It’s time to get rid of your negative mindset around conflict.

Drop your hand from covering your face, look up and see the eyeballs of the person who needs to understand your needs, and start calm, respectful conversations with your family and farm team.

Can you embrace the idea and mindset conflict is not bad? Tension in making quick decisions in harvest time or other times of high stress does not have to cause instant blow-ups. The culture of your farm is what you believe to be true (your values), how you behave toward one another, and how you make decisions.

Positive conflict behaviour looks like this:

You express your emotions in a healthy way

“It really frustrates me when you cut so high because the field operator in the fall is going to have issues with the high stubble. Would you please lower your header to this number…?”

Slamming the pickup door and not talking is the way to keep your conflict unhealthy. Use a wide range of labels for how you are feeling or being impacted by other people’s behaviour.

“We go to a lot of work to support you in the field and we really feel valued and appreciated when you make the effort to bring the meal buckets home to the back door as a sign of courtesy to us. Thank-you for being considerate of what we need.”

You create solutions and don’t attack the person

“Wow, that combine is really plugged up, you are such an idiot, why can’t you every learn to slow down?” Yikes!

Practice attacking the issue. “The combine is plugging too much, have you figured out why? Mine is set like this, and this is the speed that’s working for me today. Let’s see what solutions we can work out for the plugging to stop for you.” Lumpy swaths may be operator error, or high winds!

You are willing to reach out to check how others are doing

“How are you doing, are you OK?” is much more helpful than asking “How are you?” Look people in the eye as you listen to their response. Head down, or avoidance of eye contact, is a non-verbal answer things are not OK. Reaching out to others is a positive conflict behaviour. The receiver gets to choose their response, and you as the sender of the message cannot predict the response. Everyone gets to choose if they are going to be kind, calm and respectful. The receiver can also ask for a timeline to be able to process the response rather than swearing, yelling or throwing a shovel in frustration. Bad behaviour is not tolerated on healthy farms. You get the behaviour you accept, so why are you accepting bad language and violent outbursts?

You are willing to adapt

Farmers are masters at adapting to challenges. During the high stress of harvest, you can choose to monitor your physical, emotional and mental health with good choices: rest, good food, encouragement from others, connection to your supportive family and friends, happy radio banter on the two-ways, and positive texting with appreciation. Your language and behaviour set the tone for each long harvest day.

“Being clear is kind,” says Brene Brown, a well-known researcher on vulnerability. Machines don’t talk with words, but they vibrate, clunk and don’t sound well, and you stop. People are not machines. People need to be able to ask for what they need and know their voice is respected and heard. Perhaps it is time to ask your crew, “What’s the most important thing you need today to make it a great harvest day?”

Put yourself in someone else’s shoes

Do you know what it feels like to be over 70 with a tender back and spend 13 hours in a combine seat? Is the grain cart operator clear about what it means when lights are blinking, and you have your auger out? Don’t make assumptions your behaviour is well understood; check in with the other person. Try to imagine what it feels like to be a parent with three active young children trying to keep up with the field demands of harvest and the crew.

The ability to shift your perspective is a huge positive conflict behaviour. As folks age on the farm they may lose confidence in their abilities, especially if the environment is highly charged with blame and bad language. Young people also need positive feedback and constructive comments to help them gain more confidence in completing their tasks well.

Avoiding conflict just allows an issue to grow and the ability for reasonable solutions to wane as time goes on. “Stuffing your anger, hurt, fear or frustration” is the recipe for a volcanic event, also known as a blow-up. Conflict avoidance is not helpful. Ask for time to have a conversation. Make your request for a change in behaviour. Seek permission to create solutions together.

You can change your mindset, thoughts, language and actions. You can set the tone for a healthier culture on your farm. If you need more concrete encouragement on how to do this, listen to my podcasts. Have a safe harvest and encourage the heart of your farm with kindness and appreciation.

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There’s a great article by Kells McPhillips on the Well+Good website, calling out these conversation stoppers as “thought-terminating clichés.” Here’s her list:

• “It is what it is.”
• “So it goes.”
• “It could be worse.”
• “Time heals all.”
• “Someone out there has it worse than you.”
• “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
• “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
• “This too shall pass.”
• “It’s all about balance.”
• “Try to look on the bright side.”
• “The sun will come out tomorrow.”
• “The only way out is through.”

Words really matter. Our thoughts become words and words spur on action — or the lack of action. What we believe to be true is part of how we craft the culture of our farms.

