EDITORIAL
Profit starts beyond farm gate
Pork producers milled around the front lawn at Queen's Park early December, trying to persuade politicians to lend a helping hand to farmers enduring the worst price downturn in history. The same day, a half-mile south of the legislative buildings, Bay Street money managers listened attentively to food-industry types extolling the virtues of investing in agri-food companies.The farm income crisis that gripped pork and grain farmers seemed light years away as food retailers, wholesalers and farm input companies outlined corporate strategies, industry growth potential and, of course, the road blocks that could hamper investment returns.
To kick off the conference, the money managers were greeted by assurances from Federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief that, despite falling commodity prices and demand, agriculture is a sound investment. He said he was busy working with the federal cabinet to provide income aid and ensure Canadian farmers would be up to the challenge of producing for a world market.
But with the minister's exit, the plight of farmers was quickly forgotten and replaced with calls for the end of inefficient marketing boards, the monolithic Canadian Wheat board and just about any other farm marketing structure that has served farmers well over the years.
It was apparent at this meeting of the corporate world that farmers risk becoming an afterthought in the world of high finance - perhaps even in their very own agribusiness.
Farmers, if anything, are probably guilty of doing the dirty work - growing crops and raising livestock- for investors who have their sights set on larger returns. As Donald Ziraldo, president and co-founder of Inniskillin Wines, pointed out - after criticizing the role of marketing boards - it's tough to attract venture capital to help pay for vineyards that take four years to produce a crop that delivers small margins.
When Vanclief announced his $900-million federal income disaster program last month, a reporter asked him why his government doesn't just hand over money to health care or other causes Canadians would applaud. Why farmers? the reporter asked.
A reserved Vanclief explained that farmers were facing immediate disaster and, ineligible for employment insurance or industrial adjustment programs, had nowhere to turn.
He stopped there, but he could have added that without farm families producing cheap food inputs, Canadians would have to pay more for food, and the profits money managers glean from agri-food companies - many of which can be found in the average Canadian's mutual fund portfolio - wouldn't be as plump.
It all begins at the farm gate, but some people either don't know
or
appear to have forgotten that fact.
OPINION
Happy New Year - keep that pencil sharp!
New Years is a time for joy and optimism. I look forward to each one.Unfortunately, though, with each new year's dawn comes the cold hard fact that I'm going to be a year older, tempering that optimism and joy with a kind of frenzied drive to hurry up and get to where I want to go, quicker.
That's especially true when it comes to our farm. I'm beginning to think it's time to forget about resolutions made again and again - and never achieved. Maybe then they'll come true, and I'll at last be a slim, trim, totally organized person who sticks to a budget and has a well-padded savings account.
I sure wish that the budget business could work out. One solution comes to mind - 13 milk cheques instead of 12 in a year, with no expenses racked up against the extra cheque. Oh, how refreshing it would be to pay off the operating loan and not have to go for anything that even remotely resembles a term loan to pay off bills at the end of a tight year!
Financial and personal advisers, meantime, will say that a person has to have short-term, intermediate and long-term goals. While you're at it, set up a back-up plan. And look back at the goals you've achieved instead of just looking at the mountain of things waiting to be done.
A year ago at this time, my husband, Neil, and I figured the summer of 1998 would see us either doubling the size of our tie-stall barn or building a new free stall. Instead, we bought more quota and are milking six more cows in some new stalls in the existing barn. We've finally gotten away from having to move cows while we're milking to get them into the pipeline, but it feels like we're regressing all the same: We've had to go back to a bucket milker for the makeshift stalls. That is, it feels like a backward step until we look into the cooler. The added income from those six producers is going a long way to servicing our existing debt and paving the way for the new and/or expanded barn. Expansion in mind, we're investing in a larger, more efficient vacuum pump, locking head gates and a new stable cleaner chute.
While a winning lottery ticket would have been nice, there was another reason for delaying any major building plans. Like most farmers, we found that 1998 was one of those years in which we were pushed from one job to the next, with no time left over for research and attending facility open houses for ideas. Although rushed, we thought the early seeding and harvesting dates were great - until extremely dry weather and hard clay put us behind in the plowing. So much for control!
In a perfect world, there would be no crushing lows to offset the exhilarating highs. I guess we should have known that when our dream of an Excellent cow came true on April Fool's Day, it was an omen of bad luck to come. She picked Thanksgiving Day of all days upon which to die, two weeks shy of being able to deliver a calf from a premium, well-chosen sire. Personally, I can hardly believe we actually crested that goal.
