EDITORIAL
Rural riches
The last thing people want to find when they set out on a Sunday drive in the countryside is a half-hour traffic jam.But if you head up Highway 25 north of Milton around Thanksgiving, that's what you'll find - hundreds of city and country folk alike trying to nudge their compacts and minivans into Chudleigh's farm market, where adults clamour for home-baked pies and apple cider and bushel baskets of hand-picked apples rival beanie babies for children's affection.
But after the car has been loaded for the feast, it's too bad most Chudleigh customers head back to the city rather than set out to explore what other riches rural Ontario hides on county roads and concessions.
Whether it's pumpkins, pacers or pinot noir, Sunday drivers who head back to the 'burbs after chomping on pie and chugging cider at Chudleigh's don't know what they're missing. They could head northeast, where some of the world's best standardbred horses frolic in the fields at Tara Hills Stud near Port Perry (story, page 14). There on the hills overlooking a picturesque lake, you can find Peter Heffering's Precious Bunny, one of standardbred racing's greatest stars. Heffering, who spent most of adult life breeding some of the world's best Holsteins, including the recently deceased Hanover Hill Starbuck, has his sights set on filling his paddocks with more champions.
Drivers heading west toward Rockwood will happen upon First Line Seeds, one of the world's leading producers of food-grade soybeans, which many nutritionists think will aid the fight against heart disease and cancer in the next millennium.
For those who want to put a little more environmentally friendly corn ethanol-based gas in the tank, a trip through Norfolk county will take you by Lingwood Farms where fruit farmer Murray Porteous, recently named Ontario's Outstanding Young Farmer, shows how greater employee responsibility and a team management approach pay big dividends.
Those looking to cleanse their pallet after the cider jugs are empty can head east to the Niagara Peninsula and one of more than 50 farm and cottage wineries. Over the past 20 years, the Ontario wine industry has been transformed into a world leader, thanks in part to European emigrant wine makers.
Those weary of long rural roads need only venture a few
kilometres west of
Chudleigh's. There at the Farm Museum sit some of the tools and
ageless
iron that built Ontario's farm industry. Sometimes, those short
Sunday
drives turn out to be the best.
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Quebec producers set protest standard
In early October, Quebec pork producers won a rare farmer victory over an election-bound Quebec government.As much as $30 million will be added to the income stabilization fund for the sector, restoring funding cut last year in the provincial government's deficit wars. The government of Lucien Bouchard also promised not to cut any more from the program.
In these days of tight-fisted governments, it was amazing. And itwas a farmer victory won with some old-fashioned tactics. In September, pig farmers blocked a major road between Quebec City and Montreal for five days, protesting low incomes and government cuts. Police eventually ended the protest, but the government obviously took the message to heart.
For farm leaders who have adopted the "lobby within the system and don't be radical approach," it must be cause to reconsider tactics. Politicians in Canada have been consistent in their message that there is no more money for farmers. Never mind that many commodity prices are down. Never mind that there are doubts about whether Canada's farm safety net system is adequate to meet the needs created by a prolonged price depression. Never mind that the American government is going to be sending billions of dollars more to already-subsidized U.S. farmers in this election autumn period.
Canadian governments say they will not budge.
Federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief made that clear in the House of Commons in late September when he was pressed to offer Canadian farmers support similar to that which will flow to their American competitors. "We do not have to consider and will not consider ad hoc programs that the Americans are now considering," he said.
It did not get better when Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Jack Wilkinson appeared the same week before the Commons finance committee to plead for more farm spending in the February budget. He said safety nets need to be enriched, and the government should be willing to invest more in farm environmental programs. They were arguments familiar to farm audiences.
Rural Canadians paid a particularly high price in the war against the deficit. Like all Canadians, they felt the effects of cuts in health, education and other services.
They also saw most of their industry-specific support programs cut or eliminated.
"Agriculture and rural Canada paid an undue and disproportionate amount in the federal government meeting its obligations to balance and produce a surplus budget," Wilkinson told MPs. "If you want to maintain the infrastructure that feeds off of primary production in agriculture, we need some reinvestment back in these areas. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for that."
