Students and employers prepare for changing agriculture landscape

Students, employers and educators explored diverse options in agricultural careers at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2024.

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Glacier FarmMedia’s team’s coverage on Day 3 of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show included crop tours, livestock handling and a look at combine wrapped in a Canada flag.

The show offered a Career Crawl to connect companies with students looking for part-time or full-time employment.

Though young students and graduates often face prohibitive input costs and barriers to owning their own farms, other careers in the agriculture value chain remain open. Some exhibitors courted young jobseekers while others sought more insight.

Why it matters: Diverse non-farming opportunities in agriculture employment are often underrepresented and under-publicized.

Landyn Bowen, a recent graduate of the University of Guelph’s Bachelor of Commerce, Food and Agriculture Business program, said he would be interested in farming. However, he said many barriers prevent this from becoming a reality.

“Certainly, I think the biggest one probably would be cost,” he said. “Because obviously, you just graduated from school, so you don’t have that much money, if anything you could be in debt.”

“Trying to buy land, let alone equipment, all the input costs, like it’s just… you’ve really got to crunch the numbers to make it work, even on a large scale at a family operation.”

Bowen currently works part-time on a cousin’s farm while also working full-time as a Precision Ag Specialist for Premier Equipment Ltd. He said farming is something he would pursue, at least on a part-time basis, if startup costs were not so prohibitive.

“It’s always been in the back of my head, but I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” he said, “because given the price of land and everything … I’d have to find someone good to partner with, I think.”

While some struggle to find a path into farming, others are attempting to fill non-farming agriculture jobs elsewhere in the value chain.

Janice LeBoeuf, the strategic initiative coordinator for the Arrell Food Institute, said one of the current goals for Arrell is to attract students in non-agricultural streams to careers in agriculture.

“We’ve also been trying to figure out how to adjust the educational programs at Guelph to integrate some of these other skills into the ag program,” she said, “but also to integrate information about agriculture into other programs.”

This could include disciplines like engineering or computer science.

“Not having taken computer science, but I assume when you’re taking it you’re like ‘oh, I know that … I could design a medical app or I could develop a social kind of app,” she said.

“I don’t think agriculture is the top thing that might come to the average computer science student’s mind.”

LeBoeuf explained that there are three factors that often keep young people from jobs in agriculture: lack of awareness about opportunities, negative perceptions of the industry and past negative experiences.

LeBoeuf and Ann Kraus, the project coordinator for the University of Guelph’s Food From Thought research program, both said that one of their main reasons for exhibiting at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show was to get feedback via a poll on what they can do better, such as what kind of courses people are interested in and how to apply research practically.

AgCareers Talent Solutions Manager Katie Hunter spoke at the Career Crawl Lunch during the show on Thursday Sept. 12. She said she saw interest in a variety of agriculture careers across students in attendance.

“The students that are here, lots of them are open to the different opportunities,” Hunter said. She said this included a number of international students.

Like LeBoeuf, Hunter said she felt stigma around the industry often holds people back from pursuing ag careers.

“I think sometimes when people think about agriculture, they maybe are thinking of what you picture of a farmer, which is part of the industry and a very important part of the industry. But there’s also lots of technology, so having a technology background or interest is great.”

She said the jobs are out there if people are looking for them.

“If they’re open to what the opportunities are, I think they’ll be able to find a good path.”

As for those young people interested in farming in the future, her advice was to save up a lot of money and look into working alongside somebody with experience.