One area of agriculture I have long held an interest in is rare breeds of livestock.
There are multiple reasons for it, including maintaining a connection to our farming past when many of the breeds fit a very different on-farm world than we have today.
What works on a farm today simply would not cut it in the past, and vice versa.
Today’s hogs would not fare as well in typically outdoor conditions, and better than the current strains of laying hen.
That said many of the older breeds would not have the average daily gains and feed conversion numbers required today to grind a profit out of the large scale barns.
That should not be a surprise since steam engines are not going to work very efficiently on a farm today either.
But we have long worked hard to preserve our vintage farm equipment.
The Yorkton branch of the Western Development Museum is testament to that effort, with its extensive static display of old tractors and steam engines, which are the heart of the annual Threshermen’s Show, the highlight of the year at the museum.
We collectively seem to grasp there is importance in preserving our past, whether it’s the history of Saskatchewan baseball and a Hall of Fame and Museum in North Battleford, or someone painstakingly rebuilding a 1950s car to factory specs.
It might be easier to collect old tractors and store them in a shed to be viewed by future generations than it is to maintain Hampshire swine, but it is no less important.
In fact, I suggest the maintenance of livestock genetics is more important.
We make the assumption the trend we have been on for years in farming is the one which will continue.
That is hard to argue since the idea of farms getting ever and ever larger, and more specialized began back post the First World War. All things holding the same, the trend will continue.
But the fly in the proverbial ointment in thinking that way is the assumption all things will stay the same.
That may not be the case. We are still far from free of the idea that fossil fuels are going to last. Now diesel fuel and the power source for today’s huge farm tractors become an issue.
It may be reasonable to expect an electric car to get the businessman to work each day, but pulling an 80-foot cultivator is another issue.
On a broader scale we also expect our populations will remain clustered in ever larger cities.
But we increasingly see water shortages, how to deal with garbage from millions, and the general deterioration of city infrastructure with little financial ability by municipalities to address the situation. So, could big cities collapse? To think not would be a case of not considering all the possibilities.
Which brings us back to rare breeds. If we see a move of people back to the land, and farms forced to smaller size by any number of possibilities, could make the old genetics a much needed resource.
We actually already see that with the trend toward backyard laying hens in many forward-thinking cities. People wanting some control of their food are looking at chickens, but the cage layers of the big farms are far from ideal for backyards.
That’s why a project through the University of Alberta’s Poultry Research Centre is so intriguing. The Centre sent 5,500 chicks from five rare breeds; Barred Plymouth Rock, Light Sussex, Rhode Island Red, Brown Leghorn and Random Breed 1978 to people across Alberta where the idea of raising flocks of heritage chickens and helping preserve the rare breeds. The birds were sold to farms and acreages and for use in backyard flocks in Edmonton.
It is a wonderful program which serves well to preserve genetics which may well be important again in the future, as they have been in the past.
Calvin Daniels is Assistant Editor with Yorkton This Week.
