RealAg on the Weekend: Emergency prep, ag diversification, and jobs of the future, Mar 21&22, 2026

This RealAg on the Weekend podcast is brought to you by Kubota. For Kubota hay tools like mowers, tedders, rakes, balers, wrappers, mergers and more. Head to Kubota CA and click Agriculture to explore the full lineup. I'm Shaun Haney and this is Reel Ag on the Weekend. Let's get real and get connected with the week that was in Canadian Agriculture. Reel Ag on the Weekend starts now. Welcome to Reel Ag on the Weekend. I'm your host Shaun Haney of RealAgriculture.com Great to have everybody with us here today. Hopefully you had yourselves a great week as we have finally entered spring and it kind of does feel that way. Real here in Southern Alberta where I am a lack of snow, very brown, waiting for things to green up a little bit. Was in Grand Prairie, Alberta last week and as I mentioned here last week on the show, quite a bit of snow and flew from Toronto to Calgary at the beginning of this week and eastern Prairie seemed to have a little bit more snow than as you move west. So Saskatchewan is kind of a brown and white sort of situation depending where you are in the province of Saskatchewan. Well, today on Relay of the Weekend, we're going to be talking to Heather Sweet. She is with the Alberta NDP Party. She's the critic for agriculture, forestry and rural economic Development. We're going to get her perspectives on agriculture going forward. Going to give you a bit of a heads up here. She's got some views and some of the things she's going to say, they don't sound very NDP like they sound a little bit more conservative. So we'll play that audio for you here today. We're going to hear from Abigail Fair. She is with the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association. It is farm safety week this week and you know, we have a week like this where we talk about farm safety and it's important. And there's over 60ft. There's actually over 60 farm fatalities a year in Canada. And it kind of makes you sort of think a little bit more about maybe we need to be having Farm Safety Week every week as we enter spring there. We got to remember that a lot of these fatalities and accidents actually are preventable. So we're going to hear from Abigail Fair today on the show and I'm going to play some audio for you from the RealAg Issues panel from the RealAg Radio podcast from Friday discussing the declining happiness in Canada and what is driving that. Canada actually dropped a number of different points. I think the number 25 in the world America was number 23. Scandinavia continues to be seems like a little bit more of a happy place than over here in North America. The panel, Tyler McCann of CAPI, Lindsay Smith, Kelvin Eppner of Real Agriculture myself, talk about maybe what's going on there. But we are going to open today's show with Teresa Aguirre Cordero. She's an entomologist from the University of Saskatchewan. We got, we got season seven of the Pest and Predator podcast coming up here right away on RealAgriculture.com we're going to talk about that now. If you have any feedback on today's show, you can send me an email. Shaneeyealagriculture.com youm can also call or text the RealAg feedback line. The number is 855776, 6147. Okay, season seven pest and predator podcast. We talk about, you know, some of the predators out there that are trying to rob us of yield and some of the beneficials that are helping us out in our canopies for free. So I chatted with University of Saskatchewan entomologist Theresa Aguirre Cordero all about season seven of the Pest and Predator podcast. Teresa, it is great to have you on the show. Thank you very much, Shun. It's a pleasure. Yeah. Okay, so why did you get intomology? Well, because I, since I was a little girl, I love to catch bugs, to analyse them and yeah. Figure out how they are. And yeah, I, I was like a kind of wild girl catching bugs around. So. And then also naturally you, you end up in, in the field. Well, you know what, it is absolutely critical to have people like yourself that are committing their careers to researching some of the bugs and the insects, in some case predators that are trying to rob us of yield. But there's also the helpful ones, the beneficials, which are also some of the areas that we explore with the Pest and Predator podcast. So from your standpoint, season seven, why are you excited about the Pest and Predator podcast this year? Well, I'm excited to learn more about how the Pest and Predators podcast brings prediac entomologists directly to other researchers, growers and agronomists. It is a pretty cool group. Like I did say, there's a lot of personality and a lot of really, really key knowledge in, in Canada's field or I guess, roster of entomologists that are working at universities for the federal government and provincially as well. You're based in Saskatoon, correct? Yeah, that's correct, yeah. At U of S. At The University of Saskatchewan. Yes. Okay. And what's your, what's your specific area of focus? Plant science. So I study the insects that affect or can help to get a better yield in agriculture. Fascinating stuff across all crop types. And no lentils? Well, my master was on fava beans, so maybe like legumes or pulses, but right now just lentils. Why do you think it's important that we do podcast series like Pests and Predators? Why is that that so important, do you think? I think that it's super important to make a bridge between science and the public in general. Like growers, agronomists, or maybe like other members that make gardening or just like, like science and to know what are we doing right now. Sometimes, sometimes we forgot to. Yeah. Make this more friendly for the public or the final users that are agronomists, farmers or growers in general. So I think that it's super important to give information in an easy way. