Cam Dahl, the general manager of Manitoba Pork, warns that the labour shortage facing agriculture limits the sector’s growth potential and causes some operations to question whether they can continue to operate.
Manitoba Pork posted an article on the labour crunch faced by Canadian agriculture, highlighting shortages. Last year, a Canadian Agricultural Resources Council survey showed that 40 percent of agricultural businesses did not meet their staffing requirements leading to over 135 thousand open positions by the end of the decade. As well, rural populations keep dropping, leaving fewer people that grew up on the farm available to continue with that work. As well, it’s harder to convince urban Canadians to come out and work on the farm because it’s not seen as skilled work nor as a career and that’s something that needs to change.
The COVID situation brought the labour shortage to a head with shortages on farms in the barn and feed mills, a lack of livestock veterinarians and short people to work in processing plants. So it goes throughout the entire sector.
No doubt it will inhibit the growth of agriculture production and processing. If agriculture producers or value-added processors can’t get the people they need to run their plants and their farms, they’re not going to take advantage of some of those growth opportunities. So that’s a real problem for Manitoba and the Canadian economy as a whole.
“In some cases, operations question whether to go forward if they can’t have or find the labour and the skilled workers to carry on with their operations; some are even going to close down. It’s critical.”
“We do need to showcase agriculture and what an interesting career it can be, whether it’s on the cutting edge of genetics or animal care or nutrition or marketing, agriculture is a fascinating place to be and people don’t understand.”
It is starting to get attention where the recent Federal Provincial and Territorial Ministers meeting in Guelph included labour and labour-related issues as priorities.
“We see groups in Manitoba come together, and the commodity groups formed a labour task force under the Keystone Agriculture Producers umbrella to tackle this issue. So there is recognition of how serious the problem is by the industry coming together to look for solutions. It is on our political leaders’ radar screens; we just don’t have those solutions to put in the window quite yet.”
While specific to the ag industry in moving it forward, it also affects the public because agriculture is such a driver of the economy in Manitoba and can grow.
Dahl referenced the investment coming because of Manitoba’s growth and swine production.
The $35 million plant outside of Plumas that the swine genetics company Topigs is investing in, the 300 plus jobs at Maple Leaf in Winnipeg because of the expansion of the value-added processing.
“These are real jobs, a real boost to the economy, that is coming about because we have that critical mass of production here in Manitoba and that avenue for investment.”
If that investment doesn’t happen, if there’s a bottleneck because of labour it will affect investment in the rural communities and cities, and that’s the economy’s growth and more jobs. So it should concern all Manitobans.
He said people could contact Manitoba Pork or any commodity organizations, the Keystone Agriculture Producers, for example, something the industry will tackle on many fronts. Whether through building the profile of agriculture as a career, agriculture in the classroom, for example, is working on this issue.
“So, anybody that’s able to help out, we’d gladly take on the volunteers.” •
— By Harry Siemens
