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Introducing youth to careers across the agrifood sector

Capacity Building
CAPACITY BUILDING PRIORITY

Labour, Skills and Access to Talent

PROJECT TIMELINE
February 2021 to March 2023
PROJECT STATUS
Fund I: Complete
TOTAL INVESTMENT
$2,042,807

Consortia Contribution
$614,160

Cluster Contribution
$1,428,647

PARTNERS

Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative

Actua

Agriculture in the Classroom Canada

Goal

To address the future labour shortage in the sector, by expanding existing STEM programming for students in kindergarten to grade 12 in the prairie provinces to make them aware of, and increase their interest in career opportunities in agrifood, digital agriculture and plant protein.

Project Summary

The project includes delivery content to Indigenous and inner-city and rural/remote students and will be delivered by university partners in the prairie provinces. Emphasis would also be placed on using student instructors who are representative of the Indigenous and other underrepresented groups, including women and newcomers, to demonstrate to students that there is a place, and many opportunities in agriculture, and particularly in plant protein, for people who look like them.

Results and Impact

  • The consortium has exceeded their goal of introducing 69,000 youth to the sector over three years. They have introduced over 90,000 youth, including more than 5,700 Indigenous youth.
  • As of June 2022, during the first two years of their project, they've engaged nearly 58,000 youth with 82 per cent of these youth saying they've learned something about agriculture or digital ag.

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