This will almost certainly result in a continually growing percentage of visible minorities among Canada’s working age people over the next decade, similar to the trendlines in other western nations.

If you walk the grounds at a farm show, though, that diversity isn’t really very obvious. Nor is it something I’ve seen when meeting with marketing staff at any of the farm equipment brands — whether major or minor — on any continent.

But while visible minorities may not yet account for many of those brand staffers, I have noticed one significant demographic change over the years. Women are increasingly making up part of their executive teams.

That hasn’t occurred by accident. All the major brands are deliberately moving to increase diversity across their workforces, and getting women into leadership roles is one key target all have focused on. An excerpt from CNH Industrial’s report A Sustainable Year makes that pretty clear.

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“To establish a diverse, inclusive and attractive workplace well into the future,” it reads, “the company is carrying out initiatives that ensure women and minorities are represented in our talent pipeline, as well as increasing the number of women in leadership positions across the organization … The company is also creating region-specific initiatives that advance our (diversity and inclusion) efforts.”

Among those region-specific initiatives, the company’s Brazil operation has launched an effort to help lift women out of poverty by providing them with specific skills training that would allow them to fill positions at the assembly plant near Sao Paulo. The courses are held in the evenings to allow stay-at-home mothers to attend. The company also provides assistance such as transportation, meals and workwear for them. The aim is to help establish a skilled workforce that could raise the participation rate for women at the facility well above its current 15 per cent.

When it comes to broader goals, CNH has set itself a target of having at least 20 per cent of its leadership roles occupied by women as early as 2024.

Despite being well qualified for many corporate positions, especially highly technical ones such as engineers, AGCO’s Fendt brand has recognized that many women feel insecure in occupying positions in the traditionally male-dominated STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). To help prepare young women to deal with that insecurity, commonly called “imposter syndrome,” the company addressed it at a Female Career Day held at the Fendt facility in Germany in June. Ivory Harris, senior vice-president and chief human resources officer at AGCO, gave a speech on the topic. 

“Unfortunately, women are particularly likely to experience feelings of not deserving their success,” Harris said. “Self-doubt makes it difficult to recognize and appreciate their own accomplishments. The phenomenon of women feeling imposter syndrome more often than men can be exacerbated by women in first-time roles held by women, in what has been a traditionally male-dominated work environment, such as the STEM field. I’m passionate about empowering women at AGCO and encouraging talented female students, especially from the fields of math, computer science, science and technology.”

“The agricultural industry is changing,” adds Ingrid Bussjaeger-Martin, managing director for finance and IT at Fendt. “That makes the work very exciting. Producing food sustainably and innovatively for a growing world population presents us as agricultural machinery manufacturers with new challenges that we can only master together. I am delighted that so many young women are taking part in our Fendt Female Career Day today for the third time and are interested in a career in agricultural technology.”

That third seminar accommodated 50 young women looking to make a career in an agriculture-related field.

Over at John Deere, one woman is leading a unique effort to increase diversity in its workforce and she is doing it in a non-traditional location: urban Chicago. Brand ambassador for the company, Johanna Acevedo, spends much of her time in the former meat-packing district turned urban hub of Chicago, where farming isn’t likely top of mind for residents. She’s introducing skilled potential hires to an ag equipment industry they had no idea needed tech-savvy talent. In fact, Acevedo didn’t know that much about the company herself until she started working for Deere.

“When you live in a bigger city and there are no farms around you, John Deere is not one of the first companies that comes to mind,” she says. “And while I knew of John Deere, I definitely didn’t know John Deere was an opportunity for me to come and be in IT (information technology).”

As group engineering manager in Chicago where Deere is in the process of expanding its IT and technology footprint, first to 150 and ultimately to 300 people, Acevedo is the onsite leader responsible for “culture, hiring strategy and community outreach.” The brand’s office there is located in the same neighbourhood as Google and Facebook, which says a lot about the advanced state of modern ag equipment manufacturing today.

“A lot of people know John Deere for being a hard-iron manufacturing company,” Acevedo says. “So, I have this amazing opportunity to tell them that we also have an autonomous tractor, that we’ve had self-driving vehicles for 20 years, that we have one of the most accurate GPS systems on the market, and that we have the See and Spray Ultimate technology which uses really cool AI (artificial intelligence).”

Acevedo’s goal is to spread the message that the brand is determined to establish a culturally diverse workforce. And she’s working to make that happen sooner rather than later.

“Perhaps as a result of its presence in rural areas (which sometimes lack racial diversity), people of colour don’t always realize that John Deere is really interested in having diverse and inclusive teams,” Acevedo says. “I think (Deere’s new locations in) Chicago and Austin in particular are really great opportunities for us to show people of colour that we’re in this arena not just to play in the tech space, but because we want your diverse talent at our company. We want you to think of John Deere as an employer of choice.”

If finding and hiring a diverse group of employees is a challenge, however, so is retaining them after they’re on payroll.

“As a company and organization, we did a good job of bringing in diverse talent, but we weren’t always connecting and creating the environment and the culture where people felt comfortable staying,” says Leslee Hager, vice-president of internal audit at Deere.

But one of the company’s other departments has distinguished itself in leading the way in that effort. Deere’s accounting and finance arm had earned a reputation for being inclusive and diverse, and during a late 2020 roundtable discussion, Hager recalled a tipping point that motivated the team to raise the bar even higher.

“We were told, ‘No, this is not enough,’” she said. “One of the leaders said, ‘We need to take big action and we need to make sure all our leaders are engaged.’”

“Work streams” were created that focused on career development, diversity in leadership, recruiting and early career, culture and engagement, inclusivity conversations, and — linking them all — communication. Each work stream has “employee champions” who hold regular meetings and facilitate subgroups that meet more frequently to keep interaction topical, educational and engaging. Monthly meetings now typically include more than 500 employee participants.

