I’m moving over to Canadian Cattlemen magazine, which is also owned by Glacier FarmMedia. Right now I’m working with Gren Winslow, the long-time Cattlemen editor, to learn the ropes of editing. Cattlemen is a solid magazine, which I appreciate as an apprentice editor. I’m looking forward to learning more about the beef industry. I’m grateful for the opportunity and appreciate Gren’s help as I wade into the new work.

But it also means leaving behind a job I love. In October, I filed my last story for Country Guide. Then I filed my last story for Grainews. Fittingly, that story was the final one in a series on how farmers are managing rotations, along with everything else that goes into running a farm. I’ve wanted to write something on what longer rotations look like on the farm and I’m glad I was able to finish that project.

Now I’m writing my last Grainews column.

I’ve been a staff writer for just over six years and was a freelancer writer before that. In that relatively short time, it’s been interesting to watch issues evolve.

For example, last year it struck me that some of the recommendations for managing clubroot have changed a fair bit as everyone’s learned more about the disease. During farm shows, no speakers recommended farmers sanitize equipment between each field, but they did have more practical ideas on minimizing soil movement. This included practices such as seeding field entrances to grass and seeding clubroot-infested fields last.

They also had suggestions on when and how to use resistant canola varieties (use resistant varieties early on but don’t rely on them as silver bullets). They have a better idea of what to look for, where to scout and what spore loads actually cause disease symptoms. I also heard both a farmer and agronomist talk about the emotional toll clubroot exacts from a farmer. Saskatchewan and Manitoba farmers have a much better knowledge base to draw from than their unfortunate Alberta counterparts did a decade ago.

Someone once told me being adaptable to change was important for anyone wanting a successful career. I think that probably goes double for farmers. Whether it’s changing markets, weather, technology or crop pests, farmers have to adapt to long-term and short-term pressures. It makes your jobs hard, but it also makes the sector interesting.

Innovation

Glacier FarmMedia recently bought Farm Forum, so there’s been some discussion within the company about innovation. One question was what separates the successful innovations, the ones that farmers adopt, from the rest.

Often it comes down to what people need. Is this new product or management practice going to save farmers money or make them more money? Does it solve or prevent a problem? Does it bestow long-term benefits to the soil? Does it save time? Does it mitigate risk?

Another big factor is whether it works with current farming systems. Will a new practice fit into the current regime of pesticides, equipment and varieties? Or is it such a force of nature that it will change the entire system?

Finally, there’s no doubt that economics are a big factor. A new product has to be financially viable for a company to produce and for farmers to buy and use.

In 20 years, I’m sure that farming will look different in ways that none of us could have ever imagined. Yet some things will remain the same, I think. Farmers will always need a deep knowledge of the land they’re working with. They’ll need to know how that swale that cuts through the half-section affects the crop in wet and dry years. They’ll understand how the soil where the old pig pen used to be is different from the soil a few feet away.

My hope is that innovation and technology serves farmers into the future. Even though I’m moving to the cattle side, I’ll be watching what’s happening on the cropping side too.

Thank you to all of you who have read my scribblings over the last few years, and to those of you I’ve interviewed and chatted with at various events. It really has been an honour to work for you.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: So long, but not goodbye appeared first on Grainews.

The House of Commons Ag Committee has been studying mental health issues among farmers and livestock producers. The committee heard about the problems specific to producers who are struggling with mental health. Here’s a summary of the problems people brought forward in late September:

1. Lack of resources in their area, which might mean a long drive to get help.
2. Lack of understanding about ag among some mental health professionals.
3. A culture of toughness that prevents some from seeking help.

There were some interesting ideas and hopeful signs from the hearings. Lesley Kelly, one of Do More Ag’s co-founders, spoke to the committee. Do More Ag and Farm Credit Canada are offering mental health first aid workshops to 12 to 14 agricultural communities, at no cost to the communities. Kelly said they had expected 10 to 12 applications. Instead, they received over 80.

Another interesting concept came from Alain d’Amours of Contact Richelieu-Yamaska, a mental health clinic in Quebec. He spoke briefly about their farming sentinel program, which trains people who work with farmers to detect distress.

“We are already seeing that these sentinels are useful. People call us and seek help sooner,” he said.

What’s available?

I have no doubt that rural, and many urban, communities need more resources to address mental health. But often there are local resources available.

The Turtleford, Sask., area has qualified people to help with addictions and provide counselling for adults and children. People can also access a psychiatrist. They work out of the Turtleford hospital complex and the clinics in St. Walburg and Edam. They don’t require referrals for appointments, people can simply call intake at 306-446-6500. The one exception is psychiatric rehab, which requires a referral from the psychiatrist.

In early June, local organizers held a mental health in the workplace day in Turtleford. From Turtleford alone, a doctor, counsellor and Anglican minister shared their knowledge and experience with mental health. The day also featured speakers from the neighbouring communities of Thunderchild, North Battleford and beyond.

Dr. Mzi Tshatshela had some practical advice when dealing with mental health. Recognize there’s a problem, seek help and stick with the plan. For example, don’t quit prescribed medication after a couple of months even if you feel better. Take care of yourself: exercise, sleep and eat well.

Johann Engelke, manager of the Battlefords Mental Health Centre and a registered psychiatric nurse, also spoke. The Centre takes referrals but people can also walk into the hospital without a referral. An intake worker will assess the situation. If someone is stuck in a psychotic or manic episode or has an achievable suicide plan, they may be admitted or see a psychiatrist immediately. If the risk is lower, the psychiatrist will work with a family doctor.

You may have similar resources in your community. If you or your spouse has an off-farm job, you might be able to access support through an Employee Assistance Plan (EAP). This could mean setting up phone calls with a counsellor in the evenings or visit a counsellor in person. Employee benefits also help cover medication costs.

Remember, there’s no shame in looking for support. Farmers look for help all the time from agronomists and business advisors. Why should mental well-being be any different? Please look out for yourself, your family and your community.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Seek out the services you need appeared first on Grainews.

One of the most interesting buildings is the Manitoba legislature. Years ago, Frank Albo was driving by the leg when he spotted a sphinx on the west side of the roof. What is a sphinx doing there, he wondered. After spotting that sphinx, Albo spent years researching the legislature’s architectural history.

Several conference attendees were lucky enough to be part of a tour group led by Albo, who these days is an architectural historian with a PhD from Cambridge. It was a whirlwind look at Freemasonry, numerology, astrology, geometry and alchemy. He calls this mix of symbols and numbers and ratios the Hermetic Code.

What I found most interesting were the symbols and statues that adorn the building. There are, in fact, two sphinxes. One faces east, and one west. Each sphinx holds Egyptian hieroglyphics just below the chin which state: “The everlasting manifestation of the Sun God Ra, the good God who gives life.” That is not something you’d expect to find in Manitoba in 1920, the year the legislature was completed.

Albo told us the whole building was designed as a temple to Hermes (hence the Hermetic Code). Hermes is the gold-gilded statue on top of the building. Many people refer to him as the Golden Boy. He’s nude and running with a torch (perhaps a dangerous combination). Statues representing earth, air, fire and water sit at each corner of the dome supporting Hermes. Those four elements are a nod to alchemy, as is the gold figure in the centre of them.

Moving inside, the first thing that caught my eye was a pair of bison flanking the grand staircase (see photo at top). These bison are in what Albo calls the protection room. He told us the bison echo the bulls that guard temples from evil. He then pointed out several other icons in the room that serve the same purpose, including lion heads and cattle skulls. Another example is Medusa’s head, glaring down the staircase. Staring back up at Medusa is a bust of Athena. I can’t imagine anything scarier than being trapped in the middle of Athena and Medusa’s ancient grudge match, so I thought those icons were well-placed.

The attention to detail was fascinating to me. For example, sunlight touches every statue in the protection room at some point during the day. There are lots of mathematical details, such as three sets of 13 steps on the grand stairway, or 13 lights down each hall. There were also examples of Fibonacci sequences and sacred geometry, but I didn’t take notes fast enough to catch it all.

