When Marcel Hacault was growing up on a mixed farm near Mariapolis, Man., finding part-time help never seemed to be a problem for his father and other farmers in the area.
“They just hired the neighbour’s kid because we knew that he knew how to drive a tractor and he had that common sense.”
But a decades-long trend toward larger farms and rural depopulation has created a greater need for hired help, with fewer skilled workers to fill those positions.
Agriculture’s chronic labour shortage has all sorts of productivity and economic ramifications but it is also generating farm safety concerns, said Hacault, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association. He spoke at the Saskatchewan Alliance for Safety and Health in Agriculture’s annual meeting in Sask-atoon June 9.
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According to the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, there was a 23 percent vacancy rate for seasonal jobs and a nine percent vacancy in non-seasonal positions in Canada’s agriculture sector in 2008. Those rates are high compared to other industries.
The group estimates there were 25,590 vacant positions for non-seasonal workers and 16,560 vacancies for seasonal workers. By 2013, those gaps are expected to grow to 50,925 and 38,855 workers respectively.
Producers looking for help have been forced to hire retired farmers, immigrant workers and people employed in other industries.
That has created some unique safety challenges. Many immigrant workers have no experience in agriculture, don’t understand English or are illiterate. Workers from local industries may have a good grasp of work-safe procedures for the job they have been trained to do, but working on a farm is different.
Hacault recently spoke to a potato farmer who hired a garage mechanic to help out with the operation.
“He was so used to working in a controlled, safe environment. When you’re working on the farm, you’re out in the field with equipment moving around and the whole bit. This is not a static workplace.”
Hacault has no statistical proof that agriculture’s labour shortage is leading to an increase in on-farm accidents. But he knows farmers are uncomfortable providing safety training and are finding it particularly challenging when it comes to language and literacy barriers.
“Most farmers that I know are very good at production. This is a whole new skill set that they are unprepared for,” he said.
That’s why CASA has made developing farm safety plans one of its priorities over the next four years.
The group will work with the resource council to develop pictograms to overcome the literacy and language issues and simple job descriptions that outline what needs to be done to avoid farm accidents.
CASA will also be working with the University of Saskatchewan on a pilot project to explore what kind of incentives could be used to encourage farmers to make their operations safer for themselves and their workers.
It could include better insurance rates or a monetary incentive to equip their tractors with rollover protective structures.