There has been noticeable progress as a result. Three years ago, Deere found its percentage of women in middle-to-upper-level accounting and finance roles lagged behind its progress in lower-level positions. Now the percentage of mid-career roles held by women in Deere’s finance offices in the U.S. is increasing, and other departments are adopting the program in hopes of duplicating its success.

The job is to add diversity to the workforce and strengthen it as a cohesive, effective group, and Deere has learned this involves more than just going out and finding qualified women and people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. It means changing attitudes and biases among existing groups to create a welcoming atmosphere.

Deere’s Amy Wilson and Nicole Shearer co-operate on a “Perspectives” blog, which began as a look at being a woman at Deere and immediately earned a following. It has since grown in inclusion, encompassing everything from gender, religion, culture, race and dual-career dynamics. Since its February 2021 launch, the blog has generated and gathered dozens of submissions and posts. Many of the real-life stories share career issues and personal encounters.

“In almost every blog post we tried to include an action item because that’s ultimately the point,” says Shearer, manager of cash management. “We’re hoping that we can be a voice that encourages people to really think about something from a different perspective and then hopefully have the conversations, raise awareness, and, if it all goes well, change behaviours.”

The post The diversity gap appeared first on Country Guide.

But that may be beginning to change.

Entrepreneur Laura Lazo, who also serves as chair and co-founder of Manitoba Women in Agriculture and Food (MWAF) believes inclusion is contagious, and it’s only going to gather more steam in the agricultural industry.

“People are talking about it, conferences are organized around it,” Lazo says. “Companies are talking about it, and the industry knows that in order to meet business goals, it must attract more people from those untapped pools of talented women in under-represented groups.”

Believing that all women are equal regardless of their demographic category, MWAF has decided to work to advance them all equally.

MWAF not only works to connect women to farm and ag opportunities, but a key goal is to specifically advance women from under-represented groups. MWAF offers a variety of business and skills training and resources that encourage and support women entrepreneurs, and is now looking at how to help the industry embed DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies into their workplaces and hiring practices.

Recognizing barriers

It all began when Lazo met MWAF co-founder, Marijo Patino a few years ago and realized they had a lot in common. Both had grown up outside Canada, and both were in the process of establishing their own agricultural consulting companies. They also experienced challenges in attending industry training and events such as the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference (AWC), which they knew were crucial to help them build their networks and businesses.

“The AWC is the perfect place to meet people and companies and to learn and make business connections but attending industry events can sometimes be a challenge without the financial support of an employer,” Lazo says.

Because they both knew plenty of women who faced similar challenges, they got together to see if they could find solutions. 

“We knew many women, Canadian-born or not, who were experiencing barriers, and there were many reasons for that,” Lazo says. “If you are not a born-and-bred Canadian, you’re pretty much racialized. On top of that, if you don’t have a farming background, you don’t get the same job opportunities in the industry. If you are a certain age, you face ageism, which is true for everyone, not just those in agriculture.”

The two decided there was a need for a group dedicated to supporting all women who were involved, or wanting to be involved, in the agricultural industry. They began talking to other like-minded women, and within a month had recruited a board of directors, and established MWAF. 

Still a lot to learn

Lazo and Patino soon realized they had a lot to learn about governance and organizational structure, so they consulted an industry development specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development, who conducted a review of the new group and identified areas it needed to work on, helping them to access training and resources to learn more about running a registered, non-profit organization, which MWAF became.

It was a good start, and the group began small, with no funding except the money coming out of their own pockets. They created a webpage and started building a social media following. Patino also conducted a survey of the people they had already contacted who were interested in the group, to figure out what the focus of its services should be.

Priorities that arose included the need for networking events and professional development and training resources. In partnership with other organizations such as Farm Credit Canada, MWAF began to develop these resources, such as workshops in business plan development for women entrepreneurs in agriculture or other sectors.

The group arranged farm tours as networking and cultural events. “We wanted people that live in the city to get to know farmers and their farms, and establish a connection to educate people about agriculture,” Lazo says.

They also developed networking events like an annual general meeting (prior to COVID-19 restrictions) and a monthly virtual networking program called AgChat, hosted by leaders in the agricultural industry. A group of 17 farm women have been producing short videos for MWAF’s YouTube channel about life on the farm, intended to highlight farm women, and the culture and diversity of agriculture. The organization is also part of a Portage la Prairie working group that is developing a new concept that celebrates women in agriculture, community and diversity. It will consist of two parts, one a virtual event, and a farmers market with an ethnic component next summer.

Today, MWAF has a social media following of over 6,000 people and membership has been steadily growing, although a big aim for the group is to increase the number of both individual and corporate members in order to achieve its potential in the industry.

Working for all women in agriculture

MWAF is not a diversity group but an organization that fully embraces equality and inclusion and works for all women in agriculture regardless of their demographic categorization.

MWAF also represents innovation in agriculture in the sense that the founders did not grow up in Canada or have farm backgrounds, and the board and membership are fully diverse. 

Lazo grew up in Argentina and currently runs her own human resources consulting company specializing in agriculture, while Patino, an economist by training, is working as an independent consultant for companies in the agri-food sector. 

Lazo came to Canada in 1983 and completed a Masters and PhD at Dalhousie University, which is where she met her husband, John. She had never intended to stay in Canada; in fact, her plan was to return to Argentina to continue her work in marine biology, but when her husband was offered a faculty position at the University of Manitoba, they settled in Winnipeg.

After their son was born, Lazo worked for a while as a consultant in roles involving business and partnership development and public relations before accepting a position at the U of M’s faculty of agriculture and food sciences to manage its student placement programs. It was during this time that Lazo was first introduced to the Canadian agricultural industry.

Today, there is a group representing women in agriculture in every province across Canada and MWAF works with them, but what makes MWAF different is its focus. 

“We specifically recognize under-represented women in one of our goals because they face stiffer barriers,” Lazo says.

“We are proud of our diversity. Our board and membership include women who are from Canada and otherwise, and with and without farming backgrounds. We also represent women that are entrepreneurs and corporate employees, as well as farm women. Our approach is to support all women in the agricultural sector regardless of their role because agriculture offers multiple opportunities in production, but also in products and service sectors for people from just about any discipline.”

