Bursaries and scholarships support tomorrow’s farmers, food producers

May 06, 2025

By Ethan Wallace, Vice President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

Agriculture is arguably among the most important industries we have. Not only is it one of the biggest sectors of the Ontario and Canadian economies, but it’s also fundamental to our very existence.

After all, everyone has to eat – and in Ontario, we’re luckier than most in the wide range of food and farm commodities we can produce right here at home (that’s more than 200, by the way!). As well, our home grown production goes beyond food to include feed, fuel, fibre, flowers and much more.

At the same time, we know that the average age of farmers is increasing – the last national Census of Agriculture pegged it at 56 – and not only is the number of farmers declining, but the sector also struggles to fill all its available jobs.

The job shortage in agriculture is expected to reach 123,000 by 2030 as the sector both continues to grow and older workers retire, whether from the farm or other positions in the industry.

The opportunities in agriculture are diverse, fascinating and fulfilling, from traditional on-farm careers working with livestock or growing crops to industry positions in research, equipment maintenance, quality control, food safety, construction, transportation, processing, product development, marketing, sales and more.

Emerging fields are also increasingly important on the modern farm, like robotics, automation and artificial intelligence, to name just a few.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators