Marty Seymour, Farm Credit Canada's Manager of Industry Relations says seeing that Canada's Ag sector can work well together when the need arises was one of things he's learned as a result of COVID.
"For me one of the things that I saw of an industry that's typically growing in the same direction, but may be divided on some particular topics, is COVID brought us together. It's a good example of when we need to align as an industry we can do that."
He says it was great to see the Agriculture industry come together to address issues like the labour shortage in the horticulture sector.
"I quickly realized I didn't appreciate what was going on in the horticulture industry. That's the onions, the asparagus, all the row crops we'd see North of Toronto, other parts of southern Ontario, Quebec, BC where we rely on temporary foreign workers. We had a problem
because these workers come from Jamaica, Mexico, Guatemala. We need about 80,000 a year, and they couldn't get to Canada because there was no flights happening."
He says we also saw the Canadian Federation of Agriculture work with the Cattle Industry and Pork Industry in getting support for PPE's, getting farmers eligible for CEBA, and support for producers who had to put extra measures in place when hiring Temporary Foreign Workers.
Seymour was one of the presenters during last week's Virtual Farm Forum.
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