The first such cliché in McPhillips’ list above, “It is what it is,” sounds so defeatist to me. As coaches we embrace the power of choice. You get to choose your response to the circumstances of your family and farm situation. Are you going to be proactive and make some decisions for a better outcome? Or are you just going to throw the shovel hard on the ground and believe “Nothing is ever going to change around here”?

“It could be worse” aligns with the misery you’ve witnessed of neighbours or others in the ag community whose farms have disappeared due to unreasonable estate land transfers, divorce, or siblings in litigation. These sad stories of transition gone poorly are not helpful, nor are they motivating folks to act and improve the communication and conflict resolution in their own farm business. Failure of others is not a strong motivator for you to change. You need to draw on internal factors of motivation to do hard things.

You can do hard things. You also don’t have to do them alone!

“The only way out is through.” I just said you can do hard things, but who agrees that transition through facilitated communication doesn’t necessarily need to be hard? We’ve bought into a mindset that conversations cause explosions, so the best thing to do is just avoid the hard conversations about income, compensation, fairness, and letting go of management. I disagree.

Conflict resolution can be a process of discovery, lifting a huge weight of tension. Facilitated conversations, in which folks are prepared before the meeting to express what they truly want, can be transformational. If you’ve put your energy into your farm business for the past 40 years, you might want to be kind to yourself and take time to process the shift of labour, management and ownership over the next several years.

READ MORE: Agriculture community invited to ‘talk it out’ about mental health

The list of 12 clichés above can damage mental health. If you are struggling with your mental health right now as you read this, I encourage you to reach out to your doctor for a checkup and find the local mental health worker in your area. If you are walking alongside a very depressed sad farmer, I encourage you to sign up for the Mental Health First Aid course.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” was the title of Dr. Nikki Gerrard’s research (2000) on stress in farm families. She found three keys to coping better were:

• Communication
• Celebration
• Connection to community

However, when you say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” you are not offering support or solutions to those struggling with mental health. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is another conversation-killing phrase.

How can you be more vigilant about what comes out of your mouth?

Think before you speak

Listen to understand more, not to formulate your next response. Two ears, one mouth.

Be curious. Come to the conversation with kindness and genuine curiosity about what is truly going on for the other person.

Ask better questions without a spirt of judgement. What do you need in this moment? What is frustrating you the most? How do you want me to walk alongside you?

Is now a good time to talk further, or do you need some time to process what we just discussed? By when do you want to come back to the table to create some solutions and timelines for action?

Be careful not to confuse estate planning with transition planning. “It’s in my will, you’ll get it all when I die!” This is classic procrastination of not dealing with the need for transfer of farm assets in the transition process while the next generation is looking for ways to gain equity and the founders are fearful of failure and losing wealth.

Ask for help. Seek out ag-informed advisors with strong facilitation skills so the whole family can learn helpful language for conflict resolution with positive behaviours to create solutions not angst.

Try supportive words to open more communication:

• Tell me more.
• That’s interesting, what is the story behind that thought?
• I’m curious about what you just said, how does that feel for you?
• What ways would you like to be encouraged? Time with family, words of affirmation, or action on the farm?
• Here’s what I am observing…
• What do you need in this moment?
• What’s the next step you would like to take?

Many times, folks just don’t know what to say to comfort others, or to recognize the pain or frustration they are seeing. The Do More Ag Foundation has a great new conversation starter game. My Do More Ag conversation starter box has arrived, and it is helpful to be reminded how our questions and thoughts can create great conversations.

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U.S. officials said the Labor Department had seen a nearly 70 per cent increase in child labour violations since 2018, including in hazardous occupations. In the last fiscal year, 835 companies were found to have violated child labour laws.

U.S. officials told reporters on a Monday conference call that the administration was probing the employment of children at companies including Hearthside Food Solutions and suppliers to Hyundai Motor Co. It has created an interagency task force on child labour, and plans to target industries where violations are most likely to occur for investigations.

The Democratic administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is also pushing for heavier penalties for companies that violate these laws, and more funding for enforcement and oversight, they said. U.S. federal law prohibits people under age 16 from working in most factory settings, and those under 18 are barred from the most dangerous jobs in industrial plants.

“This isn’t a 19th century problem, this isn’t a 20th century problem, this is happening today,” said one of the officials on the call. “We are seeing children across the country working in conditions that they should never ever be employed in the first place.”

