COVID-19 has negatively impacted the agriculture industry in Alberta, resulting in the loss of 5,000 jobs over the past year.
During the first COVID-19 outbreak, some major food commodities, like flour and pasta, were in low supply. This is because farmers had a hard time meeting food supply demands due to COVID-19.
Farmers, ranchers and producers are having to modify their operations due to the pandemic. One way they do this is by wearing masks.
Many food processors had to slow down or stop food production because of backups in their food supply chain.
Another challenge that the pandemic presented to farmers was that temporary foreign workers program were suspended. Many producers depend on foreign workers to harvest their crops and keep operations going.
Northern Alberta had a difficult time harvesting their crops this year because of flooding in Fort McMurray.
The last couple of years have been difficult for farmers for many reasons, which include, having a bad harvest last year, the strike from the CN rail workers, the illegal blockades placed on many railroads and then COVID-19.
John Barlow, Member of Parliament for Foothills, says farmers are looking for support from the federal government.
“So, they’re asking the government to inject some funding for them to at least get through last spring and they didn’t do that and that certainly would’ve helped put them on a better footing.”
MP Barlow believes that if farmers had access to the Canadian Emergency Business Account, that would have been helpful to them. Barlow claims the United Conservative Party is pushing for farmers to be included in that program.
“We’ve been pushing hard for that to be changed and the Liberal government has promised many times to make that change and I’m hopeful that they will get that resolved and from what I understand, they are in the process of getting that resolved.”
The border closure doesn’t have a major effect on the agriculture industry because it’s still open for commercial traffic. So, that means for the most part farmers are still able to export machinery equipment.
Trevor Lewington, the CEO of Economic Development Lethbridge, believes Lethbridge had a good harvest this year.
“We’ve been more fortunate in Lethbridge because crops this year were much better. We had a relatively good year from a production perspective and COVID certainly made it more complex, but southern Alberta has been relatively better off than some other parts of the province in that respect.”
According to Lewington, it is predicted that southern Alberta will continue to have good weather and good crops, which would prevent problems in our agriculture sector.
He also says that new projects are in the works in the agri-food sector. These projects are expected to span over a two-year period.
One of the projects is focused on reducing food waste through sustainable insect production.
The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has been reinstated with changes due to COVID-19. Shortly after COVID-19 entered Alberta, the TFW program was suspended so Albertans were considered for jobs first. CEO of Economic Development Lethbridge, Trevor Lewington says this made it harder for producers to access labour.
Jobs experiencing labour shortages in the agriculture, technology and caregiving sectors are exempt from these changes.