I'm just glad we have a photo to prove it, even if it's too hard for either of us to look at it yet.
Another high came in the form of a paid-in-full contract, a whole month earlier than we'd expected, on our cab tractor. We decided to take about six months to sit on the money those monthly installments have represented for the past four years, and let it build toward a down payment on an upgrade of our smaller, multi-purpose tractor. That was about two days before said tractor died, leaving Neil stranded at the far end of a field. Time to sharpen that pencil again!
Back-up plans are essential, as we learned in the case of some real estate directly across the road from our house. Part of the original Comfort farm, it had, according to Neil's grandfather, "the best soil on the place," and for years we rented it back from Neil's grandmother. A little over a year ago, For Sale signs went up on it, and we were given a week to move on it or not. What else could we do? We bought it, taking on another monthly payment, delaying dairy barn renovations and purchasing less quota than planned.
The pencil sharpening we did then was nothing compared to that of nine years ago: On January 2, the same day I was told I needed knee surgery - thanks to a stubborn dry cow - a long-term nightmare began to play out. Since Grandpa had been ill, his wife put his most recent will in the china cabinet without having him sign it.
Proud as punch that our children were the ninth generation on the farm, Grandpa always attested that, "No Comfort ever had to buy this farm before, and Neil and you shouldn't have had to buy it either." Since this last will was disregarded, however, the land across the road was left to only one of his grandchildren after his wife's death, not divided in part between his only son and Neil's far-away, non-farming siblings. A provision of both wills, that 75 per cent of our mortgage to the estate be forgivable, was overridden by Neil's grandmother, joint holder of the mortgage. Still, there are highs here: We realized the value of good friends and a good lawyer, not to mention a good accountant. Also, in financing the land purchase this year, we arranged to buy out from the estate the remaining mortgage on the main farm. Thus we can hold our heads up, we can finally put it behind us and move on, and backlashes from family members may be avoided.
Finally, our son, David, is showing an ever-increasing interest
in
carrying on the farm. Provided we steward it wisely, this family
farm is
going to remain just that.
Now that's a lifetime goal if ever there was one!
Margaret Comfort partners a family dairy farm in St.
Catharines
More newspaper reporting, worse news
Newspaper wars are supposed to be good for consumers. The competition means that more journalists are fighting for that exclusive story; that the news coverage is more detailed; and that, in a democratic society, citizens are more informed - and are offered differing perspectives on the issues affecting their lives.But is it good for agriculture?
Surveying the scene since the National Post's late October launch would suggest the answer is a resounding no. The Post's appearance has meant that media outlets across the country are clamouring for audience, adding to or bolstering their beats and delving into areas that interest their readers. For many papers, that means anything related to personal health.
This is expected. Demographers will tell you that baby boomers - the generation that claims to have discovered sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll before falling into parenthood, career angst, babies, the mid-life crises and male and female menopause - have discovered death on hitting 50.
In response, there is an explosion of health- and food-related media coverage, extending all the way back to the farm. Agricultural practices are now under the microscope of public scrutiny. In recent weeks, attention has been focused on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, the ongoing saga of rBST Health Canada, and the proliferation of genetically-engineered crops. Weekly, you can throw into the mix stories about miracle herbs, supplements to cure what ails, and whatever new diet guru has hit the talk-show circuit.
Trouble is, never has the reporting been so exceedingly poor. For the Globe and Mail, the best coverage of late has been in the sports section, where a series on performance-enhancing drugs such as creatine and the androstenedione used by home run king Mark McGwire has rightly put in the public eye the long-term effects of such supplements, available over the counter in the U.S. Meanwhile, its revamped health section seems more devoted to alternative therapies and the nuances of massage, acupuncture and herbal medicines.
The Toronto Star's new Body section in the Sunday paper recently listed the top 80 food trends and preventative measures that will enhance life. The problem with these eat-this-don't-eat-that lists is that some people actually take the advice to heart and restrict intake of foods crucial to health and well-being.
Dairy consumption has fallen out of favour with teens, where vegetarianism reigns as cool. And why bother drinking milk when Tums are sold as a good source of calcium? The result, as recently reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is a generation of calcium-deficient kids who, some researchers say, may be especially prone to osteoporosis later in life. Are calcium-fortified indigestion aids really the solution to a crisis of confidence in foods?
