Producers who need help on the farm can head down to the nearest employment agency and find someone, right?
Or perhaps they can call their neighbour, who will be happy to send his son over to help out.
These options might have worked once, but neither scenario is likely these days. The labour pool is shallow, and the skills required on modern farms are tremendous.
Brent VanKoughnet, who operates Agri Skills Inc. in Manitoba, said farmers can’t hire just anyone.
“Duct tape and baler twine are pretty expensive when it comes to people,” he told delegates to the Farm Leadership Council in Regina last week.
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His fellow panelist, Keith LePoudre, who is executive director of the First Nations Agricultural Council of Saskatchewan (FNACS), offered one solution.
He said within 15 years Saskatchewan’s labour shortage could be 23,000 to 217,000 workers. Some of those will be required in agriculture.
At the same time, the aboriginal population is growing. Saskatchewan has 74 First Nations, with a population of 140,000. Slightly less than 45 percent of that population is 21 years old or younger.
FNACS’s goals by 2030 include seeing 1,500 First Nations farmers and 3,000 people working in agriculture and graduating 160 people from agricultural diploma and degree programs.
The hitch is that agriculture on First Nations’ reserves has developed differently than it did outside the reserves.
“Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) has been big brother,” LePoudre said.
Among its rules: First Nations’ people can lease land for only three-year terms and can’t borrow money to get started. As well, no advisory service is available.
However, INAC has started moving away from this approach.
“The good news is it gives people more responsibility,” LePoudre said.
“The bad news is, how do you do that after 130 to 140 years of being told what to do?”
Agriculture Canada doesn’t deliver programs specific to First Nations farmers, and the provincial government says that’s not its jurisdiction.
The agricultural council has worked with the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology to develop a strategy for teaching First Nations people how to farm.
Programs such as the Youth Livestock Program were set up to help young people get started. Through the Saskatchewan Indian Equity Foundation, they can obtain a four-year loan for their first six or seven head of livestock. They also receive training and are connected with a mentor.
LePoudre said 71 of these loans are in place now. One youth started at age with 15 with five cows.
“He now has 79,” he said.
“He informed me he is going to be the largest First Nations cattle producer ever.”
At meetings held to develop a beef and horse strategy, organizers were surprised to see provincial and federal agricultural officials attend. LePoudre said they came because they were having trouble finding riders for community pastures.
Four First Nations riders are now employed at Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration pastures, with more jobs likely.
The horse racing industry has also called, looking for grooms, and a training program has been established.
“What are your needs going to be in the future?” LePoudre asked the FLC delegates.
“Your industry needs to be talking to us.”
Kris Mayerle, a farmer from Tisdale, Sask., who with his wife, Rhonda, was named the province’s Outstanding Young Farmer last year, said he can’t say for sure how his family has managed to keep employees for its farm, pedigreed seed operation and custom harvesting business.
One employee has worked on the farm for 37 years.
He said one practice that has helped him keep employees is to take their requests for time off seriously.
“We don’t work Sundays,” he said.
“My employees love that. They give me way more hours in the other six days of the week.”
Mayerle said he involves employees in decision making and offers benefits and a salary that farm labourers traditionally haven’t seen.
VanKoughnet said good employees are smart enough to find the best employers.
“How hard are you to work for?” he asked delegates.
“How demanding are you? How easy is it to navigate around keeping you happy?”
