How do you find and keep great farm help? That’s a question all farmers are wrestling with as labour becomes tougher to find and often equally difficult to retain. With low unemployment rates, it’s tough to keep talent on the farm, says Mark Ferguson, business management specialist for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and… Read More
Starting this month, the Farm Freedom and Safety Act (FFSA) has come into effect. Put in place by the Alberta Government, the Act — known as Bill 26 — is a replacement of Bill 6, introduced by the previous NDP government. In it, there’s changes to current employment, workers compensation coverage (WCB), and occupational health… Read More
Contrary to an oft-quoted statistic, Darrell Bricker says we are not racing to a population of 9 billion by 2050. In fact Bricker, CEO of IPSOS Public Affairs and author of Empty Planet, argues that population dynamics mean Canada needs to think more strategically about attracting new immigrants and finding new export markets. Bricker says… Read More
Farmers will hear much talk of the need for resilience in the years ahead. From weather and markets, to trade, to family and managing day-to-day operations, farmers need to be able to cope with the challenges and setbacks that are routinely part of production agriculture. No one personifies resilience more than Springfield, PEI, dairy farmer… Read More
Terry Betker has worked with farmers to establish peer groups for more than a decade. Traditionally, farmers engage with their peers to share management ideas in informal settings — everywhere from industry meetings to the local coffee shop — but formal peer groups are not common in Canadian agriculture, says Betker, president of Winnipeg-based Backswath… Read More
When you think about filling part-time, short-term or contract work positions in agriculture, most likely assume the discussion will be about the temporary foreign worker program. But work opportunities in agriculture are as diverse as the industry itself, and AgCall has approached filling these part-time labour and expertise needs with a unique business model. Arron… Read More
What could Canadian agriculture achieve if it had 123,000 new skilled workers over the next decade? According to RBC Royal Bank, all that new labour would help the sector realize its tremendous economic potential and could contribute an additional $11 billion to Canada’s GDP by 2030, making agriculture more productive than auto manufacturing and aerospace… Read More
Working with family can be the most rewarding part of the farm business, but it also has the potential to be one of the most challenging aspects, full of emotion, relationship evolution, and conflict. In this episode of Mind Your Farm Business, host Shaun Haney is joined by Ed and Lyle Peters, father-son farm partners… Read More
A lot has changed for Debra Harrison in the past 39 years. Almost four decades ago she was the first female engineer ever hired by John Deere. Today she is president of John Deere Canada. Earlier this week, Harrison shared that journey with 450 people attending the Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference at Niagara Falls,… Read More
Robotics are changing the dynamics of dairy businesses, and co-evolving along with them. “Today, conventional dairies spend 50-60 per cent of the total labour on the physical act of milking cows, (and) only 10 to 20 per cent on feeding cows, five to 10 per cent on health, and the other 10 per cent on… Read More
There’s no doubt that the world of international trade has been rough and tumble the last while, but that doesn’t mean Canada shouldn’t continue to participate. Beyond just participating, Canada should be actively investing in agriculture’s major potential on the world stage now, and in the decades to come. It’s no secret to those in… Read More
We’ve seen results from an early-campaign survey on what Canadians are worried about in regards to food, and we’ve heard from each of the four main parties heading into this federal election. But what I want to know is, what are YOUR priorities, Canadian agriculture? As media, I watched the debate, I interviewed Sylvain Charlebois… Read More
Canadian farms are currently facing a labour shortage, with no signs indicating it will get better in the short-term. In response, the Canadian government has announced plans to modernize the program. The Canadian government will put a focus on making the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program easier for users to use and understand better. Minister… Read More
Labour shortages in agriculture are a challenge across nearly the entire sector, and unfortunately the issue cannot be fixed overnight. At this year’s Canadian Beef Industry Conference held at Calgary, Alta., the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC) gave an update on the state of labour for the beef industry, along with agriculture as a… Read More
As there’s many moving parts in agriculture, some may forget what’s happening in the background when it comes to policy. It might be surprising to some that farmers in other countries as close as the U.S. and as far as Africa deal with similar issues on both a large and small scale. At the inaugural… Read More