As agriculture evolves into a high-tech business, automation and machinery do a lot of the heavy lifting, giving producers and employees the ability to “operate” data and robotics to improve profitability. That means changing the perception of farm work for incoming employees, and competing with other sectors who also want them for their technical skills.

On December 9, 2021, the Agri-food Innovation Council hosted a panel-based webinar on the need to attract talent and skilled labour in the agri-food sector. Gentec attended this webinar so you don’t have to. We summarize below the panelists’ comments on the key points. The panelists were:

• Martin Scanlon, Professor and Dean, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Manitoba
• Ryan Riese, National Director, Agriculture, Royal Bank of Canada
• Jennifer Wright, Acting Executive Director, Operations, Programs and Partnerships, Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council (CAHRC)

What key changes in innovation has the workforce brought to agriculture?

RIESE. Human ingenuity is responsible for innovation so it’s the workforce that drives innovation in the sector. When I ask clients, “What keeps you up at night?”, I get a lot about accessing labour. Not even advanced skills but appropriate skills. Sometimes, it’s just showing up reliably. So we need to drive curiosity, bring in the people who want to consider ag as a career, and the skills the industry requires. But those people need to be committed, have a good work ethic, be flexible. Ag is not a 9-to-5 job. Also they have to be ready to learn, listen and be taught.

SCANLON. Post-secondary education expects graduates to communicate clearly, think well and engage with each other professionally. They’ve been trained in crucial teamwork. Those industry needs won’t go away. But technology shapes how we deliver programs because it’s pervasive. If we look at Olds College, it has a 2-year program, Techgronomy. At UManitoba, we are taking a new approach so we don’t compete. All grads, regardless of discipline, should appreciate technology, what it can and can’t do. So all programs and courses have technology embedded in them. We partner with tech companies so that grads understand how to implement tech at the farm or other level.

WRIGHT. CAHRC does a lot of labour market research focusing on the workforce of today and in the future. Producers are experiencing labour shortages now. Our forecast says the shortage will double in next 10 years. Looking at ways to increase efficiencies and be more productive will help. That said, we also see that tech is adopted quickly but not changing the number of people required. Instead, it’s impacting the skills required. So where computer skills might have been necessary for entry-level jobs, now it’s for all jobs. We’re also hearing from producers that soft skills, teamwork, etc. are becoming more important because they are hiring people who didn’t grow up on farms. They need to teach the technology but without core background skills they won’t be successful at teaching the hands-on skills. So there’s a balance between soft skills and how they affect all elements of the workforce.

How well do you think public perception of working in ag aligns with reality? There’s the idyllic image of a barn with a red door and a calf peering through, munching hay. That’s changed but the public is not realizing the opportunities ag can offer.

SCANLON. We’re not doing a good job of reaching out to urban youth, and showing them the broad array of careers in ag. There’s an image issue that we have to work with at the school level. Students have to be interested in science and then see where they can do computer programming, agrology, etc. We started a program to steer undecided science grads towards food processing and agronomy. With the Faculty of Science ,we’re offering 4-6 courses that these grads can take to get insight on what an ag or food processing career is. It’s the kind of leg-up that gets them in the door for an interview. They can say: “I have gaps but here’s my science. With additional training, I’ll be useful employee”.

WRIGHT. I have first-hand experience of this. My 15-year old son wants to farm. We live in downtown Ottawa. When he shares his desires with teachers, the feedback is that he’s taking the easy way out, wanting to be a lazy farmer. I’ve had a chance to talk to those teachers but that’s not a one off. So we have a lot of work to do reaching out to urban schools, elementary and secondary, and then build on drawing undecided science grads into ag. We’ve just started two initiatives for students. One is developing business cases that require ag and non-ag students to work together, which helps build awareness of how an IT degree can be used, for example. In many cases, they’re not aware because of incorrect or old perceptions of the industry. And we’re running a wage subsidy program to connect non-ag students to ag.

RIESE. People get farther from the farm with each generation so the more opportunities they have to understand, the better. Perceptions are mostly incorrect. Industry needs to keep promoting and encouraging people to join the sector who did not grow up on the farm, and not make it a prerequisite.

Also, I want to point out that working in ag doesn’t necessarily mean you’re starting a farm or becoming an owner/operator. Those barriers are very high. That’s another conversation. But there are lots of support roles on farms as farms get bigger and more complex. They require subject matter expertise on different areas of the business. So there are lots of opportunities to join the sector without being an actual producer. We have to highlight that, too.

We see researchers going into various fields but not ag R&D. They want to build the next spaceship, but not the next farm robot. Is this an image we want to continue promoting?

