Seasonal J’can farm workers embrace technology in Canada | News
Ontario, Canada:
If the image of farmers on bended knees, manually tending to crops, comes to mind when thinking about the Canadian seasonal agricultural workers programme, then it might come as a surprise that the reality is it is largely mechanically driven.
For the most part, Jamaican workers on the farms which JIS News has so far visited while accompanying a team of local fact-finders were observed operating harvesters, pullers, tractors, and other equipment.
They indicated that this is a major and welcome shift, compared to recent years.
On a 2,500-acre apple farm visited in Simcoe, Ontario, Michael Jones* of St. Ann was seen driving what he said was an apple picker.
“It picks up the apples from off the ground - the bad ones that fall under the trees - and we take them to a storeroom where we wash them,” he explained.
One of his colleagues indicated that these apples are sometimes used to make juices.
Jones pointed out that the machines make the tasks “a lot easier because to bend your back to pick up the fruits is not easy”.
He told JIS News that he has been participating in the programme for 18 years and was only introduced to the machine three years ago.
Prior to meeting Jones, the fact-finding team spent some time on tobacco and rutabaga farms, where a significant amount of the operations is fully mechanised. Rutabaga is a root vegetable and is a cross between turnips and cabbage.
On a family-owned tobacco farm on the outskirts of the city of London, we met Ken Henry* of St. Mary who explained the process of preparing tobacco for shipping.
He said to cultivate the suckers, the workers initially utilise a planter and, thereafter, return to the field to fill any spaces that were missed. At the reaping stage, a harvester is used to pick the leaves.
“There’s one person in the harvester… and that person would be spreading the leaves and getting them levelled off. The plants go from the harvester to be processed and cured and then to the grading room where the tobacco is compressed and weighed and ready for shipment,” he outlined.
The safety of the workers was also observed, with one worker on a rutabaga farm pointing out that whenever his hands are not on the machine being used in the operations at that location, it automatically shuts off.
Noting the extent to which machines are incorporated on the farms, at least one observer, Caribbean Employers’ Confederation (CEC) President, Wayne Chen, said that, in future, Jamaican farm workers may need to possess a skills-based background.
For Chen, the shift from manual to machines is an opportunity to be seized.
Conversely, one of the principals at a decades-old apple farm said for certain fruits, such as apples and peaches which are deemed delicate, a machine will never be able to do the job, at least not in the foreseeable future.
He noted that there is a special technique to picking apples, which includes a gentle grasp of the fruit in one’s palm before turning it gently and then releasing it into the bin (container). Retaining the stem is crucial to this process, the employer said.
He pointed out, however, that for other fruits, such as cherries, a machine is used to quickly shake the trees and gather the fruit in significant quantities.
The seasonal agricultural workers’ programme began in 1966.
Minister of Labour and Social Security Karl Samuda established the fact-finding team to assess the status of participating Jamaican workers.
*Names changed on request of workers.
– JIS
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