Job vacancies in agriculture will surpass 100,000 by 2030, and that loss could shrink Canada’s domestic food production, according to a new report.
Without enough workers to tend to farms and harvest crops, Canada’s ability to grow its own food would be limited.
“There will be a direct impact on food supply… produced in Canada,” said Jennifer Wright, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, which produced the report. “We need to do things differently to attract workers,” said Wright, whose non-profit helps address human resource issues in agriculture.
In the long term, Canada could become reliant on imports, she said. “We need to have access to domestic food as our main source of food.”
When the pandemic caused bottlenecks in global supply chains, the country’s strong domestic food production helped give Canadians more affordable food options as import prices spiked, said Wright.
In 2022, farms employed more than 351,000 Canadian workers and 71,000 temporary foreign workers. That same year, there were 28,200 farm job vacancies, according to the Conference Board of Canada’s Model of Occupations.
These unfilled positions resulted in a 3.7 per cent decrease in sales, a loss estimated at $3.5 billion, according to a survey by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council.
‘Dignified experience’
The cost of producing food has increased, putting pressure on already tight profit margins, said Drew Spoelstra, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, a group that advocates for farmers.
Salary and benefit packages for some farm workers can’t compete with other industries because of these tight margins, says Spoelstra. A survey included in the report showed agricultural workers’ top reasons for leaving a job are low pay and poor management practices.
Poor working conditions are another significant reason some agricultural work is unattractive, says Jenn Pfenning, president of the National Farmers Union. The report also points to working conditions as a factor contributing to job vacancies in agriculture.
Pfenning remembers noticing some farms had no washrooms for workers. “Even 20 years ago, in what other sector of employment would that have been acceptable?”
Putting portable toilets on a trailer near fields workers are harvesting is an example of how the agriculture industry can be a more “livable, respectable, dignified experience,” she said.
Examples like these are a “significant contributor to why [younger generations] don’t see themselves in farming,” she said. “We… have allowed the pressure on price to dictate the working conditions.”
Farming is hard work. Being honest about the requirements — how it can be backbreaking, starting work at 6 a.m., often working until after dark — is necessary to attract the right type of employee, one who enjoys being outdoors and doing physical labour, says Wright.
But farming “is an undervalued profession in Canada,” said Pfenning.
Employees at Pfenning’s farm have said friends and family ask them when they are going to get a new job. “Isn’t growing the food we need a real job?” she said. “This work isn’t as respected as others.”
A January 2024 report by Statistics Canada noted that, for temporary foreign workers in the food manufacturing industry who gain permanent residency, the five-year retention rate is just 36 per cent.
To retain foreign workers and address job vacancies, agriculture businesses will need strong management skills, says Alfons Weersink, professor in the department of food, agricultural and resource economics at the University of Guelph. Making the workers feel included in the community is key to long-term employment.
This might look like “providing a laptop with computer access so they can communicate with relatives back home,” said Weersink. Creating religious institutions for workers or access to a recreational centre to play soccer are other examples of how to retain workers.
Dispel misconceptions
One of the factors contributing to a pending labour shortage is the age of the current workforce.
Most Canadian farmers — 61 per cent — are older than 55 and 27 per cent are older than 65, says Warren Goodlet, the director general of the research and analysis directorate at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the federal government department responsible for the regulation of agriculture.
Recently, Wright heard of a farmer who finally retired at 96.
Many farmers are working past retirement age, said Pfenning. “Farming is a calling… we feel a kinship to the land.”
For farmers, their work is their lifestyle. “Farming offers a different way of life… to be part of the rural fabrics and rural communities, and grow [a] business,” said Spoelstra.
Farmers approaching retirement age without a natural successor — usually the farmer’s child or a co-worker — may continue to work to ensure the family farm is not bought by a company that would develop the land into something other than farming, said Wright. That happens mostly to farms closer to urban centres, he said.
The projected job vacancies in agriculture don’t just include jobs in the farm fields. The report notes the industry needs to “dispel the misconception that the only work in the sector is as a farmer.”
The agricultural industry needs a variety of employees, says Wright, including those to manage finances, sales, communications, marketing and IT. Developing new machinery and technology for farms also calls for environmental scientists, biologists and engineers.
Wright says presenting these diverse opportunities to work in agriculture to kids in elementary school and providing more internships in colleges and universities can help attract a young workforce.
At the University of Guelph, young agriculture students are looking forward to joining the workforce, said Weersink. Guelph students have a diverse range of interests, from herbicide study to bioengineering to farming.
But the challenge remains to keep those workers in agriculture.
We have to set up the business “in such a way that people who work [on the farm] will come back,” said Pfenning. They have to feel like they are “not just a pair of hands punching a clock.”