Instead of sympathy, he heard skepticism from urban Liberal MPs. Why didn't you propose that Ottawa pay down the debt to keep interest rates low, rather than more spending? asked Montreal Liberal Nick Discepola.
Why should agriculture be a budget priority when health, debt reduction and tax reductions are on most people's minds? asked Kitchener Liberal Karen Redman. In your view, she continued, why would agriculture be more important than those issues?
A frustrated Wilkinson tried to respond, particularly to the agriculture-versus-debt-reduction question. "If you are starving to death, it is difficult to in fact take money out of the cookie jar and hand it to the banker," he said.
But with a lack of public flexibility from the agriculture minister and a clear hostility to the idea of more farm support from some urban Liberals who will be advising the finance minister about budget priorities, the farm income issue just does not seem to have registered in government.
So what are the alternatives to co-operation with government and earnest arguments?
How can politicians be convinced that rural Canada, in Wilkinson's words, should not be "taken for granted?"
It's been so long, does anyone remember how to organize a
demonstration?
Does anyone have the telephone number for the Quebec hog
producers'
association?
Barry Wilson is an Ottawa-based farm columnist
For young and old, hockey night is here again
Once again, it's hockey night in our home town. It started out as a fun way for Neil to work out, but over the years I've come to realize that it's also a one-stop shop for the latest news - from soybean prices to local gossip.For the last 11 years, after an eight-year layoff, Neil has laced up for pick-up hockey with a group that's a regular melting pot of varying occupations. Local cops, RCMPs, cash croppers, dairy farmers, teachers, Seaway workers, stockbrokers - you name it, the occupation's probably been represented.
It's amazing the issues you can keep abreast of: What manufacturer makes the best no-till seed drill; the teachers' strike and how kids truly behave (or don't) in school; that with today's superior quality steel, the Titanic would never have split and sunk as she did; market trends for corn, soybeans and the reasons for them.
Hockey is like a universal language, and you never know when or where a lively discussion on teams and players is going to come up.
Time flew during corrective surgery for a displaced abomasum in one of our cows recently because our veterinarian, also a player in Neil's league, was talking hockey. It really gets interesting when our milk tester (the goalie for an opposing team) and Neil each give a totally different analysis of the same game.
Some of the fellows in the pick-up league had never been on skates before, having grown up on farms with limited time for school work let alone hockey after the chores were done. They seem to be the ones who enjoy it the most. It's not too competitive, yet it's a new, challenging experience.
Neil now plays for an organized non-contact league as well as the more casual pick-up game, because working out twice a week is better for the heart and increases endurance.
Sure, he's busy on the farm. Who isn't? By the time he goes on the ice at 10 p.m., the work ought to be done, anyway. The morning after may be a little sluggish, but a 20-minute nap after lunch usually cures that. The benefits of the nap are twofold, since medical research has proven that a nap in the middle of the day can reduce the risk of heart attacks and high blood pressure. Hand in hand with the latter is the stress-relieving benefit of hockey. Getting into the game is just that - there's no room for worrying, for at least that hour, about anything else.
Mind you, it has made for some interesting situations at home. As anyone with livestock knows, things can happen at the most inopportune times. When Neil looked at a two-year-old heifer before he left for hockey one night, he figured he'd be home long before there was any action. However, I guess Trudy thought I needed some excitement, too, so she went into labour. Instead of working with the contractions though, she panicked, thrashing from one side to another. Still, I was sure Neil would be home at any minute. With him and the neighbour he'd gotten a ride with, we'd have no trouble delivering the calf.
Wrong. Hockey (or the post-game powwow) ran late, and although I flagged them down from the milkhouse just in time for the delivery, we had to phone the vet. Luckily, the first-time mother survived the uterine prolapse, caught on the first service and has calved without incident ever since.
It was only natural that our son play hockey, too. In fact, David's hockey games and daughter Laura's precision skating became our social life. It's hard to believe that the five-year-old who had to be dragged to those first hockey practices when he wasn't allowed to use a stick now can't wait for hockey season to begin, and could write a "Who's Who" on hockey.