Albo told us that Simon believed architecture could influence people in a positive way — make us more rational, for example.

However, effective the Hermetic Code may be at influencing our moral character, there’s no doubt that Frank Worthington Simon left Manitobans a fascinating legacy. Frank Alba deserves a ton of credit for the years of research he’s done decoding the architecture.

Building a legacy

Whether by coincidence or design, the theme of legacy-building threaded through my entire conference experience in Winnipeg. Right after the legislature tour everyone gathered at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which is a short walk from the Forks.

The museum, envisioned by Izzy Asper, was the first national museum built outside the Ottawa area. It’s slated to be featured on Canada’s new $10 bill, along with civil rights activist Viola Desmond. The exhibits themselves chronicle the legacy of human rights abuses and advancements in Canada and around the world.

Then, early on Friday morning, I hopped on a bus with several colleagues and headed west. The first stop of the day was a pasture about 50 miles north of the U.S. border. Meadow larks trilled. Even I could see that there was a variety of vegetation in the landscape. The livestock producers who owned the quarter were working with the Manitoba Habitat Heritage Corporation to maintain the native prairie.

Curtis Hullick, a field manager with Manitoba Habitat Heritage, told us grasslands were disappearing rapidly in Manitoba due to economic pressure.

“In our minds, the species most at risk is the beef producer,” said Hullick. That’s bad news for birds and the beef industry.

We also visited SG&R farms, where the Boyd family manages the land with soil health in mind. They do everything from intercropping annuals to seeding farmland to diverse grazing mixes for their beef cattle. The field we looked at had been annual cropped for years before being seeded for grazing. Next year it will grow perennial crops before eventually going back into the annual crop rotation.

Ryan Boyd and his family are playing the long game with their farming methods. They’re not the only ones, of course. Many farmers and ranchers have future generations in mind. But the trick is to balance the farm’s financial needs with agronomic and environmental considerations.

Our last stop before supper was the Manitoba Agricultural Museum at Austin. It’s a collection of pioneer buildings and old machinery. It was another physical reminder of what the pioneers built in Western Canada.

Whether you’re building with bricks and mortar or working with soil, you’re creating a legacy. It’s worth thinking how future generations will view your handiwork.

For information on tours at the Manitoba legislature, visit the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba website.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Leaving a legacy in Manitoba appeared first on Grainews.

Fear easily morphs into anger and hatred and there’s no shortage of either on the internet. I’d love to write that the online ag community is free from such nastiness. But the ag community is affected by the same movements that are shaping the rest of society.

I’m not writing here about tweets that are simply offensive. I’m referring to things like hijacking a popular ag hashtag and filling it with sexually explicit images. Or making a rape “joke” about a female advocate with a strong opinion.

There are, unfortunately, plenty of other similar examples on Ag Twitter. One of the few positives is that other people in ag intervene when the attack is aimed at a specific person.

What exactly is going through people’s heads when they say this stuff online? Some are trolls — a now over-used term that once referred to people who ignited arguments by making outrageous statements purely for their own enjoyment. There was a strong trolling culture on some internet forums (specifically 4chan and Reddit). The original trolls weren’t necessarily political. They loved angering lefties and right-wingers alike. Of course, people do this offline, too. Think of the kid you knew in junior high who couldn’t resist baiting teachers and classmates just to get a reaction.

• Related: The other side of the ‘agvocacy’ world

Those trolling techniques have been picked up by people whose agenda extends beyond ticking everyone off for fun. A recent report by Whitney Phillips, titled The Oxygen of Amplification, examines how people used these same methods to manipulate the public discourse during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

The report mainly focuses on white supremacists in the U.S., but much of what they’re doing applies to other groups, too. For example, they’ll use memes and jokes to spread their message. They love nothing better than being condemned by a public figure, as this leads to more media coverage. They hijack other cultural symbols, unrelated to white supremacy, and give them a neo-Nazi spin in memes.

