Canada Needs More Farm Workers

Jul 30, 2018

Finding good help on the farm or ranch can be a major challenge.

It’s not uncommon for some operations to hire custom harvesters to get the crop in the bin rather than run the risk of inclement weather or frost impacting the quality.

Norm Hall is Vice President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA).

He says we’re seeing more migrant workers coming into Canada under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program or the Agricultural Stream of Temporary Foreign Workers Program.

“Foreign labor is a much higher percentage of the labor force and right now we’re seeing somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 placements short here in Canada in agriculture. Over the next ten years, that number will quite possibly double.”

He says some of the factors impacting the labor shortage is the change in the dynamic and size of farms, the government’s desire to increase agricultural exports and production, and the fact there are fewer and fewer farm kids.

“All of the developed agricultural countries are competing for the same workers. For a lot of workers, distance is an issue. For Nicaraguans, Canada is a long way away and the U.S. is a lot closer. The U.S. can bring their workers in a lot easier than we can in Canada, it takes a much shorter time to go through all the red tape.”

Source : Steinbachonline

Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.