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. Doing some cutting edge research and having that just over here, you know, and nobody really touches it, interacts with it, accesses it, unless you went to a specific meeting or something and bringing that info and connecting it with the practicality of the users, like farmers, for example, or agronomists. Ag retails is really critical and it really allows the, the tentacles of that research to. To expand out to. To the masses. So I think you hit on it perfectly. And I mentioned that it is sponsored by the Western Grains Research foundation, wgrf. It is great to have them on board again as a sponsor. Yeah. And also as a researcher is a great tool to understand another kind of insect. So for example, I'm not working with wasp, but I just listen. I don't know in which season. One interview of one person that is working with wasp and that gives me more idea about how the other insects affect my pest. Well, the pest that I'm focused on. So yeah, it's very useful not only for growers and farmers and agronomists, but also for other researchers to understand different scenarios or methodology to. Yeah, I look forward every year to having Dr. Tyler wist on who talks about beneficials attacking some of the nefarious insect characters in our canopy as if it's like some sort of WWE wrestling event. So I look forward to that every year. Remember, season seven Pest and Predator podcast is launching here this spring, so please cheque it out. It is powered by the Western Grains Research Foundation. You can find it wherever you get your podcast or@real agriculture.com we've got more RealAg on the weekend coming up right after this quick break. Excite your crops with inputs from ExciteBio Technologies. Let us help you find the best solution and access nitrogen and phosphorus with ExciteBio's lineup of inoculants and Ag biologicals. Reach us at 1-855-X-I T E B I O or at ExciteBio CA. If you're serious about agriculture, Real Ag's got you covered. For over 10 years, we've listened to and shared what producers have to say about everything from policy to agronomy from coast to coast. Keep up with the latest in Canadian [email protected] through daily newsletters and cheque out our YouTube channel. Thanks for joining us in the RealAg community as we continue to cover and serve North American agriculture. Hi, I'm Berner Tobin, host of the Soybean School on RealAgriculture.com throughout the year on the Soybean School, we'll bring you timely agronomic video content from planting to harvest, from the latest agronomic research to the latest in production technology. Cheque out our massive video library on YouTube realagriculture.com or download the audio podcast versions. Wherever you get your podcasts, the Soybean School is brought to you by Mazic Seeds and Lalamond Plant Care. If you're involved in the agriculture industry, it's important to stay informed on all the latest issues affecting your business. At RealAgriculture.com we offer fast, reliable news, information and insights to help you keep on top of all of the latest in Canadian agriculture. Visit RealAgriculture.com and sign up for our free daily newsletter covering everything from news, agronomy, animal agriculture and much more. Visit RealAgriculture.com SubscribeToday well, there is lots happening in the world of agriculture, especially in a province like Alberta. And recently I was at the big RDAR Research Showcase in in Edmonton. One of the people that I ran into was Heather Sweet and she is an MLA for Edmonton Manning. She's also the official critic for agriculture and irrigation and rural economic development for the Alberta NDP. How are we doing today, Ms. Sweet? It's great. Weather's good, stopped snowing, so I think we've had enough moisture now to last us for a bit, so things are good. We're maybe getting a little bit closer to spring, although it really hasn't felt like I was in Grand Prairie last week and they've got enough snow to make you feel like they're in the middle of January? Yeah, well, and I think, I mean, it's felt like that. I think the trick is one of the farmers has always told me as soon as the trees start budding, it's time to get ready. So I think we're almost there. Starting to see the buds on the trees. So spring's on its way. Yeah, for sure. Okay. We're going to talk about some of the issues that are going on from an agricultural perspective in the province. We recently got the budget from the government, from the ucp. From your perspective, did agriculture show up enough? So I would say no. I would say that there were a lot of opportunities that this government missed when it came to agriculture. I recognise that a $9.4 billion deficit means we gotta be fiscally responsible around how much money we're spending. So I'm not here to say we need to spend more, but what I am here to say is that I think there were some opportunities where the government could have taken the dollars that they have and really invested that into more value added production, more diversification in agriculture and really supporting that entrepreneurial spirit that we have in this province to really invest into those startups and into that diversification on ag. Can we focus a bit? I want to tail to that in terms of where should investments be made from your perspective, where would. Is there low hanging fruit? Is there just more? There's some certain things that need more of a priority. And what does that investment look like? Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a tonne of opportunity. When we think about we're basically exporting our raw market, our raw product in agriculture. Right. Like we could be doing biofuels, we could be looking at that aviation fuel. There's a tonne of opportunity around that with canola and I think there's a lot of interest in it. If we could just get the policies agreed to at the federal and provincial level about what that looks like. I think that there's opportunities around pulses and what we can be doing from that protein market. And I do think that there are people that want to invest, but the struggle is that we got to figure out how to get that capital investment attached to those projects and get rid of some of the red tape that's really preventing that investment from happening. What are some of those red tape issues? Well, it's interesting because you think about what's going on in Saskatchewan and they're able to get a lot of these projects through approval processes in about six months to a year. In Alberta, we take Three years. And so we are really slow on looking at attracting people to come here. I think right now, if there's an opportunity to build a fractionator in Saskatchewan and Alberta, people are going to go to Saskatchewan and it's just because it's just easier to do it. And there is some other opportunities, I would say, with the amount of dollars that are matched at the provincial level in Saskatchewan versus Alberta, their threshold is way higher than our threshold. And so those matching opportunities really exist in Saskatchewan and they could be happening here. But again, we're just not embracing that opportunity the same way. Some listeners are gonna be like, wait a minute, what party did you say that Heather Sweet was a part of? Do you say, I'm a New Democrat? Yeah. How do you. Okay, so we had a good laugh about that. But does that reckon. Does some of your position on this reconcile with the party position or some of your other MLAs would say in regards to regulations? Yeah, I mean, I would say that we recognise that agriculture is a primary driver for our province. We saw that opportunity in Covid. It was what stabilised our economy when everything else was going through high volatility. But we also have to recognise, like, we have to feed the world and our population continues to grow and we have more people moving to Alberta, but also around the world. And we are innovators and we have a tonne of opportunity in feeding the world. And I think that I would say, you know, as New Democrats, we were the party of farmers back in the day and we recognise that that part still is part of our history and we're a strong believer that it's part of our economic future, is to make sure we're diversifying agriculture and investing in feeding the world for farmers across the province and really North America. There is a lot of concern here in the short term about diesel prices, input prices, on things like fertiliser being driven by what's happening with the war in Iran. From your perspective as a critic for agriculture, is there anything that can be done or should be done in the Province of Alberta to try to help producers through that? Oh, and I. Yeah, and I think it's a real concern. I mean, the input cost alone that our producers are facing just continue to go up. I think that was actually the biggest failure that I saw in this budget by this government is that they've downloaded more costs through education tax and through property taxes. And really it's just one more input cost and it didn't need to be done. There could have been conversations, I know There was also negotiations happening with the province around grazing leases, and they've increased the cost of grazing leases on our producers. So even though the government says, well, we're here to help bring down input costs, this budget actually increased input costs for a lot of our ranchers and a lot of our crop producers. And so I think that was a misstep. I do think as well that this is why it's so important that we start talking about how are we diversifying. We need to look at how do we get more money in the pocket of producers. Whether that's looking at some of the great innovative strategies that our producers are looking at from a carbon market and a voluntary market, whether that's around, looking at how we can deal with succession and how we're addressing some of that property transfer. We have to figure out how to ensure that our future producers have access to their land and are able to do it in a financially successful way. Really, when a part of your portfolio is being the critic for rural economic development. And agriculture