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May/June 2015 $3.50

tied to rail

Railways built canada, and they built the west. So where to next? PG. 16

+PLUS if all seems quiet on the farm, check these six trends pg. 12 CROPS GUIDE ďƒ¨ even beekeepers say the new neonic rules are unfair pg. 36

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Contents

may/june 2015

BUSINESS 8

farm vote Does it always pay to put your “X” beside the farmer’s name on the ballot?

12 six numbers to chew on

It isn’t as quiet as you might think on the home front.

Canada’s farms are evolving as fast as ever.

PG. 16 To Market by rail Transportation and logistics are emerging as dominant issues in Canada’s competitiveness. How much do you really know about what holds the system together?

14 reap the value of personality testing

Understanding ourselves and others isn’t just a buzz phrase.

It’s how to build your business.

16 the journey

From Prairie farm to ocean port, our railways still shock the imagination with their engineering, and their bravado.

22 first-gen farming

Maybe new farmers like Barrie and Merel Voth don’t produce the commodities you’d choose, but they know what it takes to farm.

26 save the farmer, save the farmland

Ten years later, was Ontario’s Greenbelt the right decision to make for farmers, and for their farmland?

30 when organic isn’t enough

Martin de Groot’s customers don’t just want organic. They want animal comfort, energy self-sufficiency, and much more.

34 digital marketing 101

Everyone knows the Internet can boost your value-added project.

But how exactly do you make that happen?

44

g uide life — bring them back home

Saving our small communities has less to do with keeping our kids at home than with giving them reasons to return.

50 Guide HR — do you make smart mistakes?

Here’s how to get better at learning from the mistakes that all of us make.

EVERY ISSUE 6 MACHINERY GUIDE

This year’s small tractors are big in performance and comfort.

47 GUIDE HEALTH

If you’re pregnant, these medicines are now off limits.

48 HANSON ACRES Now it’s Dale who is barking about the dog in the night.

CROPS GUIDE 36 the neonic debate gets real

With tough new regulations on Ontario’s agenda, the neonic debate is getting transformed from idle threats into an all too real cost of business. Now, our production editor Ralph Pearce reports, more and more beekeepers are finally standing up for common sense.

42 PEST PATROL

Giant hogweed isn’t a plant you want to get too close to. Its sap can cause severe dermatitis and even blindness. This month, OMAFRA’s Mike Cowbrough tells us how to identify giant hogweed, and where to watch out for it.

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country-guide.ca 3

desk EDITORIAL STAFF Editor: Tom Button 12827 Klondyke Line, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0 (519) 674-1449 Fax (519) 674-5229 Email: tom.button@fbcpublishing.com Associate Editors: Maggie Van Camp Fax (905) 986-9991 (905) 986-5342 Email: mvancamp@fbcpublishing.com Gord Gilmour (204) 453-7624 Cell: (204) 294-9195 Fax (204) 942-8463 Email: gord.gilmour@fbcpublishing.com Production Editor: Ralph Pearce (226) 448-4351 Email: ralph.pearce@fbcpublishing.com ADVERTISING SALES Sales Director: Cory Bourdeaud’hui (204) 954-1414 Fax: (204) 944-5562 Email: cory@fbcpublishing.com Lillie Ann Morris (905) 838-2826 Email: lamorris@xplornet.com

Tom Button is editor of Country Guide magazine

Climbing on board John Diefenbaker was no longer Prime Minister when I got to shake his hand.

Still, there was an election in the air, and my father, who distrusted Liberals every bit as much Dief (especially when they were led by Pierre Trudeau) had hauled his four boys to the high school auditorium to hear the great man.

I particularly remember my father hooting at one of Dief’s lines: “The reason the Liberals call it their election platform,” Dief rumbled, “is that as soon as the election is over, their plan is to climb on the next train and leave it far, far behind.”

I don’t know how many thousands of times Dief may or may not have used that line. It doesn’t really matter. He used it once while I was there to hear it, and that’s all that is important.

Nor do I know what Dief would say this year, but perhaps he might tell us that the only way to get rail back on the political agenda in 2015 is to pass a law banning any electioneering except whistlestop campaigns from the back of a train, the way we did a century ago.

It would be a quiet campaign, at least, and in that way it would be proportionate to the lack of fresh insights in any of the major parties’ agricultural thinking.

The idea seems to be that there aren’t any new ideas worth exploring.

But here’s one, which starts with my own conviction that our railway dilemma is part of our even larger overall crisis 4 country-guide.ca

with our agricultural logistics and infrastructure.

The solution, I suspect, has got to involve farmers taking an ownership position in transportation, storage and diverse other segments of the market channel in diverse other commodities.

