What does a farmer look like to you? Is that person wearing a zip-up sweater or jacket with an ag company logo emblazoned on the front and back? Is that person’s face and hands clean or are they dirty or stained and wrinkled from years of tinkering on machinery and toiling in the soil?
Or, has the visage of the modern farmer moved away from a representation of hard physical labour to something more resembling cunning, strategy and business savvy?
I ask because this question came up in a significant way for me the other day. The person with whom I was chatting expressed disappointment — if not something stronger altogether — that most agricultural publications portray farmers and farm families in a way he believes doesn’t necessarily represent reality.
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The picture of a family standing in a field, kids sitting on bales, tight jeans on everyone too old to sit on bales, baseball caps, belt buckles and smiles may be getting a tad stale. At least, that was the sentiment I was picking up on.
He likely knew I would agree with him. And I did. This stale, overused tableau always got under my skin.
I work in communications. I have taken photos used on magazine covers. I have taken the exact photo I am condemning. I am guilty of propagating this farmer stereotype. Ultimately, I am guilty of laziness, leaning on what I know will be accepted rather than taking a risk by capturing images that I feel better represent either the people I am photographing or what it means to be a farm family today.
What will be on the next cover of Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers’ Pulse Beat magazine, a publication with which I have been involved for quite some time? I don’t know. But I do know it’s something worth thinking about, especially in this context.
The essence of the farmer
The question/challenge posed to me got me thinking about the kind of picture that would most truthfully resemble the essence of the farmer.
When I moved back to the farm, I would wear the same clothes in the workshop as I had worn the evening before at a restaurant with Jamie, my wife. My jeans would inevitably get grease on them, consigning them to be work pants and nothing else.
My father was and still is a staunch believer in coveralls. I certainly understand the appeal. You can wear whatever you want, adorn coveralls during the dirty part of your day and then, eureka, at the end of the day, shed that filthy layer to reveal attire untouched and pure.
I have had trouble training my brain to appreciate coveralls like they deserve.
Instead, still wearing clothes I should definitely not be working in, I tried to be more intentional about not getting so filthy. This works until it doesn’t. The farm hosts too many products that stain clothes. One brush up against oil or grease and you’ve got a stain that no amount of Resolve will remove.
My latest evolution has yet to be growing-season proven, though it has passed the winter workshop test. I have purchased workwear — pants and jeans meant for rough service. Dickies, Kuhl, etc. — this isn’t about brands, but this is something I have never done before.
A picture of me on the farm in 2012 would be of a person inexplicably covered head to toe in grease, wearing jeans and a shirt that were not meant to get so dirty.
In 2018, same clothes, but remarkably less dirty. Today, I’d be wearing clothes meant for work. I’d likely be wearing thin, grippy work gloves to protect my hands and my face would likely be clean (unless you managed to snag a candid of me after blowing out the combine).
I think these kinds of things are interesting. Farming, as you know, involves a ton of considerations. Clothing and appearance are among those things.
This is not entirely what my friend/colleague was getting at when he raised the question of what kind of picture best captures what it means to be a farmer, but it is, in part, where my mind went.
Agriculture is dynamic. Canadian farmers are a diverse bunch. To an outsider looking in, though, these great attributes, which are deserving of celebration and promotion, are often hidden under a veneer of homogeneity.
I am as homogeneous as they come. I used myself as an example here to, hopefully, poke your brain into conjuring an image of the modern farmer while discussing something practical, like my clothing evolution on the farm.
Think about it. You get an ag magazine in the mail and you remark, “Wow. That picture gets it.” Describe to me that picture. I am very curious. Perhaps our descriptions will serve as revelations of what we really think about the industry in which we work.