SCANLON. Once people get engaged, whether they have the background or not, they are powerful advocates. We need to keep getting the message across. NASA and the Canadian Space Agency have this program: what equipment do we need for the mission to Mars? They brought in the best engineers, scientists and innovators, then added ag and food. There’s nothing old hat about ag. It’s the bedrock of society so we have to attract talent to keep it going.

RIESE. Research is the starting point but it takes many years to come to life. How great is it to wake up knowing you’re going to feed society? It’s a great story to be told. You don’t have to work for Amazon, Google, etc. There’s an incredible opportunity in ag for those looking to embark in the tech world.

WRIGHT. A lot of the tech being implemented on farms comes from outside Canada, so too does the technical help. Canadians can fill that gap.

Agri-food activities are conducted outside urban areas but that’s not where people live. How do we engage people to move to rural areas?

WRIGHT. I’m hearing that there’s more movement out of urban centres but it’s not translating into an increase in the labour pool because people are working remotely. They’re not connecting with the local labour force but they are increasing the need for services. So communities can ensure support for newcomers in terms of housing and services.

RIESE. We need government policy that helps bring the right people in. I hope immigration policy and ag policy are working together to kickstart the process. A lot of towns need people to work in ag.

SCANLON. It certainly is an issue. For example, Portage is an hour west of Winnipeg. It has 13,000 residents. Local companies run four buses a day from Winnipeg to ensure they have people with the right skills to ensure the continuity of their operations. Those issues aren’t going away. Then there’s the issue of bringing broadband to rural communities.

Automation could address labour shortages but how can you reduce labour without reducing productivity?

RIESE. Any time animal husbandry is involved, we still need physical beings to look after them. We have an obligation to the animals to ensure they are well looked-after, so we need people in that regard. Automatic feeders will help reduce that physical labour but we also need people to break down data and learning. So the roles will be different. That’s the message we want to carry.

SCANLON. Every sector is looking for people… health, IT, transportation. Are we not facing an endemic issue that won’t be solved with an ad campaign? Should we plan for ag with less people involved?

RIESE. That could be Plan B. Our goal is to attract people. If we can’t find people, it will hurt our sector or not allow us to capture opportunities. That’s unfortunate as a country. We need policy and promotion from all levels of government. Not many places in the world are better than Canada to meet the growing demand for food and protein.

SCANLON. The Barton Report identified ag as a key sector of the Canadian economy that could drive growth. That’s because we have unique endowed benefits of land mass, water, environment and climate. It would be criminal if we don’t get the talent to maximize these opportunities!

Read more about the shortage of labour in agriculture:

• https://www.realagriculture.com/2021/12/new-canadians-urban-students-needed-to-fill-labour-gaps-in-agriculture/
• https://www.producer.com/news/ag-sector-urged-to-think-outside-the-box-in-labour-search/

Sex is big business.

Florid intro sentences aside, in agriculture, sex is a large—and largely under-reported—animal welfare issue that straddles economics as well. The numbers really aren’t good. In the UK, 95,000 male calves are culled every year. In Australia, 600,000. In Germany, 200,000. We couldn’t find numbers for Canada because the topic isn’t well researched but the few studies done record paltry neonatal care compared to females, long travel with irregular feeding times and, often, on-farm euthanasia. That’s just the dairy industry.

In Canada alone, 22.5 million male chicks are culled every year to produce our eggs. In France, that’s 50 million every year. Is pork any better? Not much. As piglets mature, they release chemicals that release a foul smell when the meat is cooked so any male pigs used for meat are killed before that happens.

But what if females could produce litters or offspring of only the desirable sex? And by the way, not only females. Sometimes, males are required, too, especially in the lab environment where this question was first raised. Enter Peter Ellis at the University of Kent, and collaborators Charlotte Douglas and James Turner at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK.

“My research focused on testes so we needed male mice,” says Peter. “I had to give the females of the litters to researchers who specifically wanted them—or cull them. That makes you aware of sex. So our goal to ensure that as few animals get culled just for being the wrong sex.”

That idea isn’t new. Sperm sorting is already used in the dairy industry but it’s not infallible and can damage the sperm. In pigs, the technique isn’t fast enough to be viable. So, basically, we can do better.

Embryo selection using CRISPR gene editing is a leaps-and-bounds improvement. For starters, it’s one-hundred-percent effective. Guaranteed. It’s also ethically more humane to cull embryos that have no nervous system and aren’t capable of suffering than live baby animals. And bonus, the resulting litters are a little larger—in mice. See here for the technical details.

