Do you scroll through Kijiji like I do? It’s hard to say, I bet. You don’t know how often I open the app, nor the duration of each episode. Rest assured, I do this often and for varying amounts of time.
But I can also rest assured knowing that you likely do this, too.
Since before the pandemic, I’ve had my beady gaze set on a truck with a very specific set of specs. I test drove one of them in, I want to say, 2018 or 2019, but dithered too long and lost the sale (it was probably for the better — high kilometres, if I recall).
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Fast-forward to November 2022, which, as I write this, is now. My wife and I have just returned from a road trip that was rife with question marks and was, ultimately, such a smooth success that I couldn’t have scripted it better myself if this tale was a fictional one.
What does this have to do with agriculture? A lot. But you’ll have to endure my story first.
I messaged Bryon before calling him. The ad had Kamloops, B.C., as the location. He had just listed a 4×4 2012 Toyota Tacoma in “mint shape” with only 108,000 kilometres, a manual transmission and green in colour. This met my search criteria. It did more than that, actually. It was a unicorn.
After messaging him, waiting 60 seconds and getting no response, I decided to call him.
We chatted. We hit it off. He bought it new and pampered it.
We flew into Kamloops on one-way tickets just before midnight on a Friday carrying a certified cheque and no plan B.
We stayed at a cheap motel, and we were scheduled to meet Bryon the next morning to see the truck for the very first time.
We had breakfast, walked over to his place and found him in his backyard loading the truck box with the extra tires, rims and parts that he included in the sale.
The truck was running. It appeared as it did on the ad and there were no red flags, except he wanted to take the cheque to his bank on his own and then he’d meet us at the insurance place to sign the bill of sale and help me get the documents I’d need to drive it to Manitoba.
The other red flag was he didn’t have the truck registered, so I couldn’t legally test drive it.
When Jamie and I backed it out of his yard, having given him the money and obtaining the required permits, we were driving it for the first time.
Bryon was trustworthy throughout the process. The truck drove wonderfully through the myriad of systems the Rockies threw at us and then continued to treat us well as we drove for 20 hours under the sometimes hostile canopy of an Alberta clipper.
I paid a lot for this truck, but after years of looking, I knew exactly what I was looking for, exactly what prices were fair and what signals to watch for in shady sellers.
And, earlier today, when I got the truck safetied for registration in Manitoba, the mechanic said to me, “That is a nice truck. The previous owner obviously took good care of it. It’s going to last you for a while.”
The point is this. For those who’ve been working in the ag sector for a while and who’ve had the privilege of occupying a variety of roles within it, like knowing a good deal when you see one, the ag policy gaps are likely clear. You search for good news for ag and when you find it, you know it, but when there’s poor substance under glossy coating, you pick up on that just as quickly.
Perhaps the analogy is about the value of time and patience. Perhaps it’s about the sector doing a better job of finding and engaging those with such a keen sense of things.
There are gaping holes in the ag sector. Ag policy across the provinces — at least the Prairie provinces — is undersupported. National groups are having a hard time servicing their provincial members, as their operational models don’t really allow for the kind of attention each one would require.
If a seller on Kijiji gets too pushy, I’ll walk away. I have a long list of signs that send me packing. We all do. We all have a sense of things. Don’t forget about them. Don’t think you’re off base. Some of these gaps in Canadian agriculture are so large and have been left alone for so long they are being forgotten. Perhaps those who feel like they noticed it at first have now either forgotten or lost faith in their instincts.
There’s value in searching for the same thing over a long period of time. If I was talking about something other than a truck, there’s a chance we’d call such a thing a pilgrimage.