The maximum civil monetary penalty is currently just US$15,138 per child, the administration noted in a press release, a figure that’s “not high enough to be a deterrent.”

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) opened an investigation into Hearthside Food Solutions, a U.S. food contractor that makes and packages products for well-known snack and cereal brands, for reportedly employing underage workers and violating child labour laws, officials confirmed on the call.

Reuters reported the DOL’s investigation into Hearthside earlier on Monday.

The company came under scrutiny following a New York Times investigation that said Hearthside’s factories employed underage workers making Chewy granola bars and bags of Lucky Charms and Cheetos, which the company would later ship around the country.

It was not clear whether the probe will lead to criminal charges, fines or other penalties. Hearthside said in a statement the company would “work collaboratively with the Department of Labor in their investigation and do our part to continue to abide by all local, state and federal employment laws,” and that they were “appalled” by the report alleging child labour at their company.

The Hearthside investigation is the latest in a rise in similar probes. Reuters last year published a series of stories on child labour including revelations about the use of child labour among suppliers to Hyundai, including a direct subsidiary of the Korean auto giant, in the U.S. state of Alabama.

The first story in the Reuters series, published in February last year, uncovered young teens working in dangerous chicken processing plants in Alabama.

Earlier this month, a major food safety sanitation company paid US$1.5 million in penalties for employing more than 100 teenagers in dangerous jobs at meatpacking plants in eight states, following another Labor Department investigation.

As Reuters previously reported, a record number of unaccompanied migrant minors entered the country in recent years, with many entering federal shelters and then released to sponsors, usually relatives, while immigration authorities resolve their requests for refuge in the U.S.

But authorities are struggling with long-term follow-up to prevent minors from being sucked into a vast network of enablers, including labour contractors, who recruit workers for big plants and other employers. At times they have steered kids into jobs that are illegal, grueling and meant for adults. The majority of minors Reuters found working were from Central America.

Separately, the Biden administration said earlier this year it will speed up the deportation relief process for immigrants in the U.S. illegally who witness or experience labour abuses.

“We also absolutely need to protect workers who do come forward and participate in wage and hour and other worker protection investigations and activities,” one official said on the Monday call.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nandita Bose in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Joshua Schneyer in New York.

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The provincial government on Tuesday updated a mandatory order under its pandemic state of emergency to restrict TFWs from entering the province. The new restriction doesn’t affect the status of TFWs already in New Brunswick, the province said.

With “so many serious outbreaks” of COVID-19 in surrounding jurisdictions, the province’s borders must stay closed for now, Premier Blaine Higgs said in a release.

As of Thursday evening, New Brunswick’s total COVID-19 caseload remains the second-lowest among the 10 provinces, with 118 cases and zero deaths to date. Of those 118, 114 are deemed to have recovered and four cases are active, with none hospitalized.

“Under normal circumstances, we welcome foreign temporary workers as they play an important role in New Brunswick’s continued economic growth,” Higgs said. “But right now, the risk of allowing more people to enter the province is simply too great.”

In a separate release Thursday, the province said it plans to launch a “virtual job-matching platform” on Monday (May 4) to connect New Brunswick residents with “positions that, in the past, have been filled by temporary foreign workers.”

It’s expected there will be up to 600 such jobs in sectors such as agriculture and aquaculture, the province said.

However, in a joint statement Tuesday, the National Farmers Union in New Brunswick, the Agricultural Alliance of New Brunswick and farmer co-operative Really Local Harvest said they “strongly disagree” with the province’s decision.

The groups said they want to see measures taken “to hold our promises to the workers that have been assured employment as well as the farms that are awaiting the arrival of employees on which they depend.”

“This is cutting the means by which we have to produce,” Strawberry Hill Farm co-owner Tim Livingstone said in the groups’ release. The province “want(s) us to increase vegetable production but want(s) us to hire people who may leave at the drop of a hat or before our season has finished.”

Strawberry Hill, for one, has invested in training TFWs for over four years and relies on those workers’ “expertise to supervise (the farm’s) local employees,” the groups said.

TFWs “cannot simply be replaced with another worker from another sector,” the groups said, and “our integrity as employers and as a province that has signed contracts with people to ensure our food production and supply, are at stake as we consider breaking these agreements.”

If TFWs who haven’t yet arrived aren’t allowed to enter the province, “we, collectively, still owe them, and the families they support.”

The federal and provincial governments “have moved mountains in the last months to ensure these workers are still able to come to Canada and that precautions are taken to ensure the safety of all,” the groups added.