Those opportunities, though, are not always equally available, especially to racialized women. This, says Lazo, is a detriment to the industry.

MWAF’s vision and direction reflects the diversity of backgrounds and outlooks of the people who make up the group.

“Some board members were not originally from Canada, but most of our members are,” Patino says.

Patino is an economist with more than 10 years of research experience working for governments, academia, and industries in agriculture, food and industrial development in Canada, the United States and Latin America. In 2014, she came to the University of Manitoba from her native Paraguay to complete a masters in Agribusiness and agricultural economics for a career in ag, but getting practical experience of Canadian farming and agriculture proved to be a major obstacle to her career aspiration to be a freelance researcher for projects related to agriculture and technology.

Where to get started?

Linda Zhou, MWAF’s director of planning and sustainability, currently works as a research analyst at Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation. She also came as an international student from China to complete the same masters degree as Patino at the University of Manitoba. For Zhou, a major obstacle was a lack of understanding of not just Canadian agriculture, but Canadian culture in general, which meant it was hard for her to develop the understanding and confidence she needed to pursue opportunities. 

“For anyone from a different culture, it’s hard because you don’t know where to go to get started,” Zhou says, adding a group of farmers offered her an entry-level job, which she took as an opportunity to gain experience, but many international students don’t get the same chance. “MWAF provides that platform to access opportunities and a wider network, whether it’s through a farm tour, or event or a webinar to add new skills. It’s very useful because it helps you see what people are doing, and be more confident, and that’s very important.”

It’s important that MWAF’s vision is not just bottom-up, but also top-down, adds Zhou, pointing to a recent AgChat webinar that was hosted by Trevor Heck, president of Syngenta Canada, a corporation that is working to incorporate DEI principles into its global workforce.

“We are showing that there is also a push for DEI from the top and that people at a high level in major corporations care about it,” Zhou says. “If the push is from both ends, we’re going to make things happen. If I had these kinds of opportunities while I was a student, I would have been more confident. MWAF is trying to get people into the industry faster and help them to level up easier.”

The need for more diversity

The 2017 Barton Report (a set of recommendations from the Federal Government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth) has said that Canada could become the world’s second-largest agricultural exporter of safe, nutritious and sustainable food — it is currently fifth.

But to achieve that potential, it says, Canada needs more people.

Lazo believes that because MWAF has a good handle on diversity, it can play a key role in connecting employers with the human resources they need and provide DEI services.

“As we mature, we realize we can play a significant role in connecting people and industry stakeholders. We have a two-pronged approach,” Lazo says. “One is to support women, and the other is to support the industry by providing them with the kind of people and services they need, and to help them develop policies to attract and retain more women.”

MWAF has a constantly updated job board on its website to help employers and potential employees connect with each other, and is ready to do more, says Lazo, to assist the industry in matters around DEI. It’s important to understand, though, that the gender gap is not a “women-only” issue but has an impact on everyone, Lazo adds, which is why MWAF is keen to involve more men. “If a spouse, mother, sister or daughter cannot fulfill her ambitions, there are emotional and long-term economic impacts on the rest of the family,” she says. “Involving men in speaking about gender issues and taking actions that support women in corporations and businesses will help close the occupational and income gap.”

Progress being made, but slowly

There are signs of positive change. The federal government announced in its 2021 budget that it will provide $146.9 million over four years to support women entrepreneurs and announced a public consultation process to foster inclusivity in the Canadian financial sector.

Many major companies are looking at how they can incorporate the principles of DEI into their organizational culture and are investing in initiatives to attract more women and others from diverse groups to their workplaces.

“We don’t yet have a metric to be able to assess the degree of change but by word of mouth, or in speaking with companies, we know what they are doing individually, but we don’t know the extent of the transformation across the sector,” Lazo says. “I suspect that there is not a whole lot of actual measurable change.”

On a cultural level, in fact, there is still a lot of resistance to DEI. “People say that diversity is good, but saying and doing are not the same thing,” Lazo says. “Good will and positive thinking alone are not enough to change the status of things. It takes talking, and doing … but it is the way to a prosperous and competitive industry.”

The post Different goals for women in ag appeared first on Country Guide.

Partly, it’s a human resource issue. Every year, Canada’s farms and agricultural businesses fall further behind. More and more traditional farm jobs go unfilled while, at the same time, new job descriptions are being created that demand even harder-to-find skills and vision. And it isn’t just on the farm. Farm groups, boards and ag businesses of every variety have to be on permanent lookout for smart, skilled people to staff and manage them. 

But it also a question of culture. The sector has definitely made progress. It has expanded the demographic it typically draws from. Yet it still sorely lags among population groups like women, Indigenous people, immigrants and others we call “underrepresented” even though they are vast segments of the rest of Canadian society. 

It means Canada’s farms are getting less and less Canadian.

Why is that? And what’s to be done about it? Canadian ag leaders are increasingly aware that agriculture needs to open up in order to future-proof the industry. More than ever, becoming inclusive is both a moral responsibility and a business imperative.

Now, bold conversations are beginning. New ideas are surfacing. Below are just a sampling of what Country Guide found when we went looking. Across the country, there’s a feeling that history is about to change.

Early in 2021, the Western Producer carried an op-ed article headlined, “It is Time for Bold Moves on Diversity” and in Alberta Farmer Express, “It is Time to Finally Address the Lack of Diversity in Agriculture.”

It was written by two Canadian farm leaders, Erin Gowriluk and Hannah Konschuh. In plain, powerful language, they asked the industry to look at itself in a way it seldom has before. 

“Although our industry has made progress in the areas of inclusion and diversity in recent decades,” they wrote, “we are nowhere near where we need to be.”

Gowriluk, executive director of Grain Growers of Canada and Konschuh, a farmer from Cluny, Alta., were launching The Diversity Imperative podcast, a project sponsored by Syngenta. 

