Reading Time: 4 minutes It isn’t just the government red tape and the inevitable mountain of paperwork that comes with it that has driven some European farmers to Canada. It’s also the public’s negative perception of farmers and how it is fueling a lot of the regulations, especially around manure management, fertilizer use and animal welfare. “There is no […] Read more
Choosing Canada
For these new immigrants, there’s no going back. Their future is here
The immigrant farm
Is another wave of foreign farmers headed for Canada?
Reading Time: 5 minutes [UPDATED: Nov. 21, 2023] Even into the early 2000s, Canadian real estate agents were doing impressive business flying cash-rich and expansion-minded European farmers west across the Atlantic to buy turnkey farms here at prices far cheaper than they could ever find at home. That was then. Today, the flow has slowed to a trickle, not […] Read more
Britain facing mass cull of pigs due to butcher shortage
Reading Time: 2 minutes London | Reuters — Britain’s farming industry has warned that hundreds of thousands of pigs may have to be culled within weeks unless the government issues visas to allow more butchers into the country. An acute shortage of butchers and slaughterers in the meat processing industry has been exacerbated by COVID-19 and Britain’s post-Brexit immigration […] Read more
Alberta farm builds labour diversity into its core
Is there a better way to find and retain farm employees in Canada’s tough market? Van Raay Paskal Farms figured there must be, with innovative thinking and a readiness to look to non-traditional sources
Reading Time: 9 minutes The sun is barely up but VRP Farms Ltd., a half hour north of Lethbridge, is already humming. Pen riders saddle their horses and barn labourers are shipping, sorting and processing. Feed drivers put their trucks in gear, operators of high hoes and manure trucks shuttle about the site, and truck drivers back up to […] Read more
The overseas employee
If we look to 2030, where will we find our farm employees?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Agriculture is already looking outside the agricultural community — and in some cases outside the country — to recruit workers. That’s only going to intensify if, as expected, rural populations stagnate or decline, and if farms consolidate and rely more on hired employees. It’s also worth noting that 112,000 of today’s employees (37 per cent […] Read more
Editor’s Note: Give immigrant workers a chance
While we shake our heads in disbelief at how the U.S. is so incompetent at immigration policy, we’re sitting on a missed opportunity of our own
Reading Time: 2 minutes Make time to read “The Job Ahead,” Country Guide field editor Shannon VanRaes’s examination of Canada’s shocking (at least, it should be shocking) farm labour nightmare. Her story is a cure for the superiority we’d like to feel when we look across our southern border. It should also be a spur to action. The numbers […] Read more
Trump reassures farmers immigration crackdown not aimed at their workers
Reading Time: 3 minutes Washington/San Francisco | Reuters — U.S. President Donald Trump said he would seek to keep his tough immigration enforcement policies from harming the U.S. farm industry and its largely immigrant workforce, according to farmers and officials who met with him. At a roundtable on farm labour at the White House last month, Trump said he […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