I don’t know of any neo-Nazis within ag, but there are people who employ some of the same techniques. Women and mental health advocates are frequent targets. Some people will use jokes and memes to say derogatory, or even threatening, things.

How does this information help the people who just want to talk agronomy, or maybe even argue a bit without drawing threats or pornographic memes? It helps to have an idea of a person’s motive when trying to decide how to respond to a nasty comment or threat. Will arguing just give them what they want?

There’s always the block button, which prevents someone from interacting or even seeing your Twitter feed. Twitter has added a mute button, which is not a bad way to quiet certain people pre-emptively. It removes all that person’s tweets from your timeline, and they don’t receive a notification that you’ve muted them. You can unmute them later, if you have a change of heart.

Twitter has policies against hateful conduct, which includes things like threatening people or inciting violence. There are also rules against abusive behaviour — for example, summoning a mob to harass someone.

I tried to get an interview with someone at Twitter about how they enforce these policies, but was told they would only do an interview off the record. Their website outlines several enforcement options, ranging from limiting the visibility of a tweet to booting the person off Twitter permanently. Twitter has done a poor job of enforcing its own rules in the past, but perhaps it will get better.

It’s also worth noting that online threats of violence might meet the threshold of criminal charges. Document threats if you’re the target, even if you don’t plan to go that route.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Fear and anger on the internet appeared first on Grainews.

Before I even left my hotel in Omaha, I had my first clue. The Omaha World-Herald ran a front-page story on the $12 billion ag aid package with a rhyming headline. “Farmers: Thanks for the aid, but we want trade.” The story included quotes from various farm leaders reinforcing that point.

After checking out of my hotel, I picked up a rental car and hit the I-80. I was bound for Grand Island, home of a Case IH combine factory.

As I travelled west, the landscape shifted from rolling, treed hills, to flat fields. Most crops were irrigated. Sometimes the corners of the pivot were seeded to sorghum (which is water-efficient) or other crops. Sometimes there was a field of soybeans or a herd of beef cattle. Mostly, though, I saw corn. But that surface impression wasn’t the whole story. Later I spoke to two farmers who told me how they’re doing everything from cover crops to fall grazing cattle on their land (more on that in the future).

On the smaller highways with no shoulders, driving past that tall corn was almost like driving through a forest. Do deer pop out of those fields, I wondered? I did see a few on my last day. One afternoon I drove to the Kenesaw cemetery, where some of my husband’s ancestors were buried.

I spent a good hour or more tracking down my in-laws’ tombstones. My husband’s great great grandparents died in 1921 and 1922 of influenza. So did one of their adult sons, who had survived World War One and the earlier flu pandemic. There were also a number of children and young adults buried in that graveyard.

You’ll find the same trend in old western Canadian cemeteries. It’s a grim reminder of how hard life was 100 years ago, and how medical advancements have changed our lives.

Our society has made big gains in other areas, too. That was clear during the Grand Island Case IH plant tour. About a quarter of the factory-floor employees these days are women. The painters have much better, safer working conditions. And the plant is increasingly efficient in how it uses resources.

It’s not just how we manufacture combines and how we fight disease that’s changing our society. We are in the middle of a communications revolution. Decades ago Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan wrote about the shift from a print-based society to an electronic one, and how that would change us. It’s impossible to summarize McLuhan’s writing in a couple of paragraphs, but some features of this electronic age include:

• Rapid change.
• Lack of attention span.
• In politics, image matters more than policy.
• The world becomes a giant computer or electronic brain. We move towards a collective rather than individual identity, and we internalize Big Brother.

McLuhan also thought that as our world became more interconnected, fear would become more prevalent, unless we could wrap our heads around this shift to the collective.

The thing about change is that it embodies both risk and reward. Humans both crave and fear it, and have done so long before McLuhan. So in a way it’s hardly surprising that people get nervous about, for example, changes in the way their food is produced. It doesn’t help that someone on Facebook is always willing to feed them a fear sandwich. (I’m looking at you, plastic lettuce lady).