Recent world events had kindled the need to find where there’s room for improvement in their industry, say the two women, both fully cognizant this is a conversation that’s far from easy to have, or even begin.

Yet, as they both also say, tough questions lead to great conversation, and great conversation leads to progress. And begin, we must.

What initially compelled Konschuh, who also sits on the Alberta Wheat Commission board of directors and has provided leadership in other areas, was her own acute awareness that women aren’t yet as engaged as they could and should be. And the industry can be painfully slow to change. Just ask any group of women, she says, about the leers, the offensive remarks and the putdowns they can be subjected to at any farm trade show.

“It shouldn’t be the norm to have only one female producer in the room sitting around the board table for any organization,” Konschuh says.

It’s also been clear for a long time that there’s far more to talk about than gender when it comes to inclusivity. 

“If we are going to have fulsome conversations about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusiveness) in our sector, it includes more than just our experience as women in ag. We need to be talking about LGBTQ inclusion, we need to be talking about race and racism, about Indigenous agriculture. A big one for me is ability and ableism.”

The Diversity Imperative’s first six episodes have already covered a lot of ground, including guests such as Christine Simpson, hockey reporter for Sportsnet, talking about what sport can teach agriculture when it comes to diversity and inclusion and production ag specialist Julia Romagnoli with John Deere from Guelph, Ont., the creator and curator of the Pride in Ag Instagram account to make positive change for LGBTQ inclusion across the sector.

University of Saskatchewan’s assistant professor and soil biogeochemist Melissa Arcand, who is also academic advisor for a program training students to work in resource management and land governance in Indigenous communities, has also been a guest, as has Marie-Claude Bibeau talking about being the first federal female Minister of Agriculture in Canada. 

The podcast has proved ideal for getting this discussion rolling, says Gowriluk. She, too, had been thinking about these issues a long while, and says that prior to making her own commitment to this project, she saw things she found unsettling on social media when she tried to raise topics about the inclusion of women. 

“I was surprised by the reactions that I would get,” she says. “Typically women were very supportive and understanding of what I was posting. But I was really surprised to see some of the other reactions. They were sometimes aggressive, or angry. They implied that I had no business sharing these sorts of things, or suggesting that there even was an issue.

“That was the first thing that said to me ‘we’ve got a long way to go’, when many of our male colleagues in this sector refuse to even see there may be some challenges for their female colleagues.”

Beef Farmers of Ontario

Diversity, equity and inclusion have become priority areas for workplaces in many industries, as boards ask who’s missing from the table and employers try to figure out what meaningful changes they must make to become more inclusive. Now, the first farm organizations are starting to take bold steps in this direction. 

Beef Farmers of Ontario is convinced diversity matters, and it is intent on building DEI into their sector.

In early January the group representing 19,000 beef producers gave the agri-food industry much to think about with the release of a strongly worded, detailed diversity, equity and inclusion statement.

They were committing their organization to advocate for DEI within the beef sector and to joining “with those in our community who are calling for an end to systemic racism, as well as discrimination and prejudice based on sexual orientation, gender, religion, and ability (visible and invisible), and linguistic discrimination,” the statement said.

BFO leaders were frank about why they were taking this stand.

“We recognize the beef sector is not always a diverse industry, particularly at the farmer and association level,” said BFO president Rob Lipsett.

“Further along our supply chain, however, there is a great amount of diversity among the people dedicated to ensuring our product makes it to the tables of consumers. Likewise, our consumers are another integral and incredibly diverse group from all walks of life. We feel it is important to be a voice, build bridges, listen, learn and support all members of our community.”

Jordan Miller was one of BFO’s board members urging their association to make this move.

His own thoughts around diversity began to intensify since the murder of American George Floyd in 2020 and attention focused on racism and social inequity.

“Change is hard, but big change is necessary. This is a first step,” says Miller, a sixth-generation cow/calf operator from Manitoulin Island who joined with fellow BFO director Joe Dickenson to urge his industry group to go in this direction.

The rest of the BFO board supported this even while recognizing it could be polarizing among even their own membership.

“I was a bit apprehensive,” admits Miller. “You never know how people are going to react but the board unanimously accepted it.”

The plan commits their organization to learning and ultimately to action, although it will take some time to figure out what that action will actually look like, Miller says. Their DEI statement recognizes the need to develop from within the organization, and that means a commitment to listening and learning, and to speaking up against discriminatory language and behavior.

Since releasing the statement they’ve hired Ontario-based leadership training company Bloom Consulting to do diversity training for the board, committee members and staff.

“Right now we simply don’t understand all of the issues,” Miller says. “We shouldn’t pretend that we do.”

Building relationships

At its root, diversity in agriculture is about building relationships both within and beyond the sector itself.

Farm Credit Canada views the diversification of Canada’s agriculture and food industry as an integral part of its mandate, and it says it begins with both understanding and supporting this country’s Indigenous communities and entrepreneurs to grow and thrive in our agriculture and food industry, says Michael Hoffort, FCC president and CEO.

“It begins with developing a deeper understanding of Indigenous agriculture — the history, barriers, aspirations and opportunities of today,” said Hoffort in a recent release announcing findings of an FCC survey of Canadian Indigenous farmers. 

The survey asked producers to identify how they’re currently involved in the sector, the barriers they face and the opportunities they’re seizing (see Indigenous Challenges).

Human resource crisis

It isn’t agriculture’s only challenge. Finding ways for a broader representation of more population groups in agriculture is happening at the same time as we’re learning more about the industry’s overall skills shortage.

Now bordering on a human resource crisis, the numbers clearly show agriculture’s dearth of human capacity for managing, innovating, and operating farms and agribusinesses is a problem that is only intensifying as time passes. It means that making progress on revitalizing agriculture’s most important resource — its human resource — matters more than ever. 

The acute skills shortage and the associated business risks it poses to the entire sector are most clearly depicted in research conducted by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) which has long recognized that women, Indigenous people, immigrants and persons with disabilities are underrepresented even though they have the potential to make important contributions.