obviously is a huge part of that, but there are other industries as well. Is enough being done in the province to really drive rural economic growth? Obviously there's two major cities that suck up a lot of the oxygen when we're talking about this kind of stuff. How do we make sure the rural economies are thriving as well? Well, and I think it's about investing in communities. People want to live in communities that have the things that they want to do outside of work. So you need to have good health care, you need to have good education, you need to have things in the community that are fun, like some kind of social community. And you need Internet for a lot of folks. Right. We all know we like to stream our shows on our platform. And so part of the investment that the government needs to be doing is ensuring that what attracts people to those communities is also there. So they have to do investment in our rural broadband strategy. And it can't be Elon Musk. Like, that is not the answer to providing Internet services to rural Alberta. We have to come up with an Alberta solution and not, you know, one of the sovereignty questions is like, shouldn't we have made sure that we are in control of our data? Well, I think Internet is one of those conversations. What does that look like at a provincial level so that we're not having someone from the United States providing our Internet service? That was Heather Sweet. She is the MLA for Edmonton Manning. She's also the critic for agriculture, forestry and Rural Economic development. Back right after this on RealAg on the weekend, Rhizozorb is redefining what growers expect from phosphate fertiliser. Sprysorb helps reduce phosphorus losses, improve uptake and boost ROI without increasing input costs. Join the next wave of growers switching to the next generation of phosphorus fertilisers by visiting phospholutions.com. RE Like Radio is Canada's only daily radio show focused on agriculture. Get expert advice on agronomic Monday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays will cover a broad range of issues. Thursday we'll hear from farmers across the country on the Farmer Rabbit Fire and we'll wrap things up Fridays with the RealAg Issues panel with Kelvin Hepner and Lindsay Smith. Join us Monday through Friday at 4:30 Eastern. And don't forget about the replay at 7 in the morning on Rural Radio 1477 SiriusXM. Get all the information you need to keep your Pulse crop healthy and profitable with the Pulse School on Real Agriculture.com the Pulse School is a free YouTube video series covering agronomy research and more across a host of different pulse crops. It's also available as an audio podcast. Wherever you download or stream your favourite podcast, cheque us out on YouTube or visit real agriculture.com the Pulse School brought to you by BSF Canada. Okay, let's talk about Farm Safety Week that is happening this week in Canada. Joining us here to talk about it is Abigail Fair. She is with the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association. Abigail, it's great to have you on the show. Yeah, it's great to be here. So what do you do at casa? I do a lot of the communications work, so I'm out there sort of just doing social listening, seeing what people are talking about, egg safety, scheduling a lot of social media posts, a lot of the boring back end stuff, and then gathering a lot of data on farm safety in Canada. And it is Ag Safety Week, which is very busy week for your organisation, I guess. Give us some of the numbers, the why here and why we're trying to create some awareness around farm safety. So farming agriculture is actually one of the most hazardous industries to work in in Canada, just per capita with just the number of injuries and fatalities that we see every year. So in an average year Canada loses about 60 people or more children and adults on Canadian farms. Mostly preventable accidents. So that's really the why behind casa. As I mentioned, I do a lot of data collecting, so I get a lot. I get emails almost every day of people being injured on farms and almost all of them are preventable. Yeah, that's the. That's the unfortunate part, right, is that there's a lot of things that happen on the farm that are out of our control. You know, weather markets, things like that. But when it comes to farm safety, a lot of times it's actually in our control. They are preventable incidents. And to a lot of farmers, they don't necessarily feel unpreventable because when you're. When you're in a crunch, say you're trying to, well, make hay while the sun shines. Right. Like you're trying to get things done when the weather's cooperating, a lot of people will just push themselves to the absolute brink. And the way the farming's been done, a lot of people view it as, well, that's the only choice. I'm a farmer. I have to go no matter what, no matter how tired I am, no matter what issues are going on with my equipment, I need to get this done. So it's really about working with people to not just talk about the real issues around farm safety, but also to celebrate the win, celebrate the ways that people are making these small adjustments or choosing to prioritise safety over just output. Yeah. And a lot of times it's just kind of slowing down. Yes, exactly. It's taking a break. Yeah. We've been doing a Farm Safety Roundup series with