As for me, I’ve gotten to the point that I try to avoid eating anything that smells like terror or outrage. We all need to start cutting that junk from our online diets just as we should cut excess sugar. We need to be very wary of political leaders and social media personalities peddling fear and loathing. In the electronic age, logic and the ability to pay attention will help us push through the surface impression these people present.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Times are changing everywhere appeared first on Grainews.

I spoke to two women, from different rural communities in different provinces. Both have experience as board members and in the volunteer corps.

Because I wanted them to speak openly without creating bad blood, I’m withholding their names and other identifying details.

Why do you volunteer?

“It’s mostly for the kids,” says Volunteer A. For example, the school council she’s involved with fundraises for things like playground equipment. She has also joined the board of a recreation group to bring more children’s activities into the community. She’s not currently on the recreation organization’s board, but she still volunteers frequently.

Volunteer B also volunteers with a parent-school organization. She wants her kids to have memories of her being around. She’s also joined a rural hall board. Volunteer B says many of the people involved with that hall are retirement age.

“And they deserve a break. And I think it’s time for the people my husband and I’s age to step up and take that from them. Let them just come to the events we plan and enjoy themselves and have us do the work,” says Volunteer B.

What do you wish board members and other people knew about what you do as a volunteer?

Volunteer B wants people to know that she’s not afraid to get involved, and help local organizations evolve. As someone who didn’t grow up in her current community, she brings outside experience and perspective. She wants to stay out of the community politics as much as humanly possible.

“I think it’s important to have those people come in without preconceived politics,” says Volunteer B.

When asked what she wished board members knew about volunteering, Volunteer A had a succinct answer. “Well, it’s not about the glory.” She volunteers to get stuff done.

However, she has her limits. Sometimes organizers from other communities, which she’s not involved with, ask her to pitch in. In the past she’s said yes, but also made it clear that she won’t do so regularly.

The thing is, the town she’s most active in is “crazy busy” already.

“A person can burn out,” says Volunteer A.

Do things run smoothly or could the boards do better?

When she first moved from the city, Volunteer B was on a non-profit board that seemed to tick right along. The executive director linked the board and staff, and many board members volunteered on the front line as well.

More recently, she was at a school meeting where community involvement seemed very low. But she doesn’t think she could speak to how to improve it, other than getting more people involved somehow.

“It’s the struggle that every community deals with. Everybody is just so busy,” says Volunteer B.

Volunteer A finds her school council to be very well-run. Everyone chips in, she says, and everyone is in the loop.

But the recreation board doesn’t always support it’s volunteers, says Volunteer A. The board once decided to have a volunteer appreciation event, but had the volunteers organize and work at it. Most of the board members didn’t even show up, says Volunteer A.

In all fairness, it’s not an easy job and board members are volunteering too. This non-profit is managing many activities, with many committees, and Volunteer A thinks that may be part of the problem. Perhaps some committees need to be separate non-profits.

She acknowledges that a board’s main task is to manage the organization. But board members also need to listen to the front-line volunteers, she says. They will have a better idea of what’s working and what’s not.

“It’s okay to say: ‘This didn’t work so let’s scrap it.’”

The post Reporter’s Notebook: Keeping community volunteers engaged appeared first on Grainews.

It’s an interesting exercise to think about what agriculture might look like in 20 years. Here are two agronomic problems that I think may change how people grow crops.

1. Clubroot

Once considered a disease of Alberta canola, these spores have been found in every Prairie province. Clubroot infestations can be managed in the early stages of the disease, but if left unchecked, spore loads can grow too high to grow canola in an infested field. Genetic resistance in varieties has been breached in heavily-infested fields, underlining the fact that there is no silver bullet for this soil-dweller.

Canola acreage shows no sign of dropping, at least not this year. But at some point, farmers are going to need to give their rotations a break from the oilseed to manage the disease. Yet canola remains one of the few economical cropping options for many regions on the Prairies.