Boosting diversity, equity and inclusion has long been a focus of CAHRC’s extensive work to help agricultural employers become inclusive, supportive employers of choice, says Jennifer Wright, a senior advisor with CAHRC, whose organization is continuously exploring ways to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in the sector.

CAHRC has sponsored a large volume of original research, developed profiles and case studies, and posted numerous documents on its website on a wide range of related topics, including structural racism within the food system and tools to help farm and other ag business owners create inclusive work environments. 

“The research is very clear,” says Wright. “When you have an employee base with diverse experiences and backgrounds, you actually have a really positive impact on your bottom line. It’s because you have different ideas and different ways of doing things coming to the table. It helps support an innovative work environment.”

Students

Meanwhile, schools of agriculture across the country continue to be a key front in attracting more people from diverse backgrounds to the sector. 

Progress has been made in recent years through promoting their programs to young people who didn’t grow up on the farm, says Michele Rogalsky, director of the school of agriculture within the faculty of agricultural and food sciences at University of Manitoba. 

Without question the number of female students is rising and the gender gap is closing, she says. Today about a third of all students are female and, notably, many plan to become managers of family farms. 

They’ve also seen the number of international students rise over the years.

“Back in the 1990s it was zero to one per cent,” Rogalsky says. “It increased a bit in the 2000s, but we had a big jump last fall at 5.9 per cent.”

There are many ways these students’ global perspectives benefit their program. However, where Rogalsky sees work ahead is in building relationships with Indigenous communities so their youth will be attracted to the program, too. 

“I think we as an ag sector have done a very poor job communicating and targeting that message to the influencers and decision-makers that are supporting these young individuals when they’re making their career path,” she says. 

Likewise, Geoff Brown, dean of agricultural and environmental sciences at Lakeland College says, colleges are also working hard to attract students from a greater diversity of backgrounds, including more women, and more Indigenous and international students. 

“There are just so many careers in agriculture and we need good people from all over,” Brown says. “When you draw in a diverse population, and under-represented populations, you bring in different perspectives that aren’t quite as traditional, which can only strengthen the industry.”

Adds Konschuh: “We are an industry that relies on innovation yet the conversation often focuses on technology. But what’s the conduit that that technology comes to life by? Well, it’s by people. We’ve typically been pulling from one demographic. To meet some of the lofty goals we’ve set for ourselves as a sector, we need all sorts of people contributing to that goal.”

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

How do we get there? That’s what podcasts and DEI statements and outreach programs for creating inclusive workplaces are for. 

Yes, this is a conversation that can cause cognitive dissonance, or shoulder shrugging, or outright resistance. But the same could be said about early initiatives to improve safety on the farm. That was once something a lot of farmers didn’t want to talk about either. 

“Let’s all agree to lean into this together, shall we?” says Gowriluk. “Accept that there may be times that you may fear that you may say the wrong thing or offend someone, but I think if you are there, that suggests you’re coming from the right place. As long as you’re open to hearing from others, understanding their perspectives and learning along the way, I think that’s a really good place to start.” 

Indigenous challenges

More than 70 per cent of Indigenous producers in Canada told a recent FCC online survey they plan to increase participation in the ag sector over the next five years.

That’s despite their also reporting a poor to average experience in the sector in the past, with challenges including access to capital, equipment, labour and knowledge.

It’s a sign of changing times and the increasing priority we can expect to see placed on agriculture within overall economic development across Canadian Indigenous communities.

The survey was commissioned last fall to gain a better understanding of Indigenous producers’ priorities, what they’re doing now and where they see opportunities ahead, says Shaun Soonias, FCC’s director of Indigenous relations. 

It wasn’t a large survey but it has yielded important insights that will enable FCC to be a supportive partner in the advancement of Indigenous agriculture in the spirit of reconciliation and collaboration, Soonias says. 

One of the reasons for increasing interest in agriculture is that more communities are regaining access to significant land bases through Treaty Land Entitlement settlements. 

“What we’re seeing now is a lot of communities starting to shift their eyes back to lands that they have in their control and see what they can do to fully monetize them and steward them,” he says.

The survey respondents also expressed notable interest re-establishing Indigenous food security and placed high priority on the need to create agricultural and financial learning opportunities for Indigenous youth. Things need to be done to ensure the next generation is prepared and excited to continue growing agriculture and food businesses, while fostering relationships with elders who offer a wealth of traditional knowledge, the survey respondents said.

Almost half said they see significant opportunities in greenhouse operation, community gardens, food processing and other small-scale agriculture activities on Indigenous lands.

Soonias, who is also a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation near Battleford, Sask., said FCC wants not only to better understand the landscape of Indigenous agriculture in Canada but to be a partner in advancing Indigenous agriculture in all the forms it will take. 

“We [FCC] haven’t been in this space historically,” Soonias says. “Loans were available and made, and we’ve done business, but there wasn’t anything that was really structured around how to foster success and not only to address the opportunities but some of the challenges that are unique to Indigenous communities.”

Another initiative now underway within FCC is extensive Indigenous awareness and relations training underway for its 2,000 employees across Canada. The training aims to help staff better understand the legislative and systemic barriers that prevent Indigenous communities from fully participating in Canada’s agriculture industry, and the long-standing hurdles that have also been faced by the country’s Métis and Inuit populations. 

The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council has also been researching issues and priorities of Indigenous producers, noting in a 2020 report that while the Canadian farm population is declining, the share of Indigenous people in the ag sector has grown significantly. 

The number of Indigenous ag operators leapt 51.6 per cent between 1996 and 2016. 

Indigenous operators are pursuing activities related to traditional practices like harvesting of berries, herbs, rice and plants and other non-timber forest products, tapping trees for maple syrup production, and combining plants into traditional medicine, as well as fishing, hunting and trapping. 

Ranching and farming are gaining too, from cattle ranching to bison and beekeeping, and more operators are starting agri-tourism and farm-to-table businesses, setting up farm education attractions with interpretive sites and restaurants.