Specifically, farm groups and several provinces’ officials in March pressed for, and received, a federal exemption allowing TFWs to enter Canada, in the wake of Ottawa’s pandemic-related prohibition on foreign nationals entering the country.

Ottawa later also pledged financial support to TFWs’ employers to allow arriving employees to self-isolate for 14 days before starting work.

Under the province’s new ban, “it would be difficult if not impossible for farms to hire TFWs or any other workers mid-season,” the New Brunswick groups said.

“Even if employees from other sectors or students are put in their place, when the other jobs re-open and school starts, no one will be there to bring in the harvest.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The beef plant at Greeley, about 65 km north of Denver, started operating last Friday after it was closed for about two weeks following an outbreak among workers.

“The uptick in cases in a matter of days shows how serious this crisis is and the dangers that workers are facing every day just trying to do their jobs,” Kim Cordova, leader of the local United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) chapter, said in an e-mailed news release.

Confirmed cases among workers at the plant rose from 120 on Sunday to 245 on Wednesday evening, a union spokeswoman told Reuters, citing numbers from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

JBS USA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the most recent worker death and rising cases in Colorado.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday invoked the Defense Production Act to mandate meat plants continue to function during the pandemic after companies warned of looming shortages. The order is designed in part to give them legal cover with more liability protection in case employees catch the virus as a result of having to go to work.

Cordova reiterated workers’ demands for protective equipment and testing, as well as stronger whistleblower laws and better health care.

“Our members share a common goal with JBS, federal, state and local authorities: to ensure that the plant continues to function to protect the food supply chain and to protect jobs, but it must be done in a way that protects the workers so no one else has to die,” she said.

Some 20 plants in North America have closed in recent weeks. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said they would open in “days not weeks,” in an interview on Fox News on Thursday. He said the department, which is overseeing Trump’s order, is working to ensure workers’ safety.

Brazilian-owned JBS said on Wednesday it was reopening a Minnesota pork plant shuttered by the pandemic to euthanize up to 13,000 pigs rather than produce pork.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek; writing by Caroline Stauffer.

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The news of some of the company’s 1,700 employees at the plant testing positive comes a day after a worker advocacy group sued Smithfield over working conditions at a Missouri plant, where the group said employees have been forced to work “shoulder to shoulder” during the pandemic.

More than 5,000 U.S. meat and food-processing workers have been infected with or exposed to the new coronavirus, and 13 have died, the country’s largest meatpacking union said on Thursday.

To contain the virus spread, other companies such as Tyson Foods have also shuttered some pork plants, but the closures are adding to stress for farmers who are losing markets for their pigs.

Smithfield, owned by China’s WH Group, said the Monmouth plant represents about three per cent of U.S. fresh pork supplies.

— Reporting for Reuters by Uday Sampath in Bangalore.

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Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau on Wednesday said officials are reviewing requests from employers to see which ones will qualify to have 100 per cent of their employees’ salaries covered under temporary expansions to the summer jobs program.

Decisions would be finalized soon, she said, but no specific date was given.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on April 8 announced changes to the Canada Summer Jobs program, aimed at businesses delivering essential services with fewer than 50 employees.

Those changes include increasing the wage subsidy so employers can receive up to 100 per cent of the provincial or territorial minimum wage per employee, and extending the end date for employment to Feb. 28 next year.

That move came shortly after the federal government deemed the entire food supply chain an essential service, meaning certain producers and food processors could apply to employ people under the expanded program.

“We will put a priority on those offering essential services,” Bibeau said, adding employers will be informed “shortly” of whether or not they will receive federal dollars from the program.

Concerns over labour shortages in the agriculture sector are mounting, as restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic makes the problems it already faced finding enough workers even worse.

“We are in a situation where we are facing an even greater labour shortage,” Bibeau said, adding there will be delays or a lack of foreign workers no matter what. “So we have to compensate and we know that we have a great number of Canadians who are unemployed right now.”

A little more than one million jobs were lost in March, with employment levels dropping by 5.3 per cent according to Statistics Canada. The unemployment rate now sits at 7.8 per cent and is expected to continue rising.

Meanwhile, it’s estimated there are only about 15,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada right now – well below the 56,765 that arrived in 2018. According to the federal government, producers have applied for a total of 10,181 positions through the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) in 2020.

Approvals to hire temporary foreign workers were granted to 983 businesses for 9,113 positions between January and the end of March.

