October is Agriculture Month across Canada.
This is a bit of a misnomer, since every month is agriculture month in Canada, because it has to be, or else Canada takes a big dip downward on the scale of global importance.
Our producers cannot take their role lightly. We don’t call our farmers and ranchers producers for no good reason do we?
If they don’t produce, we don’t get to go anywhere.
And never assume farmers merely do the grunt work by planting seeds, watching plants grow, and then taking the crop off at and for the convenience of others, when it’s time to harvest.
That stuff on your dinner plate isn’t there by accident bucko.
Farming and ranching in today’s complex community is tougher than ever before.
Pioneer agriculturists had simpler concerns directly attached to weather and basic equipment, coupled with a need for a much longer growing season.
Thanks to science and technology, the growing season span is shorter now.
Producers now discuss merits and setbacks associated with organic production.
How about crop diversity? It used to be red spring wheat, oats, barley and, if you wanted to gamble, a little flax. Look at the world of the Saskatchewan farmer and rancher today?
Exotic breeds of cattle with feeding plans, dozens of cropping alternatives from lentils to soybeans to mustards to sunflowers and back again. You name it, our crop-defining teams of scientists and farmers, will try to make it happen and generally do.
Technology advancements unheard of just 10 years ago, are now everyday tools.
Debates now cycle around genetically modified seeds and crops, water security, drainage, rain or no rain options, snow covers, erosion versus shelter belts and the list goes on.
And that’s not even giving time to Canadian Wheat Board arguments or rail transportation woes.
Those who are engaged in commercial gardening have another whole set of parameters to challenge them before they can come out on the other side with successful crops and profits.
Regulatory shifts happen on a regular basis because the producers must also live within and comply with a variety of political decisions, sometimes made on a whim or a slim notion. Assistance packages are added and subtracted at the whim of political expediency and the farmer and rancher is rarely the winner, but they keep trying.
After all is said and done, we still like to echo or paraphrase the words of the pioneer producer whose recollections from the late 1920s and early 1930s (printed in this week’s edition) still ring true.
No one can feel more free than a farmer.
We rest our case.