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Maybe we don’t think there’s a reason, but if we probed just a little, we’d often find it’s a sign our unconscious biases are at fault.

We all have them. In fact, says Darren C. Brown, a strategic facilitator who is one of the “inspirators” of People Development, a Nova Scotia-based network of global learning and change facilitators, to be human is to have unconscious biases, and there’s an explanation why. To help us cope with what would be an overwhelming amount of information and stimuli, our brains formulate sets of beliefs and stereotypes.

They’re like maps and we use them to navigate life. But it’s easy for these maps to be based on nothing better than what we’ve been taught and the messages we’ve been exposed to in the media.

Those maps then influence how we interact with cultural diversity.

Remember, though, they apply in reverse too. When asked to picture a farmer, Brown says many people will think of an old man in bib overalls with chickens, goats and a cow — blame it on Old MacDonald’s Farm childhood imagery. It’s an outdated stereotype that doesn’t reflect modern agriculture, and that’s bad enough, but it’s actually even worse because women, young people and people of colour are locked out.

Unfortunately, these learned mental shortcuts can have a negative impact on how we perceive and respond to people at work, on boards and in our communities.

Biases aren’t always negative but when they are, they can lead to unfair discrimination against people based on gender, race, age, ethnicity, religion, physical ability or sexual orientation. Biases can show up in job descriptions, who gets hired, HR policies, and employee expectations, evaluations, discipline and terminations.

Activated in a fraction of a second, these cognitive biases can even be against our own group and can go against our stated beliefs.

Such stereotypes, prejudices and generalizations get in the way of truly understanding and relating to one another and can lead to inequities. We may, for instance, hold the bar higher for someone who doesn’t fit our stereotyped version, says Brown. “The individual is prejudged… unconsciously we are forcing them to prove themselves.”

Doing diversity right

When an older person discounts a younger person because they think all young people are lazy, or when a younger person prejudges all older people as being out of touch, those are examples of a micro-inequity, says Michael Bach, author of Birds of All Feathers: Doing Diversity and Inclusion Right.

It’s an essential topic in today’s agriculture. Working towards diversity and inclusion is good business, continues Bach, who heads up the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, an organization that focuses on practical solutions that help employers move toward true inclusion. If you limit your hiring to white, straight, able-bodied men who make up only about one-third of the working age population, you are hiring only from this small labour pool and you’ll never know if you’re actually hiring the best or the brightest, he says.

Jennifer Wright, senior HR advisor at the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC), agrees. Research shows that having a diverse workforce results in increased productivity and innovation, she says.

Looked at the other way, Bach adds, businesses that don’t work at fostering diversity and inclusivity also risk having a tarnished reputation with consumers and the public.

The good news is that we can become aware of our unconscious biases and take steps to overcome them. We need to know, though, that it won’t happen without effort.

“Our brains work against inclusion,” says Bach. “Our brains like to be exposed to information that agrees with our existing perspective. We have to be open-minded and willing to learn new information which takes energy and can also push us outside our comfort zone.”

This can be hard at first but gets easier eventually.

Becoming aware of our biases is an ongoing process, agrees Brown. “Our biases are deeply programmed in our psyches and the way we see the world.” We have to continue to check ourselves but it is also very liberating when we become aware, he says.

While bias awareness training is a start, it doesn’t go far enough, says Wright. You need to take a measurement of where you’re at, set goals and create a plan for the steps you will follow to get there, she says. Wright offers some practical tips:

• To ensure you are hiring, without any biases, the best person, cover the person’s name on the application and look at the skill set they have.
• Write gender-neutral job descriptions. Avoid saying, “he will do this” and “he will do that.”
• Create a more diverse company image on your website and other promotional materials.
• Look at your policies especially as relating to pay equity, and giving employees flexibility for family and cultural needs.

At first, it will be necessary to be very intentional about being inclusive but in time it will get easier and become routine practice, says Wright.

While leadership from the top is important to make inclusivity a priority, the middle layers must also understand the importance and “buy in,” says Bach, who adds that by creating an inclusive environment, you will lower your recruitment and training costs. “People of colour won’t stick around in a racist environment and women won’t stick around in a sexist environment.”

Wright agrees. “For example, I have heard some frustrated farmers complain, ‘We hired a few women, they were here but then they left.’ You have to provide a welcoming work environment to support them too.” Gone are the days of “Here’s the job; take it or leave it.” That doesn’t work in an economy with a labour shortage.

These damaging unconscious biases are also hurting many rural communities, says Alberta community enthusiast Doug Griffiths, author of 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. “We tend to hang around with those who are the same colour, race and religion as us and we subconsciously judge those who are different.”

We may think our communities are friendly but unless we make a deliberate effort to be open-minded and to overcome our subconscious racism and biases, our communities will not be welcoming to newcomers, Griffiths warns. And young people, who tend to be more worldly than previous generations due to the internet and increased travel, are also attracted to communities with diverse cultures, he adds.

The message is clear for all of us, Griffiths and other diversity experts say. It’s time to get to work on creating diverse and dynamic workplaces and welcoming communities. They show we’re serious about the future.

Unconscious bias checklist

Biases can be subtle and many of the little things people say and do can have a significant impact on creating an inclusive board or workplace. Do you recognize any of these behaviours?

• Not paying attention or rolling your eyes when certain people share ideas or contribute to the conversation.
• Greeting certain colleagues at work but ignoring or avoiding others.
• Getting irritated when certain people speak or share ideas with the group.
• Listening to others with closed arms across the chest.
• Looking at your watch, smartphone or computer while someone is talking to you.
• Praising an idea from one colleague while ignoring the same idea presented by another.
• Using words or making jokes that may be perceived by others as hurtful or degrading.