Peter is quick to remind us that this research is still in the early stages. We know it works in mice. It’s bound to work in other animals but that’s yet to be tested. And at the farm level, it’s years away. In the Canadian beef industry, those coming into closest contact with the technique would be breeders.

“Once the line has been generated, it’s simply a matter of breeding,” confirms Peter. “You don’t have to gene-edit every generation, the genes required can be maintained stably in the sire and dam lines. The male carries a gene on his Y chromosome, and the female has a guide RNA that activates it. Cross them, and you get the required offspring in the next generation.”

One reason embryo selection is years away in agriculture is the public concern over genetic modification technology in the food chain.

“The UK is considering relaxing the rules around gene editing in ag,” says Peter. “That could provide important benefits, but also comes with some risks about reducing care and welfare. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has done a lot of work around this. What level of biotech the public wants and why it’s acceptable are big questions. What we’ve done is provide a proof-of-principle to inform that debate… to take it out of the hypothetical and abstract into the real world.”

The Nuffield Report is clear that the public is suspicious of ag technology that lines producer’s pockets but more likely to be on board with it to improve animal welfare. However, the debate still has to explore acceptability behind using technology for breeding but where the end product is “normal”.

“We’re not engineering cows to produce more milk or grow faster. These animals will be the same as ones from conventional breeding practices,” says Peter. “Since milk doesn’t contain cells from the cow, that too will be normal. My sense is that public debate on gene editing will shift when people realize the welfare benefits that are possible. In the short term, that’s what our research will accomplish.”

In Canada, where GM salmon and apples are already on store shelves, public debate might reveal different answers than in the UK. Gentec researcher Ellen Goddard and her team are the national go-to experts on public acceptance and willingness-to-pay for technology-enhanced foods.

“I’d be very happy if Gentec decided to sponsor public surveying at a more granular level in Canada,” says Peter, who is a former collaborator of Gentec CEO Graham Plastow from his Ucambridge days.

Another reason for the long time horizon for embryo selection in ag is quite simply the need for more research. The research in mice represents 6-7 years of work, of which the first three alone were to develop cell lines. So the main next step—in parallel with the public debate—is developing cell lines to make sure that the parts that make the sex selection system in mice also work in other animals.

By then, we should have a better idea of whether the public, wherever they are, really wants to make a difference to animal suffering.

For more reading on this subject, try the official press release or the Francis Crick Institute website.

“Our current approach to risk management around animal health is too fragmented and too under-invested in prevention. The economic consequences of contagion are so enormous that we can’t tolerate the status quo. We have to bring public and private interests together to prepare for and prevent disaster. Just around the corner, diseases are lurking that could slam our beef and pork exports and devastate the rural economy. The whole system requires a new frame of thinking.”

With those cautionary words, Rory McAlpine set the stage for how Animal Health Canada (AHC) would be different. Rory emphasizes that he has retired, and speaks from his position as a champion for the initial concept of AHC and his earlier work with the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council, which is the secretariat supporting the creation of AHC. Two examples illustrate his thoughts.

African swine fever (ASF) killed half of pigs in China either directly or through herd culls. It has not appeared in Canada but would take just one wild boar in a remote part of the country to bring $5 billion in pork exports to a standstill—overnight! You can bet that Canada isn’t ignoring this. An ASF Executive Management Board (on which Rory sat) is building a Pan-Canadian ASF Action Plan.

“But they’re doing this off the side of their desks,” points out Rory. “If we had AHC, we’d be better prepared in terms of biosecurity standards, surveillance, traceability, border measures, and maybe even a vaccine. Even with AHC, it would be especially challenging if both wildlife and farm animals were implicated because disease management in wildlife is mostly a provincial matter.”

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is one such feared example. It’s like mad cow disease but in deer, caribou, elk, etc., which are a food source in Indigenous communities and rural Canada. Some evidence exists that it could transmit to humans. There is no nationally-focused prevention-based strategy to handle it. See the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute’s report on CWD for a better idea of the imminent threat to Canadian agriculture. CWD represents an especially thorny challenge because risk management is all-encompassing, involving wildlife management, farm management, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, veterinarians several farm sectors and indigenous communities.

“The prion protein doesn’t care about borders,” says Rory. “It doesn’t care about mandates set in legislation about who’s responsible. COVID demonstrates the need for integrated governance when managing infectious diseases. Our current approach is too based on bureaucratic convenience and siloed action plans across industry. If more actors were prepared to share their authority and resources with a group like AHC, we could better manage these risks. CFIA certainly can’t do it alone.”