I think this change will be relatively gradual. Perhaps clubroot will push industry and government to develop and champion crops that are a profitable alternative to canola. Already we’re seeing soybeans push north. Pasta makers are incorporating faba beans into their products. Maybe quinoa will be the next Cinderella crop. Or maybe it will be a combination of several new crops that slowly gain acres.

Clubroot is not the only canola disease exacerbated by tight rotations. Eventually those disease pressures will tip the economics towards less canola in the rotation. I don’t think canola will vanish from our landscape, but I think we will see fewer of those striking yellow fields in the long term.

2. Herbicide resistance

There’s no denying that herbicide resistance is growing in Western Canada. Chemical companies are encouraging farmers to use at least two active ingredients on weeds by mixing and repackaging existing products. But they haven’t come out with new chemistry in years, and anyone I’ve talked to says there’s nothing new in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, herbicide resistance management plans can be complex, and extra costs may not pay off in the short term. In the fall of 2016, Kate Sanford Mitchell of Bayer passed on a sensible piece of advice to avoid being overwhelmed.

“Pick one management technique that you can do on at least one field. Try it out. See if it works on your farm,” she said. I can see farmers doing this very thing, gradually adding new tools to their tool belts. I bet many readers are doing it already.

Harvest weed seed destruction looks promising for some weeds, and strategic tillage may knock back others. Higher seeding rates, winter crops, perennials, cover crops, inter-crops, longer rotations, and more competitive varieties help. So does controlling weeds in ditches.

I think farmers will still be using herbicides in 20 years. But I think they’ll also be relying on more tools to manage weeds than they do today. Here’s what a typical farmer might do in the future:

• Till weedy patches in a couple of fields.
• Seed a marginal (and unprofitable) patch to grass to control weeds.
• Seed cover crops in a third field.
• Use herbicides throughout the farm, but tank mix everything.
• At harvest time, destroy some of the weed seeds through an attachment on the combine.

These are just a couple of agronomic problems that I think will drive change on farms. There are many problems and advances that will contribute to change. My guess is that farming will become more management-intensive and complex. Farmers retiring today will be amazed by what our future farmers can do.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: How will we be farming in 20 years? appeared first on Grainews.

For two days, I stayed with Leeann Minogue’s family near Griffin, Sask. While there I visited the South East Research Farm for a Country Guide story, and Ceres’ Northgate Terminal for Grainews. Watch for those stories in the future.

After, I headed to Winnipeg. I attended an Icelandic brunch at the Scandinavian Centre, and discovered that pickled herring is delicious. Pickled herring is a polarizing topic, so it’s good to know where one stands.

Then it was north, to Lake Winnipeg. I researched the history of Icelandic settlers in the Gimli area for a new novel. In late October, 1875, about 325 Icelanders landed just south of Gimli with ragged Hudson Bay tents and stoves for shelter. Once there, they hurriedly built houses for the winter. There were many families, and children in this group.

Why would they undertake such a trip in late October? Some stayed in Winnipeg — mostly single women who found work as domestic servants. But there wasn’t much employment available.

Immigration officials urged the women and children to stay behind. That would have meant staying in the immigration sheds, and as the name implies, those sheds weren’t exactly winterized. They also would have been cut off from their husbands and fathers for several months. I haven’t read anything that explicitly states this, but I imagine that women and children living in immigration sheds would have been vulnerable to predatory types.

So they all chose to head up the lake.

No strangers to hardship

These Icelanders were no strangers to hardship. Before arriving in Winnipeg, they’d lived in Kinmount, Ontario. There they suffered through unemployment, overcrowded housing, hunger, and sickness that killed many of the children.

Why did they leave Iceland in the first place? Reasons included an earthquake, poor economic conditions, poor fishing, unusually cold weather that resulted in poor pasture, a massive sheep die-off. The poor risked becoming wards of the state. From there, they might be bid on, and become indentured farm workers. This process often split families.

There was also worry about volcanic eruptions. In fact not long after the Kinmount group left Iceland, Askja erupted, triggering mass emigration.