(Adapted from Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council [CAHRC] Agri HR Toolkit)

Positive steps to a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment

• Educate yourself about discrimination by reading about it.
• Reflect on your own attitudes and behaviours that may contribute towards discrimination at work and in social situations.
• Donate time or money to a cause that promotes diversity or supports a culture different from your own.
• Be open to hearing input from anyone in the workplace, even if their experiences or opinions are different than your own.
• If language barriers, transportation issues, religious holidays and other issues prevent workers from participating in events, meetings or training programs, try to find solutions.
• Ensure all HR practices and policies support diversity, inclusion and equity including recruitment, selection, promotion, training and development, compensation, and succession planning.
• Host a diversity workshop or discussion.

(Adapted from Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council [CAHRC] Agri HR Toolkit)

Resources

• Birds of All Feathers: Doing Diversity and Inclusion Right (2020) by Michael Bach
• Are you biased? I am: TEDx Talk with Kristen Pressner
• Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (2020) by Pragya Agarwal
• CAHRC Agri HR Toolkit includes an Unconscious Bias Awareness Checklist

The post Me? I’m not biased! appeared first on Country Guide.

A diverse workforce, it turns out, will help your farm produce measurably better productivity.

Diversity drives innovation, explains Pam Paquet, a Fraser Valley psychologist and business consultant. A mix of genders, generations and personalities gives different perspectives, she says. “It challenges the old school thinking of if it ain’t broken, why fix it?”

Businesses and indeed the entire economy are best served when both women and men are employed at all levels, agrees Jaqui Parchment, senior partner for Mercer Canada, a global consultant in talent, health, retirement and investments.

Parchment says their 2016 global research study called When Women Thrive, shows that “while men bring important skills to a workplace, an equal proportion of women would introduce different, but just as effective skills, such as those involving team- and people-building, flexibility, problem solving, and emotional intelligence.”

Despite this, however, traditional job design and leadership competencies are more often closely aligned with the relative strengths of men, leaving potential business growth untapped, says Parchment.

Passionate leadership

Changing gender roles on the farm may require a mind shift for some members of the farm team. Strong leadership can help create a respectful environment where all team members feel valued and are able to do their best work.

These changes require buy-in from senior management, and they also require support for women’s unique health and financial needs, says Parchment, who explains that Mercer has coined the “6 Ps” to describe the changes necessary to help women thrive in the workforce:

• Passionate leadership
• Personal commitment to gender equity
• Perseverance
• Proof-based decision making
• Processes that are predictable
• Programs for training and growth

The 6 Ps can be a roadmap on the farm too, providing a kind of checklist to ensure your farm’s female team members will know they are welcome, and that they will be able to contribute at their best.

“In short, there must be a mix of personal commitment and structural changes that work together to improve diversity and inclusion,” Parchment says.

Formalized structure and clear roles

It’s important to have a formalized structure with clarity of purpose, roles, responsibilities and the values of the organization, says Terry Betker, a farm adviser at Backswath Management in Manitoba.

In other words, a high-performing, inclusive workplace needs to become one of the farm’s values. It must articulate that belief, and as with other values, Betker says, “The business must live its values, and when faced with management decisions, it must test them against those values.”

Such values may be even more important for women than men, Betker says, especially if there are areas on the farm where women feel they aren’t welcome.

Paquet agrees, adding that it’s important to have clarity around what is expected of each team member.

Farmers may think they don’t need to set up job descriptions because it’s a family-run business, and everyone knows their role. Yet that can be exactly the kind of workplace where job descriptions are even more important, Paquet says, because there are too many unspoken assumptions floating around.

Like other assumptions, HR assumptions can be most dangerous when they stop you asking questions.

For instance, says Betker, it’s been easy in the past to assume that gender is a good basis for deciding who does what job. But when you challenge it, that assumption starts to crumble.

“Most jobs can be done equally well by both genders these days,” Betker says.

And that’s not just true of shopwork or field work. For instance, don’t assume that keeping the books is women’s work, says Betker. A better way to determine who is best suited for a job is to use personality assessments.

“And if no one wants to do a job it would be better to outsource it,” he says. “Otherwise it won’t receive the attention it should.”

The assertiveness factor

Men and women often have different communication styles, and this can present some challenges.

Paquet says women may want to look at a situation from different angles and talk about it, while men may be more analytical and present a decision instead of seeking input from the other team members.

Sometimes women also have a hard time being assertive when there is conflict, continues Paquet. There has been a lot of pressure historically on women to be the ones who step back in order to maintain group harmony.

Men seem also to have an easier time drawing boundaries between work and their personal lives, she adds, but coaching can help women to overcome this tendency.

Women also know that even though they need to be assertive in order to contribute at their best, assertive women are often characterized as “bitchy,” says Paquet. “Women in leadership are often judged with a harsh brush.”

Communication is key

Strong communication is essential to ensuring the farm team works together efficiently, says Betker. “Communications must be formalized with a clear meeting structure,” he says. “You must run the farm as a business.”

Cathy Mak, vice-president of human resources and compliance at Leamington’s Lakeside Produce agrees that communication is key.

“Employees need a voice, a listening post,” she says. She used an employee survey to elicit input from the company’s packing plant staff. As a result of the survey feedback, the company changed from a rotating shift schedule to a set schedule, which made it easier for the predominantly female employees to arrange childcare.

The result was a big increase in employee retention rates, says Mak.

Like Mak, Anne Burnham, who runs Burnham Family Farm Market near Cobourg, Ont., says two-way communication is essential. “Good communication is key and I’m always working at it,” she says.

Burnham tries to check in with each of her employees individually at paycheque time to find out how they are doing and if they are having any problems. Listening to the employees is an important part of her job as a manager, she says.

She also gives the employees feedback on how the business is performing. “A paycheque is not everything for job satisfaction,” she says.

Burnham suspects that communication is one area where farm businesses can improve. Farmers who are used to working alone and making their own decisions may not be aware of the level of communication required, she says.

Reinforce inclusive values

Michelle Painchaud, a business consultant who specializes in agricultural HR issues, says signage placed in common areas as well as clauses in employee manuals can reinforce the idea that each member of the team has value regardless of age or gender.

Painchaud has also seen companies create bonuses for being respectful and for being team players instead of the usual incentives based on profit or end of harvest. And if proactive steps aren’t working, disciplinary steps may be required for employees who are disrespectful to other staff.

