A chronic shortage of workers isn’t just a problem for meat packers, but all of agriculture, say experts.
Mark Chambers sees the impact every day at Sunterra Farms, but also knows his experience is being mirrored across the country.
“If we can’t get enough labour to produce the value-added products or to expand and grow, we’re going to be at a competitive disadvantage to our neighbours south of us,” said Chambers, senior production manager at Sunterra Farms and also a member of a national task force trying to find solutions for the worsening labour situation.
“That’s not a good thing when you’re trying to grow your economy.”
There are currently 800 to 1,000 vacant positions in Canadian meat-packing plants alone, including 20 at Sunterra’s facility near Acme, which processes mainly hogs (but also some bison, cattle and lamb). The plant employs about 100 people, said Chambers.
“It’s not a big plant — it’s a small business — and we export about 70 per cent of that product to international markets,” he said. “It’s a challenge to try and take advantage of those opportunities when you don’t have enough people. We just cannot kill enough pigs if we don’t have the people there.”
The labour shortages at processing plants have a “trickle-down effect” all across agriculture, said Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst, executive director of the Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council.
“There are many plants that are sitting with hundreds of positions that are unfilled,” she said. “When that happens, the plant isn’t operating as efficiently as it could be, and those big operations start thinking about whether they want to stay in Canada or move operations to the States.
“The whole of the value chain, whether it be in the pork industry or the beef industry, is really quite concerned about this issue.”
And the problem isn’t unique to food processing, said MacDonald-Dewhirst. It’s also impacting primary producers who can’t find farm labourers.
“We know vacancy rates have typically been nine to 10 per cent for this industry, and we know that that has increased in the last little while,” she said.
“With so many positions being open and people really scrambling to fill them, it impacts not just production capacity right now but also business growth and expansion opportunities that producers aren’t able to take advantage of.
“Everybody is implicated if one part of the value chain is in dire straits.”
Source: AlbertaPork