Bibeau said the rate of temporary or seasonal workers entering Canada is “a bit behind the curve” relative to other years while the industry continues to be challenged by transportation issues and isolation requirements for workers arriving in Canada.

Transfers planned for top-ups

The federal government has made it easier for employers to hire Canadian workers by offering to pay wages, but there has been no action yet to encourage unemployed Canadians to find work in agriculture.

To help employers in “essential” sectors keep workers on staff, the federal government on Wednesday announced it would work with provinces and territories to set up a new transfer program.

Under that proposed program, the two levels of government would cost-share a “temporary top-up” to the wages of any low-income workers deemed “essential in the fight against COVID-19” in those provinces and territories.

The top-up would apply to essential workers earnings less than $2,500 a month, such as front-line hospital workers, long-term care workers and “those working so hard to make sure that there that is food on our shelves and tables.”

Quebec and British Columbia, for example, have already set up direct wage supports for low-income workers in essential-service sectors, and the proposed transfer program would allow Ottawa to cost-share those supports. Further details are to be released “shortly.”

Farm work in particular has become increasingly reliant on imported workers, because it is generally work Canadians don’t want – or need.

“We are actually looking at ways to encourage Canadians to work in the food industry to work in farms and processing plants,” said Bibeau, later admitting that “it’s a challenge… but we still have to do even more to encourage (Canadians) to join the industry.”

The government on Wednesday also announced further tweaks to the Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), retroactive to March 15, that would allow people to earn up to $1,000 a month while also collecting CERB funds.

The changes announced Wednesday also extend the CERB to seasonal workers who have exhausted their regular employment insurance benefits and can’t yet undertake their regular seasonal work because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The CERB will also now be extended to other workers who have recently exhausted regular EI benefits and are unable to find a job or return to work because of COVID-19.

Those changes line up with proposals from a group of 22 senators who wrote to Bibeau on April 6, asking the government to consider allowing Canadians employed in positions typically filled by temporary or seasonal agricultural workers to continue receiving CERB funds while they do farm work.

The senators also suggested Canadians working on farms should continue receiving employment insurance benefits without having their earnings clawed back. As well, they asked the federal government to pay for accommodations for those who would usually live on a farm in a communal setting.

Industry associations echoed those calls.

“We’re trying to figure out if we can find a wider way to support a greater number of producers or if we will have to go through ad hoc… programs, which would be specific to one sector and another. So we are getting there right now,” Bibeau said.

“I know that our farmers deserve you know, more support,” she said. “And we’re working really hard on that right now. A variety of recommendations are coming from the different sectors right now. So we are sorting this out.”

Earlier this week, the government announced it is offering $1,500 for each temporary foreign worker coming to Canada, to help farmers, fish harvesters, producers and processors cover costs related to containing COVID-19.

— D.C. Fraser reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Ottawa. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair on Thursday released a new guidance document, “Guidance on Essential Services and Functions in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which maps out the work required across Canada’s 10 “critical infrastructure sectors.”

“Food” is a stand-alone sector among those 10, which also include health; water; transportation; safety; energy and utilities; information and communication technologies; finance; government; and manufacturing.

The idea is to help “critical infrastructure employers” in the public and private sectors in “identifying and managing their workforce, while fostering alignment and harmonization across sectors.”

The government emphasized its guidance is “non-binding and advisory in nature, and should not be considered to be a federal directive or standard.”

“Through this incredibly challenging time, Canadians want the services they rely on every day for their health and safety and economic well-being to continue,” Blair said in a release. “We have put together this guidance to help support critical infrastructure employers in identifying and managing their workforce while responding to COVID-19.”

Apart from those in the retail grocery and take-out and delivery foodservice businesses, as well as those working at companies’ in-house employee cafeterias, the “Food” list of “essential services and functions” includes:

• agriculture and aquaculture workers and support service workers, including handlers of field crops and agricultural inputs and staff of storage facilities;
• animal agriculture workers, including those in the raising of animals for food; animal production operations; veterinary health; manufacturing and distribution of animal medical materials, animal vaccines, animal drugs, feed ingredients, feed, and bedding; transportation of live animals and animal medical materials; transportation of deadstock; and slaughter and packing plants along with their “associated regulatory and government workforce” including inspectors;
• workers in animal food, feed, byproduct and ingredient production, processing, packaging, and distribution; manufacturing, packaging and distribution of veterinary drugs; truck delivery and transport; and farm and fishery labour needed “to harvest and produce our food supply domestically;”
• workers undertaking “traditional” harvesting activities, including fishing, hunting and agricultural activities;
• employees of companies in the production of “chemicals, medicines, vaccines, and other substances used by the food and agriculture industry, including pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, minerals, enrichments, and other agricultural production aids;”
• employees in the manufacture and maintenance of equipment and other infrastructure necessary to agricultural, aquaculture, and fishery production and distribution;
• employees and firms supporting food, feed, and beverage distribution, including warehouse workers and “vendor-managed inventory controllers;”
• workers supporting the “sanitation of all food manufacturing processes and operations from wholesale to retail;” and
• workers in food testing labs.

The “Other” list of essential service employees also includes veterinarians, veterinary technicians and their support staff as well as those involved in the health and welfare of animals, including boarding kennels, stables, animal shelters, zoos, aquariums, research facilities and other such providers.

The federal public safety department said Thursday it will “continually consult on and amend the list as events unfold” and noted the current list is “meant to be broadly representative.”

In a related statement Thursday, Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said she would “assure you that our government is taking all the necessary measures to ensure that Canadians always have access to quality food at affordable prices.

“We know how essential the women and men who work on farms, in processing plants and throughout the food supply chain are to our collective well-being. When we go to the grocery store, we can be confident there will be food on the shelves.”

In spite of their own concerns over safety in the current pandemic, she said, “food workers are on the job, working hard to make sure we all have enough to eat” and “businesses and public health departments are working to protect the health of food workers.”

Some industry groups had recently pressed for agriculture and related sectors to receive a “critical infrastructure” designation. John Barlow, agriculture critic for the federal Conservatives, added to that call in a Facebook post Tuesday.

“By declaring the agriculture sector as essential during this crisis, the agri-food supply chain will remain intact and Canadians will be able to continue to count on access to safe and affordable food,” he wrote, adding Bibeau had “so far failed to follow through on this promise” for such a declaration.

“Farmers and producers will be making key decisions in the coming days and weeks which will have a huge impact on Canada’s agriculture sector,” he wrote. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Earlier this week, police made 10 arrests and cleared a blockade in eastern Ontario that had been stopping freight and passenger traffic for almost three weeks on one of Canada’s busiest lines.

The blockades were held in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia, who are seeking to stop TC Energy from building a gas pipeline over their land.

“In the absence of illegal blockades on our network over the last 24 hours, and while we are keeping a close watch for any further disruptions, we have started calling back many of the temporarily laid off employees based in Eastern Canada,” CN CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest said in the email seen by Reuters.

The email did not specify how many of the 450 workers were being called back.

After 21 days of disruptions, “there is a significant backlog of trains parked on our tracks and in our yards that will be processed,” the email said.

“The complete network recovery process will take several weeks.”

Montreal-based CN said the company was on its way to recovering in Western Canada, and said products such as export grain, imported containerized goods, coal, potash and other commodities are moving to market.

Canada relies on CN and rival Canadian Pacific Railway to move crops, oil, potash, coal and manufactured goods to ports and the United States. About half of Canada’s exports move by rail, according to industry data.

— Reporting for Reuters by Allison Lampert in Montreal.

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Farmers in Canada have long reported challenges in recruiting farm workers because the rural-based work traditionally involves a high degree of manual labour, long hours, and is often seasonal.

In 2017, Canada’s agriculture sector was short 16,500 workers, a labour crunch that cost farmers $2.9 billion in lost revenues, the council said in a new report on Canada’s agricultural workforce prepared with the Conference Board of Canada.

“In the coming years, the gap between the sector’s labor requirements and the available pool of domestic labour is expected to widen considerably, a trend that would place more agricultural businesses at risk and seriously impede the sector’s growth potential,” the report said.

The agriculture industry’s struggle to find domestic workers means farmers are heavily reliant on temporary foreign labour, brought to Canada though various streams of the Temporary Foreign Worker program. Foreign labour now accounts for 17 per cent of the sector’s employees.

On Tuesday, the council said the agriculture sector’s job-vacancy rate is “the highest of any major sector in the Canadian economy.” About two million Canadians are employed by Canada’s agriculture and agri-food sector, accounting for one in eight jobs or 12 per cent of total Canadian employment.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government challenged Canada’s agriculture industry to increase its exports to $75 billion by 2025. Canada is currently the world’s fifth largest exporter of agricultural goods.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa.

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