Things didn’t exactly go smoothly in Gimli, either. The first winter was hard, and about 35 Icelanders died. The next year, another huge group of Icelanders settled in the area. But the newest settlers likely brought small pox. By the fall of 1876, small pox was raging through their communities, killing 102 Icelanders. The whole area suffered under a quarantine that dragged into the next summer, long after the disease had run its course.

It also devastated First Nations families in the area, killing all but 16 of the 60 members of the Sandy Bar band. Particularly poignant is the story of the Ramsays. John and Betsey Ramsay had lost their summer camp when the government gave the land to the Icelanders. Yet they built relationships with the Icelandic settlers.

Betsey Ramsay and most of their children died of smallpox. Only John and his daughter Mary survived. John Ramsay was then hired to drive Dr. Lynch to other settlements all through the winter, until the disease had subsided. Afterwards he bought a marble headstone for Betsey’s grave.

An Icelandic family still maintains Betsey’s grave, which is on private land.

There was no shortage of suffering in the 1870s, whether you were in Iceland or Canada. While people still suffer today, there have been some improvements in both countries. For example, I don’t think Iceland gives away wards of the state as indentured labourers today.

Seasons change, too. I was in Gimli for a week. By the time I left, the ice on the lake had gone from solid white to a blue-grey colour, with the texture of rippled glass. At home, the Ski-doos are gone and the fields are drying. Soon we’ll all be cutting grass and watching crops grow.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: A Grainews reporter’s spring travels appeared first on Grainews.

This was just one gem among many in Canadian author Drew Hayden Taylor’s short documentary, Searching for Winnetou. Winnetou is a fictional Apache warrior dreamed up by German Western novelist Karl May. May wrote all kinds of fantastic adventures for Winnetou and his German buddy, Old Shatterhand, in the American southwest. They hunted bison in the desert. Winnetou even killed grizzlies with nothing more than a knife. In the film, people call Winnetou the German Superman.

Germans are crazy about Winnetou. Each summer 200,000 to 300,000 people attend Winnetou-themed plays in Northern Germany, held in an outdoor amphitheater. Taylor, a playwright, noted the production values are outstanding. Costumed actors ride horses and shoot guns. The set and costumes look great. They even have a trained bald eagle.

It doesn’t end there. The books became films. And these days German hobbyists spend weekends, weeks, even months living like traditional First Nations people (or at least some facsimile of it). They camp out in tipis and do beadwork. They hold pow-wows.

Taylor sprinkles sly humour throughout the film. Upon finding tacky wooden teepees, he jokes, “I recognize this tribal teepee architecture — Eastern Ikea Nation.”

What does this have to do with agriculture? While there are some big differences between German appropriation/appreciation of First Nations culture and the general public’s perception of farming, there is a striking similarity. Some people outside of agriculture have an idealized, not entirely accurate, perception of farming’s history. Same with the German hobbyist view of First Nations history and culture.

But in both cases, it’s not that either group is completely ignorant of the cultures and communities they are romanticizing. They have bits of knowledge. Some have quite a lot of knowledge, in fact. Others, not so much.

What’s the problem with putting farmers or First Nations on a pedestal anyway? Well, it’s pretty easy to knock people off that pedestal if they don’t meet expectations, or if expectations change.

Holding on to perceptions

In an interview about the film, Taylor mentioned that some Indian enthusiasts hold so tightly to those romantic perceptions that they’re disappointed by the fact that most First Nations people drive vehicles instead of riding horses these days. It was that comment that piqued my interest, given the judgement heaped on farmers for employing modern agronomic methods.

Still, in some ways, the roots of Indianthusiasm are quite different from agenthusiasm. Winnetou was created around the time Germany became a nation, and this might be part of the reason he’s such a beloved projection of German ideals. Adolf Hitler was a Winnetou fan as well, which ushered in the darkest bit of the Indianthusiasm movement. Hitler was so enamoured with the Lakota people that he declared them honourary Aryans.

Indianthusiasm survived Hitler and the war. It really picked up steam once East Germany was under Soviet control. Germans wanted an escape from government control.