Tips for creating an inclusive farm business

Source: Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council Agri HR Toolkit

Negative behaviours to avoid

• Ignoring, dismissing, interrupting, or speaking over others.
• Using negative non-verbal behaviours (rolling your eyes, shaking your head).
• Failing to give credit where it is due.
• Looking at your smartphone, computer or watch while someone is speaking to you.

Positive behaviours to reinforce

• Give everyone a clear set of rules and expectations to guide their behaviour.
• Include these rules in an employee policy handbook and post them in the employee lunchroom.
• Use inclusive language such as sales person, not salesman; cleaner not cleaning lady; staff in the office not the girls in the office; supervisor not foreman.
• Be aware of how a joke or comments may be perceived. What is funny to one individual could be offensive to another.

Training resources

• Workshops available from the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion
• e-learning available from Divesity@Work
• Mentorship, coaching for women from Women in Leadership

The post The inclusive, prosperous farm appeared first on Country Guide.

Research shows that diversity enhances innovation in the workplace. As well, agriculture relies on newcomers to fill the growing demand for workers in the industry.

However, diversity in the workplace also poses some challenges, including communication barriers, cultural differences, and perhaps most worrisome of all, our own personal biases.

Any of these can lead to misunderstandings and conflict, says Dr. Sara Mann, a professor in strategic HR management at the University of Guelph.

Interacting with people from different cultures requires what the experts call “cultural intelligence,” which Mann defines as the ability to interpret and adapt to others’ behaviour.

The good news, says Mann, is that we can learn to get better at it.

First of all, let’s understand what we mean by culture, which includes the values, norms, beliefs, and customs that an individual holds in common with a group.

There is even a “culture of agriculture,” which can sometimes include a tendency to knock those who don’t farm. We do the industry a disservice, however, when we refer to people as “city slickers” or “citiots,” especially considering these are the same people whom we want to buy our products.

Mann says the first step is to become more aware of our biases. Then we should try to look at the situation through the other’s perspective.

Evelina Silveira, owner of Diversity at Work in London, Ont., which offers training and publishes Diversity and Workplace magazine, explains how different cultural norms can interfere with effective communication. While language barriers may be one cause of misunderstandings between those of different ethnic backgrounds, less obvious but perhaps even more important are differences in how we communicate.

Silveira explains that while North Americans and Northern Europeans commonly speak in a very direct and open manner, the other 80 per cent of the world may actually find this manner of speaking rude.

“We may believe our way is better, but it is important to understand that these are just different styles,” says Silveira, adding that you may confuse the speaker if you interrupt a high-context speaker and ask them to get to the point.

Leadership styles also vary between cultures. “Much of the world is used to a more authoritarian or hierarchal leadership style,” says Silveira. Workers may have been closely supervised and may not have been allowed to be innovative, she explains, so it may take workers some time before they are comfortable with being left on their own to do work.

It isn’t that they can’t do the work that you are assigning to them. It’s that they are uncertain about what’s expected of them, and what they’re allowed to do.

It’s another example of why, when it comes to fostering a workplace where diversity is respected, leadership is important, says Silveira. There must be the same expectations for everyone from the top down, she says.

Importantly, she adds, “It must be clear that bullying and harassment will not be tolerated.”

“There must be clear communication from the top down and sideways,” agrees Lew Bayer, a Winnipeg-based corporate civility trainer.

Creating a culture of civility in the workplace is worth the effort, Bayer says. Research shows profits are 30 per cent higher, employees are 30 per cent more engaged and there is a 30 per cent increase in employee retention in these workforces.

“When understood and effectively harnessed, diversity enables us to work toward common goals and contributes to growth and innovation,” says Bayer. “By building our cultural competence, we can bridge cultural challenges and learn to better understand ourselves and others, to prevent and rectify misunderstandings, and to communicate effectively across cultural boundaries.”

Striving to create a more inclusive workplace also has spinoff benefits for families and communities, since employees take these good habits out into the world with them.

“Incivility happens as a result of habit,” says Bayer. “When you teach civility, people start to think differently. They will understand reciprocity, respect, team orientation and problem solving. They will become more engaged.”

Practical tips for an inclusive workplace

Some employers may not be aware of the difference between equality and equity. For example, equality is giving everyone Sunday off as their day of rest. But if someone practices a religion that has Saturday as its day of observance, then giving that person Saturday off would be more equitable.

When planning events, be aware of restrictions around what foods may be eaten, whether alcohol is permitted, and the roles of men and women.

If there are language barriers, choose simpler explanations and use pictures or hands-on demonstrations to make it easier for workers to understand what needs to be done.

Too often we are careless with how we say people’s names. A person’s name is their identity and we should be respectful. Write the names down phonetically to help you remember how to say them correctly. Don’t laugh if you are having trouble pronouncing it, and don’t anglicize the person’s name or call them a nickname without their permission.

Canadians tend to be more casual when it comes to names. In high context cultures, hierarchy and following formal protocols are more important. Don’t use the person’s first name until they tell you to do so. In the meantime, use the polite titles of Mr. or Mrs.

Avoid making generalizations about a person’s culture. For example, if someone is from Romania, don’t say you have a friend from Poland. “It’s not the same thing,” says Silveira. “That’s like someone telling you that they have a friend who is American.”

Don’t assume that you know everything about the area where a person comes from. Our news reports likely don’t tell the whole story.

Also respect a person’s cultural norms. “Customs bring continuity when everything is new for an immigrant,” says Silveira. “It helps to hang on to something familiar.”

Source: Evelina Silveira, publisher of Diversity and Workplace magazine

Resources

• The Winnipeg-based Civility Experts offers training in culture, diversity, generational or gender differences. You’ll also find the free Cultural Compass Assessment Tool to help you determine where your farm business needs to improve.
• Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council offers some workshops and online training.
• Diversity at Work — training, consultation, books and newsletters on fostering inclusivity in the workplace and serving diverse clients.

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