Although some stakeholders are fretting about the urgency related to ASF, AHC is not operational yet. The journey has been politically challenging, with several levels of government and multiple species groups all accustomed to autonomy. The final step to occur by 2022 is a legal public-private partnership with funding.

To get this far, potential models to adopt or adapt were examined. Animal Health Australia was considered a good fit: a public-private partnership that has been funded and given legal authority to manage animal health risks and the associated financial risk. That organization has a complicated formula to manage financial risk that considers variables like whether human health is implicated and whether the source of infection is foreign.

“We can learn from Australia and others,” states Rory. “If ASF strikes tomorrow, decisions have to be made immediately about zoning, liquidating herds and financial compensation. A response fraught with lobbying and hand-wringing is not ideal, and could compound the duration and severity of the crisis.”

This type of readiness provides opportunities to drive the development of genomics tools, whether related to tracing the origin of animals (“DNA fingerprinting”) or as part of developing less susceptible populations that reduce the impact of disease. Whether we use the “Swiss cheese model” or “rings of protection”, different approaches help build resilience into a system where redundancy has been eliminated as part of just-in-time efficiencies.

But isn’t animal health just one third of the equation? Shouldn’t we be talking about One Health?

“One Health is the ultimate prize,” Rory concedes. “An integrated One Health approach to managing public health and animal health in the face of zoonotic disease risks has to start with better coordination in each camp. We have world-leading scientific capacity, digital technologies and financial resources… now we need our decision-making structures to catch up. The lives of people and animals depend on it.”

For more background on Canada’s need for Animal Health Canada, see Rory’s article in the “transition binder” the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute would give to the new minister for Agriculture, after the 2021 federal election.

“In that article, I use the example that it took SARS to stimulate the need to create the Public Health Agency of Canada, albeit lacking good integration with provincial public health authorities, as we see in the COVID response” says Rory. “And it took the tainted blood tragedy to fix our national blood safety system via Canadian Blood Services. We can learn from these examples in the space of animal health.”

We know we should be more careful about appropriate antibiotic use for people, domestic and farm animals to avoid increasing antimicrobial resistance. But how exactly should we be more careful? And how come the solution isn’t the same for everybody? Gentec-associated researcher Ellen Goddard tackled some of the thorny questions around behaviour change at a UCalgary One Health webinar on November 17.

One Health has a very complex definition but we tend to think of it as relating to zoonotic diseases, especially diseases from wildlife. The principal drivers for the emergence of zoonoses are human activities such as agriculture, travel, trade and land use.

So almost everybody is affected by the definition but an office worker in downtown Toronto may not feel the same connection as someone who works directly with animals, be they farmed, domestic or wild. That very context colours our approach to potential solutions.

Farmers, for example, are directly involved. If you’re a farmer, you’re probably convinced that you’re behaving in the best way possible to protect your animals, the environment and the health of your family. You’ve learned and studied as much as you can from your neighbours, extension agents and vets. So if somebody shows up on your doorstep saying that you need to change your habits around antibiotics completely—and you’ve always used antibiotics successfully to protect your animals—that idea is not going to go down well. That may be because you don’t fully understand the connection between antibiotics and the development of antimicrobial resistance. Or because you don’t see that the actions you take on your one farm also affect the soil, waterways and wildlife far beyond it.

So complexity is one of the fundamental things that discourages behaviour change.

Another is that, at the end of the day, we are dealing with people, individuals and society’s approach to the use and care of animals. We all have views about animals: they are created in our youth, through cultural ties, schooling, etc.—and they almost never change. If we’re raised to believe that animals need protection and care, that applies to all animals. If we find out that they are being mistreated or subjected to actions that we interpret as mistreatment, we are likely to respond very strongly.

For example, culling animals is one of the most effective ways of limiting the spread of disease, whether to protect domestic or farm animals, wildlife or humans. As scientists, this is obvious. That’s what the data say. But if half of society has strong, fundamental, ethical beliefs about not mistreating animals and the authorities are going to cull a large number of wildlife, you can bet the reaction will be angry and hostile. This is a perfectly rational response from people who believe protecting animals is ethical. And they think they’re doing the right thing.

An example of this is the badger cull in the UK. Badgers are a protected species, so the public can’t get its head around the idea of culling them because they are bringing tuberculosis onto livestock farms. Badgers need protecting, period. That said, the public supports vaccinating the badgers (this is doable). On the other hand, farmers are desperate for protection from this disease. They want the culls. Once again, the data show that, in areas of the UK where culling has taken place, the rate of cattle infection from tuberculosis is lower. So farmers say, “See? Culling works.” Then the decision falls into political hands, and citizens feel undermined because their position, contribution and voice aren’t valued.