The hobbyist movement also snowballed as cities grew. Germans began looking for an escape from the city, a way to be more connected with the natural world. I think that’s a feeling many urban agenthusiasts would relate to.

Beyond all that, anyone talking to consumers about agriculture could take a page from Drew Hayden Taylor’s playbook. Although he’s funny, he doesn’t descend into mocking people. He’s never mean or scolding and always fair to the people he talks to for the film. That approach helped him build rapport with people, have meaningful conversations, and find out all kinds of fascinating things about the German hobbyist movement.

To watch the film online, go to the CBC Docs website ‘Searching for Winnetou’ or do an Internet search for “Drew Hayden Taylor documentary.”

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Last year, the federal Liberals attempted to roll out tax reforms that raised the hackles of many in the ag sector. The proposed changes to capital gains exemptions seemed likely to threaten many producers’ abilities to pass the operation to their successors. Other revisions could have threatened a producer’s ability to save for retirement. And, of course, the consultation period coincided with harvest.

There were many more implications for farmers. But the tax blooper seems like it was borne of ignorance more than anything. It just seemed like the Liberals knew very little about farming.

For example, after the feds had backed down on many of their proposals, they announced they would cut the small business tax rate to nine per cent, from 10.5 per cent, over the next couple of years. An excerpt from a background document used an example of a farm, stating that “once the small business tax reductions are fully implemented, the business will save an additional $750 which could be used to help pay for new farm equipment.”

Where exactly was Lawrence MacAulay in all of this? On October 5th he was quoted by CBC News’ PEI bureau as defending the proposed tax changes, and stating they’d had an “extended” consultation period. He also voted against an opposition motion to extend the consultation period into January, CBC reported. He said he was working with Bill Morneau, the federal finance minister, to make sure the new bill wouldn’t sideline succession planning.

Well, why didn’t he do that before the proposals were made public? He sure would have saved his colleagues a lot of ridicule from the ag sector.

If this had been the federal government’s only agricultural faux pas, one could chalk it up to humans being humans and making mistakes. But as I write this, on the first day of spring, western Canadian farmers and shippers have suffered through poor rail service for months.

Rail service

Warren Sekulic, who farms in northern Alberta, told the House of Commons ag committee that he was eight months behind on delivering many of his contracts. Ian Boxall, who farms in northeast Saskatchewan, said he was still waiting to deliver on three-month-old contracts. Lack of rail service by CN was the hold up, Boxall said.

Boxall’s local elevator is one of only four that connect to both CP and CN, so the elevator was able to take some of his grain. Not the entire contracted amount, but just enough so he had the money he needed at the time, he said.

We did have extended interswitching provisions as part of Bill C-30. Shippers have said that just having the ability to go with another railway often improves service. But the Liberals let that Bill sunset last year, focusing on getting their own Bill C-49, the Transportation Modernization Act, passed. It sounds like the Senate may send it back, based on reporting from iPolitics’ Kelsey Johnson.

It’s probably worth the time to get that Bill right (or closer to right). But why the Liberals would have killed Bill C-30 before this new legislation came through is beyond me. Farm groups in Saskatchewan were asking the feds to extend Bill C-30 last spring, as they were worried that the new legislation might get tied up during the grain shipping season, the Western Producer reported.

And Liberal, NDP and Conservative members of the Transport Committee shared those concerns, said Conservative transport critic Kelly Block. That is according to reporting by Emmett Shortt of WestCentral Online.

You can argue that transportation isn’t really in MacAulay’s wheel house either. It’s under Marc Garneau’s purview. But a big part of MacAulay’s job is, or should be, to work with his cabinet colleagues on issues that affect the ag sector.

The Liberal government doesn’t understand the business of farming. Nor do they understand the time-sensitive, seasonal nature of the industry. But most Canadians don’t, either.

That’s why we need an ag minister who understands, or at least is willing to learn, about this complex industry. And that minister must have influence and know how to use it with his or her cabinet colleagues. Otherwise the blooper reel will just keep rolling.

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