last week. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The province on Tuesday announced the two-year registered veterinary technologist program at Saskatchewan Polytechnic will offer a distance delivery option, starting this fall, for vet techs to train in rural and remote areas.

Eight students will be accepted for the fall intake on the new option, whereas the vet tech diploma program usually accepts 26 first-year students per year at the school’s Saskatoon campus.

Participants in the remote program would “begin their studies remotely and complete the program at a partnering clinical practice with local veterinarians,” the province said.

Students in the virtual program would have to complete the program out of a rural partnering clinic — specifically, a mixed animal clinic, Saskatchewan Polytechnic said.

The advanced education ministry will put up $687,000 for development and operating costs for the new program in 2021-22, the province said Tuesday.

Further sweetening the offer, the province on Tuesday also announced a loan forgiveness program for new graduates who practice in rural or remote areas of the province.

Under that plan, veterinarians and veterinary technologists who work in rural and remote communities for up to five years will have up to $20,000 of their Saskatchewan Student Loans forgiven, the province said.

The province noted Tuesday that three of the 20 seats it funds at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) at the University of Saskatchewan will prioritize admission of students who are “more likely to work in a large animal and/or rural mixed animal practice.”

The remote learning and loan forgiveness programs are “important to addressing a labour market shortage in rural Saskatchewan,” Advanced Education Minister Gene Makowsky said in Tuesday’s release.

The Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association, for one, “has been talking about the challenge of diminished rural veterinary services for years,” association chair Arnold Balicki said in the province’s release.

The association is involved in a preceptorship partnership with Saskatchewan Veterinary Medical Association, he noted, to help third-year students try out practices in rural Saskatchewan.

The province’s latest steps, Balicki said, “are very welcome in ensuring cattle producers have access to veterinary services across Saskatchewan.”

“The provincial government’s move to target three rural-oriented seats will help encourage even more of our veterinary graduates to choose agriculture-focused veterinary careers,” WCVM interim dean Dr. Gillian Muir said in the same release.

A shortage of veterinarians and vet techs in rural areas hasn’t gone unnoticed in neighbouring Alberta either, where the sector is considering more ways to use vet techs in rural practices, and seeking out internationally-trained vets. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The federal government said Tuesday it will, effective “immediately,” temporarily waive its rule requiring a TFW to receive federal approval for a new work permit before he or she starts at a different new job.

Up against “new challenges in a rapidly changing job market” due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many TFWs with employer-specific work permits lost their jobs this spring, the government said in a release.

Of those, some have already left Canada; others can’t yet leave due to international travel restrictions or unavailability of flights. But under the normal process for a TFW to switch to another eligible job, he or she must first apply for a new work permit, then wait for that permit to be approved and issued before he or she can begin work.

The new temporary policy allows a TFW who is already in Canada and has secured a new job offer — “typically backed by a labour market test” — to get approval to start working in the new job, even while the work permit application is being fully processed.

The temporary policy will shorten a process that “can often take 10 weeks or more, down to 10 days or less,” the government said.

The decision comes as “many employers in sectors that have ongoing labour needs and who provide critical goods and services to Canadians, such as agriculture, agri-food and health care, find themselves with urgent needs for additional employees,” the government said.

“Today’s announcement builds on all the work we have been doing since the moment COVID struck to ensure our agriculture sector, particularly our horticultural producers, can count on their workforce and that they can ensure their safety,” federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said Tuesday in a separate statement.

To be eligible for the shortened process, a TFW must be in Canada with valid status and an employer-specific work permit — or must have been working under a work permit exemption — and must have submitted an application for a new work permit with a valid job offer, under either the TFW program or the International Mobility Program.

The work permit applicant must then submit a request to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The request will be reviewed “within 10 days,” the government said, and if approved, authorization for the worker to start at the new job will go to the applicant via email.

An employer eligible for the new process still must have or get a valid positive labour market impact assessment (LMIA) from Employment and Social Development Canada, name the worker in a position on the LMIA, and notify Service Canada.

In an “employer-specific, LMIA-exempt” situation, an employer must submit an offer of employment through the International Mobility Program employer portal.

“While there will always be jobs for Canadians who choose to work in these sectors, these changes help support our economy by ensuring that temporary foreign workers already here can contribute during these extraordinary times,” federal Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said in the government’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Those shortages are more in the manager and owner categories though, says the Canadian Agri-Food Human Resources Council (CAHRC).

As part of its extensive study of worker shortages in agriculture, CAHRC has issued reports on the dairy and poultry sectors. The single biggest labour challenge they’ll face going forward is “finding skilled and experienced farm managers, including owner-operators. For these commodities, management and ownership jobs account for almost two-thirds of the current workforce, and between now and 2025, they will account for the majority of the jobs going unfilled due to a lack of domestic workers.”

• Read more: Could Trump save the dairy industry from itself?

“Unless these industries can find additional sources of labour with the right skills and experience, they will suffer from a critical gap at the managerial and leadership levels that could inhibit their ability to thrive,” the council pointed out. The two sectors account for 55,500 jobs or 15 per cent of the total agricultural workforce.

“Through consolidation, automation and other efficiencies, the dairy cattle industry has shed more than a third of its workers since 2009, employing 39,900 as of 2014. However, despite this reduction in the size of the workforce, an additional 3,400 jobs went unfilled due to a lack of available domestic workers. This labour shortfall cost an estimated $71 million in lost sales.