When he's home now, he plays pick-up with his Dad; at Guelph, his intramural league has been a forum for meeting all kinds of other students. I can tell I brought David up right - he knows how to air out his equipment. His father's always been a believer in saving on the laundry by wearing things over again - something you just shouldn't do with a sweaty T-shirt. Neil does open the dreaded bag - and sometimes even hangs things to dry - but I must brave it to get things to the washer.
To get rid of static cling, I always use fabric softener now.
Once - and
only once - was enough for Neil to open his duffel bag, pull out
a nice
clean T-shirt, and just happen to find a pair of girl's
underpants attached
to it. I think the dressing room is still buzzing about that!
Margaret Comfort partners a family dairy farm near St. Catharines
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LETTER FROM EUROPE
By Norman Dunn
Necessity's the mother of diversification
At least in Europe, a sure sign of hard times in agriculture is a growing interest in unusual enterprise ideas for the farm - new crops, better use of by-products, exotic livestock, and so on. When prices are really down, and that's just where they are for grain, pigs, milk and meat in Europe currently, then new moneymaking ideas are in.Last month, for instance, a contact of mine in Austria asked if I wanted to buy some "tasty and very tender" yak meat. Here was a pioneer tired of the reduced income from milk cows on his Alpine pastures.
Now, the EU certainly supports dairy farming, but real income's been dropping fairly steadily because of increasing feed and labour costs. My Austrian friend's answer to this was simple: find an animal that looks after itself, that can stay on the highest pastures throughout the winter with only the odd bale of hay when the snow gets really deep. That's how yaks appeared on his farm. He's started selling breeding heifers to neighbours who've noticed that he doesn't have to rise early for milking any more, and that his barns no longer need mucking out!
Why should a French wheat and sugar beet specialist on the fertile Paris plains suddenly start growing raspberries? The reason's the same: There's much less cash in conventional cropping. This year's price for Jean-Luc Gandon's wheat is the equivalent of C$200 per tonne, and that's only where protein is at least 13 per cent. Under that, he can't give the stuff away.
Four years ago, he was collecting $250 per tonne for feed-quality samples. Jean-Luc started growing rasps and strawberries three years ago when he had a foreboding that things were going bad in the EU cereal sector. Now he's producing acres of soft fruit along with his more usual wheat, sugar beets, peas and barley. Except for the beet, net income per hectare from the fruit is better than any crop on the farm. And his combine-driving neighbours? At last count, 40 of them had stepped down to start growing rasps and strawberries. Jean-Luc's also making money out of this. He's founded a fruit marketing company and buys up all the local production.
Milk production may be subsidized in Europe. But this also means that the amount each farmer produces is restricted to a so-called quota. This sort of control is irksome for an independently minded farmer, especially when prices start to slide and he wants to increase output to make up the difference.
Even in Europe, though, there are no quotas for horse milk. Ulf Helmich from near Hamburg in Germany noticed this. He has a herd of mares anyway on his farm - his long-time hobby has been breeding and training show jumpers - so why not divide the milk between foals and farm shop? Ulf tells me he hasn't stopped expanding since he thought of marketing mare milk. The product, he finds, is in continual demand from hospitals and sanatoria because it's acceptable to folk allergic to cow milk. Mare milk is also valuable for those with gastric problems, because it's more easily digestible than the bovine product.
All this creates a dream for the pioneering farmer: a marketable product that hardly anyone else produces and with no bureaucratic control on expansion. It also adds up to a lot of money for Ulf: Each litre of his mare's milk sells for the equivalent of C$10 - 20 times the producer price for cow milk in his district.
Getting more value out of conventional crops is another answer to low returns - and it seems there's always something new that can be done with straw. A farm co-op near Koblenz in Germany has found that milled and pelleted wheat straw makes good absorbent litter for house pets. The idea only really got off the ground last year, but it immediately met high demand from urban cat owners. This year, 6,000 tonnes of straw have been contracted for processing, and the co-op is offering farmers 10 per cent more than the going price for the right article, delivered in big bales and with a maximum moisture content of 15 per cent.
The picture of straw-laden farm trucks queuing outside the co-op
reflects
just how quickly farming fortunes can turn around here. Last
year, most of
my neighbours were happy to plow the stuff under and were still
complaining
because they were no longer allowed to burn it out in the field!
Norman Dunn, based in
Germany, is Farm & Country's European correspondent
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