Listening to farmers from across the country, you hear a wide range of strategies for dealing with the farm labour shortage. While organizations led by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council have long been chronicling the shortage and working on big picture solutions, farmers have had to find their own answers.
In many cases, additional money is being spent on equipment to help compensate for a shortage of people. Even though the price tag can be hefty, going from two seed drills to one big, new outfit and going from two moderate-sized combines to one big unit cuts the labour requirement.
But you still need people, especially in peak seasons. Sometimes the older generation on the family farm are still able to help out even if they no longer want to work long hours. Other times, city dwelling relatives or friends are able to come to the farm during busy times.
Sometimes landlords you’re renting from are willing to lend a hand. They get to work with newer equipment than what they used to run and they have minimal stress as compared to when they had to pay the bills and worry about equipment breakdowns. Sometimes retired producers embrace the technology on newer equipment; other times, technology is an obstacle.
Custom operators can be an option if the workload is too great for the people and equipment you have available. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to get custom operators when you need them and they may not do the job to your satisfaction.
Rather than someone who makes a business out of custom work, it can often be better to hire a trusted neighbour who has extra capacity for seeding, spraying and/or harvesting. If a neighbour knows they can get some custom work, they might buy bigger equipment than what they need to operate their own farm.
For people with young children, it may be easier to hire a nanny than a farm worker. Women are typically the primary care giver and having a nanny during peak times in the growing season can free them up to run equipment.
For vegetable production, large honey farms and orchards, the temporary foreign workers program has been invaluable. Some large grain farms are also tapping into this labour supply, but it isn’t without challenges.
The program has lots of red tape, many requirements aimed at protecting the workers, language barriers and no guarantee that people housed together will get along. These workers are in an unfamiliar country far away from their families. In many cases, they are asked to do hard, physical labour that few Canadian workers would even consider.
Contrary to popular perception, the supply of foreign farm workers is finite. Many of the same foreign farm workers have been coming to Canada for many growing seasons and although it would seem reasonable to allow them to become Canadian citizens, that isn’t as practical as it sounds.
In many cases, spouses and children don’t want to be uprooted from their home country. Economics is another problem. Although the money earned as a farm worker allows them a much better lifestyle back home, here in Canada the money doesn’t go very far. A temporary foreign worker who becomes a Canadian citizen may decide to take a job other than farm labourer.
There’s no magic answer and no end in sight to the farm labour crunch. Each farm operation is finding its own solutions, but it isn’t easy.