Agriculture, food processing is key for southwest Alberta

As is the case with global economy, many sectors of the Southern Alberta economy have hurt too, but Peter Casurella, Southgrow Regional Intiative’s Executive Director says there’s reason for optimism, but it will take time.

It’s going to take a couple of years to get back to job levels but Casurella says right now from a macroeconomics standpoint, Southern Alberta is positioned to be a strong economic force and a growing destination for businesses.

Because of a ‘resilient industrial ecosystem’ the region didn’t get hit as hard despite the fact job postings went down 33% cent in April 2020 as compared to April 2019.

The issue right now there is an adjustment period of what jobs are out there, how they have changed.

He points to the fact that Southern Alberta had 9 per cent unemployment during the pandemic which is less than the provincial average of 15.5 per cent.

Southgrow held its annual general meeting June 24 via ZOOM online platform with feature speaker Todd Hirsch, Chief Economist for ATB. While the Lethbridge Region Economic Recovery Task Force’s report “Economic and Industrial Impact of the Coronavirus” was released May 27 and it has some bleak numbers, Casurella points out the report was a look at a moment in time, especially in regards to one the most stable portion of the southwest Alberta economy, agriculture.

The report, completed by CAI indicated that the gross regional product (salaries + (sales-purchases) for the area equals $13,606,906133. Of that total, agriculture makes up 12 per cent of that at $1,643,641,348. The report states that agriculture is the most important economic sector.

“If you look at the CIA Global study, agriculture looks rather dire,” says Casurella in a phone interview June 25, pointing to the loss of 11 per cent of jobs in the ag industry (April stats), the combined total of salaries being down in those employed by the agriculture industry and the amount of sales being down. “Todd Hirsch was fairly optimistic though and is expecting a robust comeback, He says we did really well as a nation economically through the COVID-19 as compared to other nations.”

“(The Economic and Industrial Impact of the Coronavirus report) is only a snap shot and a lot of the seasonal labour does look bad as COVID slowed it down. It is not as bad at the education sector.”

Because of this he says agriculture should be monitored with a lot of global factors in play.

Casurella says agriculture will be stable as there is always a steady demand for food and there is good infrastructure here.

In the report there was also a noticeable increase in both specialty food manufacturing (110% job growth since 2015-19) and meat product manufacturing (10% job growth increase since 2015-19). That is also tempered by mitigating factors such as whether or not restaurants and shops can recover. With all three, depending on exports, especially to the U.S. and overall costs, that could hinder agriculture’s performance.

Renewable energy is a massive industry with more growth and there is a lot of room with transferable skills as new development and innovations progress.

He says there were some worrisome areas. “Retail sectors will never be the same; it would be disingenuous to think so, especially with online sales,” explains Casurella. Retail was 4.3% of the gross regional product and a 22.9 per cent total job loss with the industry and event the number of job offers was down 18 per cent between May-June 2020 as compared to the same time in 2019. “Education was going online and change was already happening there and so there was some cost saving going on there (especially with post secondary education); all of this might provoke more online and less need for physical campuses.”

The big issue is the major shift and adjustment going on in the southwest and across the country. He says the labour issue with companies and post secondary education needing to do what he says is “a better alignment for the training available and what will be needed. He says the pandemic crises accelerated the shifts which were starting to happen.

Casurella realizes and deeply sympathizes with those who have lost work recently, especially due to the pandemic altering the economic landscape and tightening the job market are looking at the current situation as difficult if not desperate.

Trying to have enough money for the basic necessities is critical.

But he cites the comparison of during the industrial revolution when those using and producing carriages for horse and carriages were going to be unemployed and not know what to do. However, the skills they had could be applied to parts and vehicle production. Casurella believes Alberta is in that now. There are a lot of highly skilled people. Businesses and the government just need to figure out a way to match those skills to the new reality of jobs available.

Southgrow will continue to collaborate with its members which includes 26 communities and various economic partners (Community Futures for example) across southwest Alberta generating and sharing ideas and initiatives.