As it stands, David Walker, the co-owner of Sunset Strawberry U-Pick near Fredericton, believes most producers have to be in the sector for passion rather than financial gain.
“If you go back for the last 50 years, successive governments have really not put policies in place to encourage agriculture,” Walker told Global News on Saturday.
Walker is no stranger to the agriculture industry, as he was raised on a dairy farm and previously worked in the New Brunswick Department of Agriculture Aquaculture and Fisheries.
In past, many long-time farming families would see their lands and equipment passed down through generations, Walker said, but that no longer seems to be the case.
“I know farmers in this province have discouraged, absolutely discouraged, their children from going into agriculture because they said it was a low-paying labour intensive activity,” Walker said, standing next to a raspberry bush.
A recent report released by RBC’S Climate Action Institute indicated that by 2033, 40 per cent of Canadian farm operators will have retired. It also predicted the sector will be short about 24,000 general farm, nursery and greenhouse workers.
To Walker, much of the data in the report, outlining a demographic crunch, seems consistent with New Brunswick.
“Until there’s money in agriculture, why would you go into it?” he posed.
For the National Farmers Union in New Brunswick, the RBC findings were “completely unsurprising” given the statistical trends over the last decade.
“What we see most in New Brunswick is farms that have been family farms for many generations and a career that was passed down to the next generation… That’s not happening the way it used to,” said executive director Suzanne Fournier.
The report stated 66 per cent of Canadian producers do not have a succession plan in place.
Due to the changing labour market, Fournier said there’s a need to shift the “public perception” of farming to show it’s more than simply “back-breaking work.”
She added programs must be created to ensure New Brunswickers who want to enter the agriculture industry can do so without breaking the bank.
“In many cases, we’re talking about multi-year investments,” Fournier said.
Referencing a fruit or berry startup, she said it takes “years to establish and produce fruit,” which means farmers are left on the hook for three to five years.
As for Walker, while there is no quick-fix to the challenges ahead for the agriculture industry, he hopes consumers can find a better understanding of the role the industry plays.
“In this province we are extremely vulnerable in terms of our food supply,” Walker said.
“When our food system starts to fail, that’s when we are going to see serious problems in this country.”
