The single biggest labour challenge for the dairy, poultry and egg commodities will be finding skilled and experienced farm managers, including owner-operators.

That from the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC), which has completed a three-year study entitled Dairy: Labour Market Forecast to 2025 and Poultry and Egg: Labour Market Forecast to 2025.

For these commodities, management and ownership jobs account for almost two-thirds of the current workforce, and between now and 2025, they will account for the majority of the jobs going unfilled due to a lack of domestic workers.

It's expected that the dairy industry will see 1,100 jobs go unfilled by the year 2025, while numbers are similar for the poultry and egg sector.

Both industries will be significantly impacted by retirement, with nearly one-third of the dairy workforce and nearly one-quarter of the poultry and egg workforce expected to retire by 2025.

The dairy, poultry and egg industries account for fifteen per cent of the total agricultural workforce.