The days of farm workers slopping the hogs, cleaning manure from pens and hucking hay bales are gone.
Jobs in agriculture require increased skills and knowledge to operate $300,000 tractors, seed drills, and $500,000 combines.
Today and in the future farm workers will need better skills to stay on the job.
Farmers will use new technologies that require new skills, for example, installing and maintaining software on farm machines.
“Without trained workers agriculture will be left behind,” Stuart Cullum, president of Olds Agriculture College, told the recent conference of the Canadian Agriculture Human Resources Council.
While previous revolutions in the ag industry were based on growth of high yielding crops and genetically modified crops, the third revolution will focus on use of technology in farm decisions, management, and environmental matters.
Technology skills on the farm will be required in a range of work fields from supply of inputs, seeding, spraying to harvest, marketing as well as equipment technologies like drones and self-operating machines.
Jobs vary in fields from mechanics and software engineering to analyzing mountains of data.
According to the World Economic Forum, leading technologies in the next three years will involve analyzing data, internet-based marketing, cloud computing, and virtual reality.
Technology skills are already in such high demand about 40 per cent of global employers have a hard time finding skilled workers now.
Canadian farmers are adapting operations to technology.
Seventy per cent of farmers in the age category from 25 to 59 reported using technology on the farm in the 2016 Census of Agriculture.
Just about 50 per cent of older farmers also used technology.
Cullum said the Old College is trying to adapt and re-train older workers.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
