A study from RBC says that over the next few years, there will be over 30,000 Farm Jobs in Canada just for immigrant farmers. They can either take over farms or start their own farms.
“In 10 years, 60% of the people who run farms today will be over 65. Never before have so many farmers in Canada been so close to leaving their jobs. Also, the number of operators under age 55 has dropped by 54% since 2001, according to a study by RBC called Farmers Wanted: The Labour Renewal Canada Needs to Build the Next Green Revolution.
“The best way to solve this problem right away is at our borders. Giving permanent immigration status to more than 24,000 general farm workers and 30,000 operators can help fill retirement and staffing gaps, help the sector reach its full output potential, and meet domestic and international food demands.
The most recent information from Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) shows that the Canadian agricultural industry is already relying more and more on immigration to fill jobs where there aren’t enough workers.
In 2022, 970 new permanent residents moved to Canada to work in the agricultural sector. This included 155 managers, 530 agricultural service contractors, farm leaders, and specialized livestock workers, and 285 general farm workers.
Compared to the 625 new permanent residents who came to Canada to fill these types of jobs in 2021, that’s a 55.2% increase in the number of farm workers coming to work there.
The number of people coming to Canada to fill farming jobs is even higher than it was before the pandemic. IRCC data shows that 710 new permanent residents came to Canada to fill these types of jobs in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
And the trend of more people coming to work in agriculture is just getting started. And they are relocating to Canada to take up Farm Jobs in Canada.
In the first two months of this year, 320 new permanent residents came to Canada to fill these kinds of jobs. If this rate of immigration to fill farming jobs stays the same for the rest of the year, Canada will have 1,920 more farm workers. RBC says that the need for people to work on Canadian farms has reached a crisis point.
The Canadian agricultural industry has one of the worst labor shortages in the world. The study says, “Canada’s agricultural skills crisis is already one of the worst in the world.” “The country has one of the worst shortages of people with the right skills to make food, coming in third behind the U.S. and the Netherlands.”
Farm Jobs in Canada
The bank sees the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) as a good way to find low-skilled workers who can help farmers who are having trouble finding farm workers.
“But it has some bad things about it. First, it’s a temporary fix for a long-term problem,” says RBC. “Second, many of these Temporary Foreign Workers (TFWs) who learn skills that are important for planting and harvesting in Canada must go back to their home countries for short periods of time. If they can’t go back to Canada (because, for example, their government won’t let them because it worries about food security), Canada’s farm workers will be cut by a lot.”
In its study, RBC says that better policies are needed to let in low-skilled workers, such as a way for experienced TFWs to get permanent residency, which would solve this kind of shortage right away.
Temporary work permits and study permits are two steps to getting into Canada.
Canada has a two-step process for choosing new immigrants, which has become more important over the past 20 years.
In the first step, Canadian employers play a big role in hiring and evaluating temporary foreign workers on the Canadian labor market. This includes work permit holders in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), permit holders in the International Mobility Program (IMP), international students who have jobs, and other temporary workers.
In the second step, the IRCC decides how many temporary foreign workers can become permanent residents and which ones are qualified.