WSPS in Ontario. We've learned a lot about farm safety here on RealAg Radio. But let's. Let's dig in here a little bit of what some of the, I guess the activities and sort of the daily themes that CASA is going to be hosting and holding and promoting for Ag Safety Week. Yeah. So today we're talking a lot about, like, spring seeding and slowing down on the farm. The farmers listening know spring is a busy time and you add into that there's a lot of. A lot of travelling on roadways. There's. You're interacting with the public, whether. Whether it's just somebody in a truck driving behind you when you're transferring equipment on a roadway or railway crossings. There's a lot at play in spring. So Canadian Ag Safety Week falls at a great time where we can encourage people to take the time now, before the spring busyness really hits, to start making their safety plan and figuring out how they're going to ensure that the spring season is profitable and. And safe. And then we move on. We're talking about rail and road safety, so talking about, or encouraging producers to slow down and to maybe turn off the radio, open their cab doors when they're going across railways and just listening and being aware of trains and being cautious when they're on roadways. We're highlighting farm machinery safety as well on when. Actually, I think that's tomorrow. We have farm machinery safety as our topic. And then we have emergency preparedness, women and egg and livestock safety. So we're really going in on just some key areas that we see that the conversation around safety still needs to grow and evolve. Yeah. So what are some of the things you're doing on some of those days? Like the day where we're talking about having a safety plan? What are some of the things that you're encouraging people to do? So we're actually launching the Emergency Preparedness Hub for casa. So that is an online resource where farmers, farmers, producers from all across Canada can go to this emergency preparedness hub and they can find resources for creating a safe farm plan. They'll find toolbox talks. And it's not just our content. So CASA really believes that there are so many amazing partners. There's so much work being done in ag safety, but it's so spread out. So the goal of the hub is actually to bring all those resources into one place. So instead of looking at 17 different safety websites, you can just go to one spot and we pull together some of the best emergency preparedness resources from different provinces and territories. That is very specific to. Yeah. To the different areas that people are farming in. So that's what we're really celebrating and encouraging people to cheque out. Yeah. I think it's always important to remember we're not talking about, you know, I think a lot of times when we talk about farm safety, people imagine the extreme end of the pendulum. Yes. In many cases, that's not what we're talking about here. We're just trying to make some improvements and create a safer environment in your operation. Most farmers, many farmers have some really robust, like, intentional safety plans in place. They may not even see it that way, but it's in the way they talk to their kids or the way they talk to their workers. Like, a lot people are out there, they are doing the work, but there's just always more to be done or else we wouldn't see so many deaths on Canadian farms every year. And there just is this sense of, well, it's always been done that way and it's been fine till now, so why would I change it? So I think really it's just small adjustments and working with people on one small thing at a time to just make. To make farms in Canada overall just a safer place to live, work and play. What's the website for people to find out more and get some information on some of the resources. So you can cheque out CASA AXA CA or to go directly to the Emergency Preparedness Hub. It's egrady cat A G R E a D Y dot CA Great stuff. Eggsafetyweek. Ca. Yes. Yeah, great. Well honestly really appreciate you joining us here today. This is an important topic. All the best to you. Thank you very much. Egg Safety Week. Thanks for celebrating with us. Great stuff. That is Abigail Fair. She is with casa. As I said at the top of the programme, Farm Safety Week really could be every week in across the Western Canadian prairies and Canada over 60 deaths per year. And you know we do the Farm Safety Roundup with WSPS out of Ontario and as I mentioned that interview cover a lot of different topics. Everything from noise to road safety to protective equipment to reflective equipment on, on, on or things you could put on your equipment to make it more safety relative. It's just so critical. So really cheque out that Farm Safety Roundup that we [email protected] and go to some of those resources that Abigail chatted about. When it comes to Ag Safety Week they got that hub. There's a lot of great resources there for you to use that are free of use and really can give you a bit of a head start. And we recorded a farm safety episode this week on the Farm Safety Roundup and one of the things we chatted about was just that tailgate safety meeting just needs to be five minutes. The farm safety plan does not need to be that that 6 inch 3 ring binder. It can just be something as simple as having just a component of. It can just be that simple. Five minute