If that seems unrealistic, take a look at Commodity Bulk Handling Group (CBH), the largest co-operative in Australia, owned by 4,200 of that country’s farmers. As discussed by columnist Gerald Pilger in our December 2014 issue, CBH receives and stores 90 per cent of the grain produced in Western Australia at 197 receiving sites, and it has 100 per cent ownership of and operates all four of the region’s port terminals.

CBH also owns its own fleet of locomotives and rolling stock, it has created a joint venture with Hudson Shipping to create Australian Bulk Stevedoring, and it does much, much more besides.

This isn’t a new Canadian Wheat Board. This is a business with $2 billion in assets that strives not to control marketing, but to reduce costs.

Achieving similar success in Canada will take political vision and political leadership in order to equalize playing fields that have been shaped for today’s railways and grain companies.

Or we could have another non-event election, and everyone could get on their trains after. Are we getting it right? Let me know at tom.button@fbcpublishing.com.

Kevin Yaworsky (250) 869-5326 Email: kyaworsky@farmmedia.com Head Office: 1666 Dublin Ave., Winnipeg, MB R3H 0H1 Fax (204) 944-5562 (204) 944-5765 Advertising Services Co-ordinator: Sharon Komoski (204) 944-5758 Fax (204) 944-5562 Email: ads@fbcpublishing.com Designer: Jenelle Jensen Publisher: Lynda Tityk Email: lynda.tityk@fbcpublishing.com Associate Publisher/Editorial Director: John Morriss Email: john.morriss@fbcpublishing.com Production Director: Shawna Gibson Email: shawna@fbcpublishing.com Circulation Manager: Heather Anderson Email: heather@fbcpublishing.com President: Bob Willcox Glacier FarmMedia Email: bwillcox@farmmedia.com Contents of this publication are copyrighted and may be reproduced only with the permission of the editor. Country Guide, incorporating the Nor’West Farmer and Farm & Home, is published by Farm Business Communications. Head office: Winnipeg, Manitoba. Printed by Transcontinental LGMC. Country Guide is published 13 times per year by Farm Business Communications. Subscription rates in Canada — Farmer $41 for one year, $61 for 2 years, $87 for 3 years. (Prices include GST) U.S. subscription rate — $35 (U.S. funds). Subscription rate outside Canada and U.S. — $50 per year. Single copies: $3.50.

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Call toll-free 1-800-665-1362 or email: subscription@fbcpublishing.com U.S. subscribers call 1-204-944-5766 Country Guide is printed with linseed oil-based inks PRINTED IN CANADA Vol. 134 No. 8 Internet address: www.agcanada.com

ISSN 1915-8491 The editors and journalists who write, contribute and provide opinions to Country Guide and Farm Business Communications attempt to provide accurate and useful opinions, information and analysis. However, the editors, journalists, Country Guide and Farm Business Communications, cannot and do not guarantee the accuracy of the information contained in this publication and the editors as well as Country Guide and Farm Business Communications assume no responsibility for any actions or decisions taken by any reader for this publication based on any and all information provided.

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ISSN 0

THE ONTARIO AGROLOGIST A conversation with Kyle Maw P.Ag. and a Relationship Manager with Farm Credit Corporation based in Chatham, working with cash crop farmers as well as fruit, vegetable and livestock producers. Kyle is also a website & software manager specializing in agriculture and agribusiness program applications.

Q: Your professional life seems to

for. And I tell them that the OIA is a

prove the Ag industry mantra that

professional body within the Ontario

there are good jobs available in the

agricultural industry and that, as a

agricultural field for young, ambitious,

Professional Agrologist, I’m a member

qualified people. Can you give us an

of the Institute of Agrology.

overview of your working life to date?

Q: Are there any particular

Kyle: I joined FCC in 2008 shortly after

responses, from people you deal

graduating from the U of Guelph where

with, that come to mind?

I received a Bachelor of Commerce in

Kyle: I’ve had some people say

Agricultural Business. As a Relationship Manager I deal directly with farmers here in South-Western Ontario. My responsibilities include maintaining an existing portfolio of clients and to expand that portfolio through new business development. My clients cover a fairly broad spectrum of lending requirements from farm equipment infrastructure needs through to farmland expansion purchases.

Q: When did you become a member of the Ontario Institute of Agrologists?

they’ve seen the P.Ag. designation before but didn’t really know what it stood for, or the story behind it.

Generally though, people seem to

advocate for Professional Agology?

requirements, business ethics and

Kyle: Probably I’d have to say that I

professionalism within the Ag industry.

am. When I run across people in the

I also tell them that the Institute and

industry who were at university about

its members give me a good network

the same time as me, who aren’t

of contacts so that I can stay current

members of an Institute of Agrology,

with what’s going on in the Industry.

