Trish Armstrong doesn’t like it, but she has to be picky.
“It’s not just any Joe that can work on a farm now – it’s got to be somebody with a bit of intelligence,” the Eastend, Sask. farmer said about hiring help to work at her 560 cow operation.
“Lots of times you can get two hands, but it’s really hard to get anyone who has any experience and has the desire to work.”
Armstrong is one of hundreds of producers across the Prairies having difficulty finding farm help this spring.
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The Western Producer’s help-wanted section is brimming with well over a hundred advertisements seeking workers for grain farms, cow-calf operations and other agricultural businesses. Federal employment centres report they have many requests for farm workers, but find far fewer interested applicants than are required.
Many agricultural employers said they were surprised by how difficult it is to find good help.
Marlene Klassen, manager of the Human Resource Centre in Swift Current, Sask., said skilled workers there have many options besides farm work. Construction, manufacturing and the oilfield are booming, so farmers looking for workers must be able to compete.
“People who are available and have good skills are able to make choices that they weren’t able to make in the early 1990s,” she said.
Too many options?
Saskatoon employment centre analyst Rhonda Laing said farmers face stiff competition for available labor from equipment manufacturers.
It isn’t just farmers and ranchers having problems finding good staff. Stewart Stone of Heartland Livestock, which operates livestock facilities across the Prairies, said finding people at all is difficult, but finding skilled people is often mission impossible.
“There isn’t a deep pool of talented people out there,” said Stone.
Farm and agricultural employers often need workers with more than farm experience. They also want specialized driver’s licences, veterinary skills and the ability to do inventory and other minor accounting work, Klassen said. Not long ago, most farm hands only needed a Grade 10 education to get a job.
Stone said Heartland often hires workers without skills they need, then trains and develops them.
Armstrong said she doesn’t mind training people, but has been frustrated when they leave, taking their new skills with them and the farm has to train another new person.
Apart from the boom in the oilfield and other similar industries, there are other factors that make finding farm help difficult, Klassen said.
“The exodus from the rural areas into the cities is also not giving us the ready supply of people who have a farm background,” she said.
And since Canada’s population is aging, there are fewer young people to move into farm jobs.
Klassen said many farm workers shop around for employment and compare pay and benefits of various farms. She said one saving grace farms can offer is the lifestyle.
“They’re saying: ‘How does it fit in with my family values,’ ” said Klassen. Many families want to move out of the city after they have children, and “some look for opportunities in rural areas.”