discussion. Is there any safety issues we need to discuss? Does something to be fixed? It's kind of part of your repairs and maintenance. Just real simple stuff that can have major, major benefits. Okay. We'll be back with more of Reelect on the weekend right after this quick break. CDC Evident Durum from Alliance Seed is the clear Choice for Plant 2026. It delivers high grain yield, strong disease resistance and excellent end use suitability. With CDC evident, you'll set a new standard for Durham performance. Learn [email protected]. Since 2009 the Canola School on RealAgriculture.com has been providing relevant and timely agronomic advice to anyone involved in Can Canola production. With over 15 years of video content on YouTube, the Canola School has been producers go to source for Canola agronomy, research, marketing and more. The Canola School is brought to you by BASF and Invigor Hybrid Canola cheque us out on YouTube [email protected]. I'm Lindsay Smith, host of the Agronomist and I want to thank you for tuning in for over 200 episodes of our beloved little programme. Join me Monday nights, 8pm Eastern on YouTube for our live and interactive Agronomy Q A. Each week our guest panel will handle some of your toughest agronomic questions live streaming on YouTube, Facebook X and RealAgriculture.com tune in Monday nights or go to RealAgriculture.com agronomist and sign up for our email notifications. And don't miss an episode. When hay season hits, every hour in the field counts and Kubota hay tools are built to make the most of them. With mowers, tedders, rakes, balers, wrappers, mergers and more, Kubota has the equipment to keep your operation moving. Head to Kubota CA and click Agriculture to explore the full lineup on the Real Life Radio podcast on Friday. In the bonus segment, what we did was we chatted about some new data that's come out that says Canadians are losing their happiness relative to other jurisdictions around the world. I think Canada was globally number 25 in the world when it comes to happiness. That's a fall from 18 a year prior. And the panel of Tyler McCann of CAPI, Lindsay Smith and Kelvin Hepner of Real Agriculture and myself discuss the ins and outs of this and what is actually happening. We ranked 25th out of the happiest nation. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, I said it correctly. Yes, yes. It's just depending on how you phrase it. Yes, yes. Yeah. Then and again, like there's, it's quite something because I don't think it's hard to blame Canadians for feeling maybe a bit down. It's been a tough year, lots of bad things going on. But whenever that, you know, the Finns in the Nordic countries still rank up there and like they are actually are within like, you know, bomb distance from Russia and they've got real like secure issues when they are reinvesting in bomb shelters in these countries and yet they still figure out how to be happy. Maybe there are some things we could learn. It's because they have saunas and they cross country ski and they eat a lot of fish. You forgot about the drinking fins, the Finns. Do you have any Finnish friends. Go ahead, Kel. Numbers. It's the 35 and under crowd that don't have a job that is. It's hard to have a meaningful life then. And I think that's really weighing on the Canadian numbers now. Yeah. Which people can't find jobs and I don't want to go back to Polly, but that was actually one of the clips I saw of the Rogan interview is where Poliev talked about having, you know, having. We need to make sure that people have a meaningful life. One of the things the article talked about that I read about this data is this again, questioning the young Canadians use of social media and how that is impacting people's overall happiness and utility. I think when I read it, you know, one of the numbers I have in the presentations lately is this Daryl bricker number where 48% of Canadians under the age of 30 see opportunity elsewhere and don't want to leave the country, like State. Like all of this kind of is a part of this, which is. I think it's. This is the stuff we. There's no easy solutions, but this is the kind of stuff that I think should really concern not only Canadians but also the government. Yeah. Certainly around AI policy as well because a lot of starter jobs are the ones that are affected by AI not hiring and the immigration numbers haven't. That's where the influx of. Of temporary foreign workers is also taking away jobs potentially. And like that's. Yeah, there's a lot of things and government is trying to turn the ship on this, but it is part of why Canada is declining in that number. Yeah. Well, we have a divide in society too, where the, the older, wealthier people have done well in the markets the last couple of years and that type of thing. And so it's not good for society to have people headed in two directions at this rate. Youth unemployment is like what, 16%? Is that correct size? It's been in a long time. Yeah. And I think that for a long time there was this impression that when it was. When you talk about AI and automation, it was going to be those factory jobs or maybe Kelvin's chicken barn job that was going to disappear. But actually it's not that. Right. Or they may disappear one day, but what's happening in the meantime is you're wiping out tens of thousands of jobs in IT and tech. I