I’m not shy about asking them if they’ve

Q: You speak and correspond

looked into getting their accreditation.

across the country. Do you often

doing some student networking

come across Institutes of Agrology

events on campus and I liked what

members from other provinces in

they said about the organization. So

the course of doing business?

qualify as an accredited Professional Agrologist about a year or so later.

only help my career and endeavours.

a mandate based on academic

with agricultural industry people

graduation and then I went on to

designation was worthwhile, it could Q: Would you call yourself an

was still in university. The OIA was

designation pretty well right after

organization considered an Agrology

like that there is an organization with

Kyle: Well, I got interested while I

I got my Articling Agrology (A.Ag.)

if the higher level people within this

Kyle: Yes, it’s quite common to see the P.Ag. on business cards and letters I receive. I’ve also noticed that quite a few managers within Farm Credit have their Agrology accreditation —

Q: You have the P.Ag. designation

especially those in the prairie provinces.

on your business cards. Do you get

That’s actually one of the reasons I

questions about what it means?

was motivated to advance to the

Kyle: Yes, people have asked me

P.Ag. level shortly after I joined FCC.

about it, and what P.Ag. stands

From my standpoint I thought that

The Ontario Institute of Agrologists represents nearly 500 Professional (P.Ag.), Technical (T.Ag.), and Articling (A.Ag.) Agrologist members across Ontario’s diverse agricultural industry.

The OIA is based in Guelph. For a current listing of OIA Members, events and information go to the website shown below.

www.oia.on.ca

Machinery

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

Size always matters when it comes to tractors. But that doesn’t always mean bigger is better. In fact, smallest is often best, especially with the incredible technology, nimbleness and gutsy flexibility of today’s small tractors. Six different series of compact and utility tractors are included in this month’s MachineryGuide, with the manufacturers offering the same level of durability and reliability as in their more powerful models. Whether it’s moving hay bales or seed bags, these supposedly “small” tractors are big at heart, and can endure the toughest conditions around the yard.

Kubota M6 Series 

Kioti PX Series

Maximum versatility and ergonomic cab design are just two of the many advantages to be found with the new Kubota M6 series tractor.

Advanced control comes with the Intelli-Shift transmission and an eight-speed powershift with a three-speed high, mid and low range, giving you 24 gears in forward and reverse. When you choose the auto four-wheel-drive mode, the M6 tractor switches automatically to twowheel drive for travelling speeds above 20 km/h. The system will then re-engage to four-wheel-drive below 17 km/h. That means a smoother ride, plus fuel savings and reduced tire wear. Kubota has also redesigned the cab interior, with more room and rounded glass for a better view on the job at hand.

Built as much for comfort as for performance, Kioti brings its new PX9020 tractor to market as a small but capable workhorse. At 91.2 horsepower, the PX9020 boasts several key features, including hydrostatic power steering, rear differential lock, selectable ground speed power takeoff (PTO), dual remote hydraulic values and push-button four-wheel drive. It also comes with a rear PTO speed of 540 r.p.m. with an optional speed of 1,000 r.p.m. and a lift capacity of 4,850 pounds.

Big or small, operator comfort has also become an expectation, and Kioti meets and exceeds that with a deluxe temperature-controlled cab and a moon roof.

www.kioti.com

www.kubota.ca

6 country-guide.ca

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 John Deere 6R Series John Deere’s small-frame design shows the company is putting serious effort into the market segment, building machines capable of posting some strong performance numbers in a package that’s the right size for their owners. The 6110R produces 110 horsepower and offers control and comfort wrapped around manoeuvrability and handling. Deere has enhanced visibility while adding selective control valves and moving them further under the cab. The cab’s interior has also been updated, bringing control components up to the same standards inside the 7R, 8R and 9R series. Other features in the 6Rs are an IVT transmission, available premium lighting packages and increased service intervals, meaning less-frequent oil changes.

www.deere.com

McCormick X6 Series  The success of the X60 series mid-range tractor line is a tough act to follow, yet McCormick believes it has done just that with its new X6 series. One of its two models — the X6.420, rated at 111 horsepower — falls into our below-120-hp category, fuelled by a Betapower 4.5litre, four-cylinder diesel engine. The four-wheel-drive front axle is also standard, as is the fully locking front differential that engages simultaneously with the rear differentials for true four-wheel pulling capability.

A brand new four-post cab provides a more-modern look to the interior, with greater visibility and a whole new level of comfort.

www.mccormick.it

 New Holland T6 Series Manoeuvrability, adaptability, comfort and visibility all come together in New Holland’s versatile T6 series all-purpose tractors.