An example closer to home is chronic wasting disease (CWD) in cervids. Deer are far removed from most people’s lives these days, so you’d think the public would have no interest in culling decisions. The Alberta government tried that—and there was a huge pushback. People simply didn’t like the idea of killing huge numbers of deer and elk. Setting the cull aside for a moment, CWD hasn’t been shown to affect livestock or humans but we don’t know if that will change or what the long-term implications are. Farmers say they like the idea of deer and wildlife on their property. They worry that if CWD is transmissible, they would have to act to stop the deer/human/animal interaction. They like that their farms are private property, not accessible to others. It makes them feel they can control some aspects of their environment. So we have to understand what motivates people to change their behaviour when an issue of animal health may affect the public.

From our surveys, we know that everybody opposes taking NO action; but hunters, outfitters and the public differ hugely on the type of action to take. If you make your livelihood on something that will be restricted, you will feel more strongly than the said office worker in Toronto. So individual behaviour influences the success of any One Health strategy. If we don’t come up with multifaceted solutions, we will fail because, particularly in the context of animals, people have strong feelings that drive whether they accept or reject solutions.

That’s why it’s so important to do behavioural modelling to test strategies that may be successful. We need to understand what drives people’s behaviour, pick the strategies that encourage change, and tailor them to groups and individuals on the front lines. This will be essential if we’re going to apply One Health in a way that benefits the world to come.

Genomics isn’t the first “Big Thing” to land in the lap of farmers and producers. Just looking back 100 years or so, there’s the internal combustion engine, chemical weed control, antimicrobials, refrigeration, no-till technology, GPS—and probably lots more if we think hard enough. These advances—widely and quickly adopted—allowed farms to grow and prosper based on increased yields and back-saving efficiencies.

Genomics has been adopted by the Canadian dairy, crop, pig and poultry sectors but not so much in beef—even though the benefits have been demonstrated.

“Canada’s beef sector faces a unique set of challenges,” explains David Andrews, owner/operator of Lazy A Farms Ltd. and Chair of Gentec’s Management Advisory Board. “Number One is the 50,000 independent cattle farms with an average of 70 cows on each one. This complex community is very difficult to motivate to adopt new technology.”

Two components contribute to profitability: good marketing and low costs. Enter the Canadian Beef Improvement Network (CBIN) (see our articles on CBIN here and here) to address a data exchange system integrating all levels of the sector to reap common benefits—and Gentec to develop the tools producers need to deliver in-demand products more cost-effectively.

“If I ask my neighbours,” says Andrews, “I get blank stares back. Gentec has almost no brand recognition; and yet, it has and will continue to deliver tremendous value to producers.”

Gentec focuses on producers and how to deliver the tools needed to address local opportunities and challenges that genomics and genetic improvement can solve. Gentec prioritizes activities identified by industry that have a clear line of sight to industry benefit.

Part of the invisibility is due to timing. Since 2010, Gentec has been compiling uniquely-Canadian databases of phenotypes and genotypes of beef and swine. That will never make headlines. What has are the tools created out of those data:

• EnVigour HX ™: the first genomics tool for cross-bred cattle in Canada that verifies parentage, analyzes genomic breed composition and provides a vigour score.
• Molecular Breeding Values (MBVs),
• Feeder Profit Index, and
• Replacement Heifer Profit Index.

Using EnVigour HX could increase net returns to producers by $160/cow/year, creating a total benefit of $205 – $410 million AND reduce the sector’s carbon footprint. gEPDs can improve fertility and feed efficiency, and quality for carbon credits estimated at $145 – $324 million over 5 years. Using the Indexes costs a couple of thousand dollars vs several thousand for the old-style, individual genetic tests.

With these tools and the numbers that support their use, Gentec, in the form of new Head of Beef Operations, John Basarab, Clinton Brons and Kira Macmillan, is more visible in the agricultural community (as seen in August 2021 at AgSmart).

“That’s where I see Gentec’s role,” says Andrews. “We provide the dedicated research and the data to back up the arguments for everybody in the value chain who uses genomics. We communicate with the industry associations, packers and retail; they relay consistent, evidence-based messaging to their members.”

That mandate is reflected in Gentec’s latest Strategic Framework, with a virtuous circle of generating revenue from research to fund extension activities in a self-sustaining way.

“One thing that will help with uptake is the growing number of young managers of large herds,” says Andrews. “They’re more inclined to read and understand the research, so I expect to see significant progress in the coming years. Gentec will have an important role in communicating credible information that producers can trust.”