It may be true that nobody ever got into farming because they wanted to become an expert in human resources. Even so, the on-the-ground realities of a scarce labour force are going to prod Canada’s farmers into paying much, much more attention to the issue.
At least, the farms that emerge as success stories will see it as a prod.
That’s the bottom line message of a recent study by the Canadian Agriculture Human Resource Council (CAHRC). The 2009 survey has uncovered a large and growing gap between the needs of the nation’s farmers and the available labour pool.
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CAHRC, whose membership ranges from general farm organizations to governments as well as colleges and universities, surveyed hundreds of farm operations across the country and found across-the-board shortages, says Danielle Vinette, the organization’s executive director.
“Three out of four employers surveyed had at least one vacant position in their organization,” Vinette says. “That translates to more than 25,000 non-seasonal positions across the entire sector.”
Nationally, agriculture is facing a nine per cent vacancy rate for full-time permanent positions, and as one might expect, that gap grows even larger in temporary and seasonal positions. Employers reported a 17 per cent vacancy rate for these jobs, which translates into 16,560 vacant positions.
How does that stack up to other major sectors of the economy? Well, Canada’s national vacancy rate has been below three per cent for years. Other sectors with higher vacancy rates include small businesses (4.5 per cent) and electricity (3.2 per cent).
Another tell-tale sign of an industry suffering through a labour crunch is the number of temporary agriculture labourers who come to Canada from places like Jamaica and Mexico. Those numbers have more than doubled since 2005, when about 14,000 workers made the trip, compared to last season when 29,291 workers temporarily took up quarters on Canadian farms, primarily on fruit and vegetable operations.
There’s also a growing need for highly trained specialists, according to the CAHRC report. The study showed there were already more than 2,200 vacancies for technicians or specialists across the country, and the industry was expecting to need about 2,800 more over the next five years. Likewise there was a shortfall of close to 3,000 machinery operators, with an additional 8,500 expected to be required within the next five years.
Nor can Canada’s farmers hope this is a temporary market blip. While some workers might take a second look at agriculture as the economy cools down, that’s not going to address the structural problems the industry faces.
“It goes beyond just competing with the [Athabasca] oilsands,” Vinette says.
First, there’s the image of agriculture. While the owners and operators of farms might think there’s no life like it, for a wage employee it’s a different story. Where you might see a business that you own and operate and where you determine your own fate, that’s simply not the reality for an employee.
They’re more likely to see an industry dominated by small businesses with limited opportunity for advancement. It’s also an industry where nepotism runs wild — after all, they’re called “family” farms. Not to mention, if news headlines are reliable, that the business seems to ping-pong from crisis to crisis, with the occasional boom thrown in just to confuse everyone.
In fact, if agriculture is going to take control of its human resources future, this may be exactly where it should start, Vinette says, working closely with education institutions to market the sector. She also says the industry should generally work to improve its image with potential employees.
“People are becoming much more aware of where their food comes from,” Vinette says. “This is an opportunity to promote the industry.”
This promotion of the industry could take the form of TV commercials, flyers, pamphlets and posters.
Another major step will be to keep better track of the scope of the challenges that agriculture faces. Other industries are well aware of their labour, likely because most industries involve fewer, larger players. But for a sector like agriculture where there are many independent operations, tracking this data can be tough, even for an organization that’s charged with tracking it.
“When we first began working on this issue, we were surprised to find how little data existed,” Vinette says.
Why is that data important? Because, says Vinette, it’s needed to ensure that agriculture gets its piece of the pie when it comes to federal and provincial skills training funding, and even to get the staff down at the local jobs centre to recognize that agriculture is a sector with a lot of opportunities.
Vinette says CAHRC is proposing to work with Statistics Canada to develop a better method of surveying and tracking agriculture employment needs in Canada and that the association will be advocating for special studies to address the lack of good information on agriculture.
As well as tracking the situation more clearly and attracting more employees, individual farms can also benefit by upping their own human resources game, Vinette says.
“Less than a quarter of the farm operations surveyed had an HR plan,” Vinette says. CG