“In 2014, 15,600 people were employed in the poultry and egg industry and an additional 250 jobs went unfilled due to a lack of domestic labour,” the council noted. “These shortages cost the industry an estimated $6 million in lost sales. By 2025, 15,900 workers will be required, and 1,100 jobs are at risk of going unfilled.

“Both industries will be significantly impacted by retirement, with nearly one-third of the dairy workforce and nearly one-quarter of the poultry and egg workforce expected to retire by 2025,” CARHC said. “Finding Canadian workers with the right skills and experience is the greatest barrier to recruitment for both industries, despite the fact that they often offer attractive work conditions, including full-time, year-round employment located relatively close to urban centres.”

The council has concluded that the gap between labour demand and the domestic workforce in agriculture has doubled from 30,000 to 59,000 in the past 10 years and by 2025, there will be 114,000 more jobs than workers unless more Canadians are attracted to the sector or the federal government admits more foreign workers. Overall, the agri-food sector has a current job vacancy rate of seven per cent.

In the dairy sector, the demand for labour is expected to continue to decline as a result of a stable market for the industry’s products. However, the labour supply is also predicted to shrink as well.

“As a result, the industry will continue to experience a labour shortage, with manager and owner-operator jobs at the greatest risk of going unfilled. Of the 1,100 jobs forecasted to go unfilled by 2025, 90 per cent will be jobs at the manager and owner-operator level, which will result in a skills shortage as well as a labour shortage.”

The poultry sector faces a levelling of demand similar to dairy, the council noted.

“Improved industry productivity will limit the demand for labour, while a shrinking supply of domestic labour will widen the industry labour gap. As with the dairy cattle industry, manager and owner-operator jobs will be the most difficult to fill.”

The stable employment dairy and poultry offer also means they suffer lower rates of employee loss than other agri-food sectors.

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The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council on Tuesday released labour market information (LMI) research which, based on data for 2014, pegged primary agriculture’s annual farm cash receipt losses at $1.5 billion, or about three per cent of the sector’s total value in sales and production.

In the beef cattle sector alone, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association noted in a separate release, unfilled vacancies cost the industry $141 million in farm gate cash receipts in 2014.

The study found the gap between labour demand and the domestic Canadian farm workforce now sits at 59,000. the CAHRC said in a release during its recent “Growing the AgriWorkforce” summit in Winnipeg.

Projections indicate that by 2025, the Canadian agri-workforce could be short workers for 114,000 jobs, the council said. In the beef cattle sector alone, the gap could widen to 12,500, the CCA said.

In the beef sector, the CCA said, the study suggested the future increased labour gap could come from a spike in labour demand for up to 2,500 workers, as export-dependent and “protein-based” commodities are expected to post productivity growth of about 2.5 per cent over the next 10 years.

Trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Canada’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union are also likely to generate more beef exports, the CCA said.

The LMI study suggested a declining labour supply in beef production, due mainly to retirements by up to a third of current producers over the next 10 years, will be the largest contributor to that projected labour gap, the CCA added.

The CAHRC said its research was based on surveys, interviews and focus groups with 1,034 representatives of Canadian farm organizations, employees and employers, including 813 farmers.

The LMI study looked only at primary production, not processors or input suppliers, but worker shortages affect both farmers and processors, the council added.

“Unfilled jobs in Canadian food processing plants force Canadian foods to be processed outside of Canada in places like the U.S. and Mexico where there are workers,” the council said.

As a result, Canada has to import its food back into the country after processing, which adds to food costs for Canadians, and “these two factors together could have a significant impact on Canada’s ability to produce and process its own food.”

Immigration is likely to account for growing share of the future labour force in Canadian agriculture and beef production, the CCA said, but “some provinces may benefit more than others due to regional economies and demographics.”

“The situation is critical now and will only get worse unless it is effectively addressed,” Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst, the CAHRC’s executive director, said in the council’s release.

The council, she said, “has established the necessary collaborative channels with government and industry and now we need to continue to move forward to find solutions.” — AGCanada.com Network

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The vice-president of Saskatoon-based Farmers of North America got 30 calls in the first two days after his organization launched a new initiative last month to streamline the process of getting temporary foreign workers.

“Members started calling in immediately after receiving notifications,” said Martin.

“The feeling I had was kind of, ‘Oh, we’ve hit a sensitive spot here.’”

Prairie farmers have been scrambling for years to find and retain workers, many of whom are lured away by high wages in the oilpatch.

“The labour situation has become more difficult in recent years,” Martin said. “Farmers just can’t compete with oil money. They just can’t do it.”

After surveying their members and hearing the challenges they faced, the company looked for a business partner adept at navigating the regulations around temporary foreign workers. It has now joined forces with International Labour Canada, a company that brings in workers from areas in Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, as well as from Ireland.

But it’s not cheap — with the fee typically running about $4,000 per worker.

Nor can you expect to save on wages, which range from $14 to $34 an hour, minus some expenses.

“To be clear, this is not an inexpensive option for farmers,” Martin said. “Anyone who might claim Canadian farmers want to use the program to get cheap labour are either misinformed or flatly malicious.”

But given the current labour shortage, farmers don’t have much choice, he said.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture estimates the country is short by roughly 30,000 seasonal farm workers, and the federal government also recognizes the problem. But the regulatory burden is daunting.

“You know, Immigration Canada, and Employment Canada may very well say that this is a simple process… but it’s not,” Martin said. “I’ve run across numerous examples of farmers telling me that, ‘Yeah, we’ve tried this before. We’ve tried to do it on our own and we’ve spent three years trying to jump through the hoops, and we ultimately gave up in frustration.’”

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