Don’t let COVID-19 hurt our food supply

The novel coronavirus that’s endangering Canadians’ health could soon threaten their food supply.

With just weeks to go before the start of another growing season, the COVID-19 pandemic is already making it harder for farmers across the country to bring in the tens of thousands of temporary, foreign workers they need to get the spring planting and other essential agricultural jobs done.

The window of opportunity for farmers and governments to answer this challenge is short. The time to get fields prepared, crops in the ground and orchards pruned is almost here. Without the necessary workforce, many farmers will cut back on what they grow and harvests will be less bountiful.

And given the pandemic has already shattered so many long-held assumptions, we can’t be sure if it will also disrupt the supply chains that bring fresh produce into this country from the United States.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week warned the Trump administration to keep the border open after medical manufacturer 3M said it was forced to stop exporting N95 face masks to Canada. This country depends on many American products. But who knows what COVID-19 could eventually do to movement across the border?

Clearly, our political leaders already have a lot on their plates. But they need to deal with a growing farm labour shortage, too — pronto — or our plates could be missing some of the things we expect.

This isn’t to suggest Canadians will go hungry. Given how highly mechanized most farms are today and how a domestic workforce is already in place, many of the farms that produce the foods we deem essential can cope with the changes the pandemic has brought to our society. But lots of other farm operations depend on the 60,000 seasonal agricultural labourers admitted into Canada every year.

We have access to such an abundant supply of nutritious, domestically-grown fruits and vegetables — including strawberries, apples, tomatoes, asparagus, broccoli, peppers, potatoes and squash — because of hard-working foreign labourers who spend part of their year in this country. And, we might add, doing repetitive, manual jobs many Canadians avoid like a plague.

Fully aware of just how vital this foreign workforce is, the Canadian government last month decided to allow them to enter the country, provided they selfisolate for 14 days. That was the right move. But the self-isolation means some workers won’t be able to help with the busy spring season for two weeks.

COVID-19 has also made it harder for foreign workers to get here. There are few flights arriving. The visa offices in Mexico, a country many temporary workers come from, have been closed. Already, Ontario farmers are short of an estimated 3,000 labourers.

Some of the impending labour shortage could be filled by Canadians who are unemployed because governments have shut down large sectors of the economy. At least some of the thousands of postsecondary students scrambling for hard-to-get summer employment should be available, too. The federal government’s Job Bank should help Canadians seize the opportunities on the farms. Perhaps some people will even welcome it as a way they can help in a crisis.

And governments should be ready to do more. One of the problems facing farm labourers is they are often expected to live in cramped living quarters where they’re employed. Such conditions could encourage the spread of COVID-19. But governments could arrange better, temporary living accommodations in some of the rural community centres that are now closed.

This pandemic is not going away soon. But neither will Canada’s need for food.