Programs to train agriculture and agri-food workers in the works

by SUSAN MANN

The University of Guelph is leading efforts to ensure the agriculture and food sector has enough highly trained and qualified workers, while another organization is working on a comprehensive plan to promote employment opportunities in the industry to young people.

The situation is serious for Ontario’s economy because “the food and agriculture sector is a major sector for employment and the province is looking to the sector as a key sector for economic growth,” says Rene Van Acker, associate dean, external relations for the university’s Ontario Agricultural College. “Highly qualified personnel is a key piece of that puzzle.”

The two organizations, University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) and Food and Beverage Ontario, which represents processors, have recently released a report containing three major recommendations to attract the next generation of skilled workers to the industry.

Part of the university’s efforts includes promoting the industry to high school students to get them interested in post-secondary agriculture and food programs. Van Acker says one way the university tries to recruit students is through its work in the specialist high skills majors programs in high schools, where students visit the university campus and teachers learn about the university’s programs. “It’s an awareness-raising opportunity,” he says.

But recruiting students to agriculture programs is challenging because “there are limits in how much recruitment you can do and how you do that recruitment” of high school students, he says. In addition, general university fair events aren’t designed to attract students to “take programs that serve the food and agriculture sector.”

Promoting the agriculture and food industry to attract students was one of the three major recommendations in the joint report, called Planning for Ontario’s Future Agri-Food Workforce: A Report on Agriculture and Food and Beverage Processing Training in Ontario Colleges and Universities.

The other two recommendations are to increase capacity and enrolment in post-secondary programs and implement new food post-secondary programs.

Steve Peters, executive director of Food and Beverage Ontario, says the need for a plan to attract young people to agricultural careers was also identified in that organization’s report released a year ago.

Currently, Food and Beverage Ontario has an application filed with the provincial agriculture ministry for Growing Forward 2 funding “that would help to fulfill the recommendations from this (the joint OAC/Food and Beverage Ontario) report,” he says, noting he can’t be specific because discussions are ongoing and the organization doesn’t yet have a signed agreement.

“It’s a comprehensive plan for the next 3.5 years to really promote this industry and promote opportunities in the agriculture and agri-food sectors,” he says. The plan’s development is supported by businesses, educational institutions and government leaders.

The joint OAC/Food and Beverage Ontario report assessed the employment needs of the agriculture and food industries and found that 59 per cent of employers have trouble finding candidates with proper training, according to a press release from the two organizations. It also referenced an earlier report from JRG Consulting Group that found the supply of graduates from post-secondary school programs is not meeting industry’s demand. The industry’s demand for newly hired people “straight out of university is expected to increase by 10 to 20 per cent over the next few years,” the release says.

Existing post secondary school programs were also reviewed as part of the report.

The “industry is always telling us it’s a challenge to find qualified people,” Van Acker says. A lack of skilled workers can limit businesses’ opportunities to grow “and it can limit their opportunities to be as effective as they want to be.”

Van Acker says the report is the first time “we’re starting to look at that in a coordinated fashion in terms of post secondary service of the sector.”

Before the report was released representatives from industry, government, colleges and universities from across Ontario attended a workshop on Oct. 14 to talk about the need to attract skilled workers to the agricultural industry. “It’s the first time that we’ve gotten together as a group around this topic and that’s a good start,” he notes.

Peters says in the release that with the workshop leaders working together and “an action plan developed, there is an opportunity for the industry to grow to 185,000 jobs by 2020, an additional 60,000 over today’s numbers, and generate over $70 billion in sales.” BF