I’ve always been a farmer. I grew up steps away from where I live now, near the village of Fillmore in southeastern Saskatchewan. My grandparents acquired a 640-acre property in 1956, and I helped harvest crops and raise livestock on those fields. I didn’t spend days off from school sitting on the couch and watching TV—there was always something to do. When I was young, my dad farmed 1,500 acres, and I helped feed our 80 cows and ensured they had bedding.
Today, our third-generation farm employs seven people and grows wheat, canola, lentils and flax on 15,000 acres of Saskatchewan prairie. We sell to grain companies and specialty buyers that export our commodities around the world. My dad is still involved in the business, but I’ve taken on a bigger role over the past 13 years. I have three sons with my wife, Stephanie, plus two nephews and a niece, and our vision is to grow an enduring farm for the fourth generation.
That’s the fundamental problem with our worker shortage: since birth rates have collapsed over the last couple of decades, our available workforce is shrinking, and those able to work aren’t working for us. My job posting offered competitive pay and benefits, but I found that prospective qualified employees weren’t interested in manual labour and long hours. Urbanization is another issue: major cities welcome immigrants by the thousands, but rural areas don’t get the same influx of newcomers.
It’s high time the government recognizes the danger our industry faces. We need to enact change through policy and bring more skilled agricultural labourers to Canada; they can come from the pool of international workers who have experience in this sector. The Dutch government, for example, recently announced misguided plans to buy out and close up to 3,000 farms in an attempt to reduce emissions, and those are workers looking for an opportunity to stay in the business they know and love.