The National Post jumped into the farm coverage fray early on, telling readers in a front-page photograph on its second day of publishing that Quebec farmers were protesting about compensation for the deadly scabies in sheep. The next day, front page again, readers learned how the use of antibiotics in agriculture was creating superbugs. Except that the story managed to confuse the very real issue of antibiotic resistance with a grab-bag of food-related anomalies that left this reader wondering if the story wasn't more about selling papers than reporting new information.
The biggest trend in each of Ontario's Big Three rags, though, is the continuous and tenuous espousal of connections between various agricultural practices and all manner of ills.
It is far easier to embrace urban legends about the declining nutritional quality of foods as an explanation for various medical maladies than it is to write about the hazardous risks posed by certain bacteria in the food supply.
Agricultural issues for an urban audience are being reduced to
the safety
of food. Farmers need to lead the non-farm press beyond
sensationalism to
meaningful coverage of the challenges and changes facing the
province's
food producers. The fact that many of them are actively
implementing
on-farm or HACCP-like food safety programs is a good start. But
it's going
to be a long row to hoe.
Douglas Powell is an assistant professor in plant agriculture at
the
University of Guelph. His new book, "Reclaiming Dinner," will be
published
this summer
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LETTER FROM EUROPE
By Norman Dunn
No end in sight for battered beef
Henk Hoogenkamp, boss of an international meat industry consultancy, reckons that vegetarianism will boom in the current and next generation.This Dutch expert has devoted his career to studying the meat industry - and his crystal ball contains mainly bad news for cattle raisers. "I'll give you an example," he says. "Some 14 per cent of all teenage girls in Australia don't eat meat. They're the decision-makers on family consumption trends for the immediate future." In northern Europe, the story is the same. Draw a line due east from Paris: above that mark vegetarianism and falling red meat consumption are reality in every land.
I say "red meat" because poultry and pork have successfully distanced themselves from beef. Several surveys indicate that chicken and the "other white meat" are increasingly regarded as an acceptable protein source by would-be vegetarians who haven't managed to break the meat habit. But what's the real reason behind red meat's demise? Did it really start with BSE (mad cow disease)? Or did this sickness simply give already-sagging beef sales a hefty push downhill?
Certainly, the daily television newsreel shot showing a Holstein cow staggering around a dung-filled yard in the last stages of BSE hasn't helped beef consumption figures over here. And that film has been running for five years now!
Nor has newspaper coverage. What started as "Disease no threat to human health" evolved to "Perhaps there is a small risk, but only if nerve and brain tissue are consumed," which begat "There is definitely no link between BSE and the brain-rotting Creutzfeld Jakob Disease in humans."
Finally "There is the possibility of a link after all." Little wonder that this last bombshell, announced almost 33 months ago, resulted in beef and veal consumption dropping by up to 40 per cent throughout northern Europe. Sales have recovered, but are nowhere near the level prior to BSE.
What else has happened since the start of the BSE crisis? Britain - the worst-hit land and where the disease was first identified - has seen 2.5 million healthy cattle slaughtered in programs to control the disease. The world export ban on British beef has cost the EU the equivalent of some C$10 million, with longer-term British trading losses put as high as C$200,000 million (some 30 per cent of British beef was sold abroad before the ban). Additional billions have also been spent by the EU in farmer compensation for low beef prices. Throughout Europe, returns for beef producers are still well down - in fact, halved compared with those of 1990.
Then there's the social damage. Alone in the first year of BSE, 1,000 jobs were lost within the British meat sector. Farmer bankruptcies are daily news in the beef trade. Realistically, it's fairly difficult to attribute farmer suicides to one single cause. But here's something to ponder: When I met with UK farm journalists at the annual Smithfield farm fair in London this December, we discovered that, without exception, we all personally knew at least one beef producer who had taken his or her own life since the BSE crisis began.
Gloomy stuff. But some say that it's over now. In November, the ban on British beef export was lifted. For European beef generally, the industry is trying to attract more customers with advertising campaigns and stressing that new identification and traceability regulations mean that every animal slaughtered is guaranteed healthy and from a healthy herd.
But just as veterinary experts predicted that the disease would
probably
die out "by 2003 or 2004," Portugal, the EU's poorest
member-country,
reported its 67th case of BSE. The EU has now imposed a beef
export ban
there.
Norman Dunn is Farm &
Country's European correspondent, based in Germany
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