don't know anything about coding, but you hear these storeys. Oh, no. Like you. You don't need a human coder anymore. That this, this, like these AI systems can do it. There are. And so. So what does that mean? What does that look like? How does that impact the fabric of the country? Is. Yeah. As a challenge. One of the big questions I've had is if we eliminate all the junior positions, junior, junior copywriters, junior paralegals, junior coders, what that's great for the senior people because it makes them more efficient and there's more margin there. Where do the future senior people come from if there's no juniors? That's the thing that I don't think people talk about. I use AI every day, so I'm not anti AI whatsoever. Probably I'm using AI more than the whole entire panel. So that's a question I have. And you know, I can't remember if I told the storey in the air, I got a friend that's a lawyer and both of his kids wanted to become lawyers. He's convinced both of them to not enter. To be. To not enter law because he sees so much disruption. And what is the future of lawyer rates and the future, what that economically looks like for lawyers because of the use of AI and what he sees happening inside the firm. So that gets your attention. And again, I think it's worth highlighting that is different than some of the experience we live through in the ag sector. Right. If you look at a robot going into a dairy barn, I think most dairy farmers that have robots in the barn will tell you that it's shifted their work, but they still need to be there, they still need to do the work. It's just given them new tools and changed what they do during the day. That is not what is happening in some of these other industries. They are just eliminating the jobs and they are just replacing people. And so even if you get into this world with autonomous farm equipment, you still practically need to be there. Maybe you've got some HR savings. But I think we're a long way from this world where the need for farmers disappears and we're going to be replaced by machines. But again, I think if you're a paralegal, there's a chance that large swaths of that could disappear. If you're an accountant, I think accounting, right, is one of those spaces that seems to be a low hanging fruit for AI replacement. This is also where like I, I take it then a step back even or, or before, depending on, or forward, depending on who you're talking to. Like right now, our colleges and universities are also going through a major flux of, you know, losing international students and all those sorts of things in which you know, we're going through this here in Ottawa where we've had one of the main colleges essentially axe 40 different programmes like our, our education and our training systems are going to have to adapt too to essentially account for this, you know, a huge shift in what the, the workflow demand is going to be. And also potentially how do you attract people into those sectors that still need people and that job isn't going to be replaced by. Because ultimately these weren't jobs that were necessarily as attractive. And I mean that, that has been a long standing sort of issue of saying like going to the trades or going to the whatever. Yeah, people don't necessarily want to and maybe that's because they have preconceived ideas or whatever. But realistically, as I do love the memes of AIs coming for your job and it's like, I'd like to see AI get a silage dragon stuck. So like, you know, these sorts of things of like, sure, go ahead. But I mean this will, it is an incredible disruption in the types of jobs and roles there will be demand for. And how do we make sure that the people who are looking for work will know and could access training and et cetera to get into the jobs that will still exist and or have increased demand. So ultimately this could be a really great thing for agriculture in that there might be a whole bunch of brilliant people that are looking for somewhere to use their brain and it becomes agriculture. But how do we explain what they could be doing and attract those people? I think that's a question we've all had in this industry for a while. That was a clip from the Real Light Radio podcast from Friday talking about Canada scoring 25th in the world when it comes to happiness. Delved very much into the topic of artificial intelligence and the impact that it has, especially for young people trying to figure out how to develop a meaningful life and how to find a career, a job. Affordability the number one concern for Canadians. If you look at a lot of different pollsters, affordability and the cost of living is number one. You got to have a job to be able to afford anything. And youth unemployment is a real concern based on some of the numbers out of Stats Canada. If you have any feedback on today's show, you can send me an email. Shaneyaalagriculture.com youm can also call or text the RealAg feedback line 855-776-6147 make sure you cheque out realagriculture.com thanks for tuning in. To reel AG on the weekend. Thank you for downloading this RealAg on the weekend podcast sponsored by Kubota. The right equipment is only half the storey. Having the right dealer support is just as critical. With Kubota equipment and dealerships you get it all. Visit Kubota CA and click Find a dealer to connect locally. Sam.