There’s only one model in the 120-hp-and-below class — the T6.145, rated at 116 horsepower, but it also comes with the option of the Auto Command continuously variable transmission. With its Tier 4B emissions standards and a 4.5-litre, four-cylinder engine design, you get better performance with maximum power. It can be ordered as “autoguidance ready” or with New Holland’s IntelliSteer “auto-guidance complete” system installed and ready to use. You can also opt for the 52.2-gallon fuel tank plus an auxiliary modular tank for 58.6-gallon capacity, enough for 12 hours of operation.

www.agriculture.newholland.com

Case IH Farmall 100A Series  The new Farmall 100A series tractor places two models from this series into the 120-horsepower-and-lower market, with a bold statement on value. With 110 and 120 horsepower units available, the 100A series simply helps you get the job done, from livestock operations to smaller-scale farms. Case IH also offers a redesigned cab, electronically controlled engine and a more economical drivetrain. The company says there are more standard features in this tractor than others in its class, including faster throttle response, quieter operation and increased fuel efficiency, plus a Tier 4B/Final-compliant engine design. Comfort is just as big in the smaller units, too, with a new cab featuring enhanced ergonomics, a new control panel and an available high-visibility roof panel.

www.caseih.com

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country-guide.ca 7

business

Farm VOTE

By Gord Gilmour, CG Associate Editor

t isn’t a unique story. In the late fall of 2010, Manitoba farmer Ian Wishart called a press conference to announce that he was heading into provincial politics, and that he had decided to seek the Progressive Conservative nomination for his Portage la Prairie constituency.

Until then, Wishart had been the well-regarded president of the Keystone Agricultural Producers (KAP), the province’s general farm organization, so when he announced he was throwing his hat in with the right-of-centre Conservatives, more than a few political observers were surprised.

After all, during his tenure with KAP, Wishart had seemed to spend most of his time and energy on the environment, not on business issues, and the Alternative Land Use Stewardship (ALUS) program was largely his brainchild. While many conservatives such as former prime minister Brian Mulroney have strong environmental track records, it’s often seen as an issue that’s more important to the lefties.

Wishart had even worked very closely with the NDP government of Gary Doer on the water stewardship file, steering the government away from a perceived anti-agriculture bias as they addressed nutrient loading into Lake Winnipeg.

In short, if you didn’t know him, you could be forgiven for predicting that if Wishart ever went stumping for votes, he wouldn’t be wearing Tory blue.

But that’s just what he did. Earlier this spring Wishart spoke at length with Country Guide in his office at the Manitoba legislative building, where he continues to serve as an MLA, most recently as critic for family services.

Wishart says it’s by design, not accident, that he and other members of the KAP executive were seen as apolitical during their time on the executive.

“I had actually been the president of my local PC constituency association years ago,” Wishart said. “It was very much a conscious decision to meet with, and work with, all parties. In our view it was the only way we could be a credible lobbying organization.”

It’s the nature of the work, Wishart said. As a farm leader, the job isn’t to chase your own political aspirations, nor the agenda of the party you may be personally predisposed toward. Instead, it’s to advocate on behalf of your industry and the interests of all its members.

8 country-guide.ca

Does it always pay to put your “X” beside the farmer’s name on the ballot?

Sometimes that middle ground isn’t so easy to find. “We spent a lot of time at KAP looking for consensus,” Wishart said. “It wasn’t easy, and sometimes it just wasn’t possible — we lost the cattle producers, for example.”

He was referring to the 2008 decision by the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association, which at the time said KAP and the cattle industry were too often finding themselves at odds, usually over positions on things like biofuels and corn tariffs that served to increase cattle producers’ cost of production.

But at times, it was even tough to keep grain groups under the one umbrella, especially with the controversy surrounding the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

When Wishart did decide it was time to move on and pursue other opportunities, he also decided that he wanted to do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt the organization he had been so closely associated with.

This took time and planning, and his first step was to leave KAP well ahead of the provincial election, which came roughly a year later.

“We talk about the need for politicians to have a cooling off period if they’re going to leave government and become a lobbyist,” Wishart said. “I think the same is true of lobbyists who want to become politicians — they need a transitional period too. I don’t think it would have been right for me to just turn around and say, ‘Now I’m a politician.’”

Within the organization, there were discussions about how to smooth the transition and ensure the government remained willing to take a meeting with KAP, after the group’s former president had announced he wanted to join the ranks of the opposition.

“We were actually quite lucky in how that worked out,” Wishart said. “As it happened one of our vice-presidents, Rob Brunel, was from St. Rose, and the agriculture minister at the time was Stan Struthers, who represents the Dauphin constituency, which also includes St. Rose. Rob, who’s a really competent and well-spoken guy, stepped up and became interim president, which I think really helped to keep that relationship going.”

In the end, that was the important thing, Wishart said. He and the other members of the executive needed to manage the transition carefully so they wouldn’t ruffle any feathers, and so they could protect the farm group’s long-standing public tradition of political impartiality.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

business

When he left the farm lobby to run for a Manitoba seat, Ian Wishart knew he could be hurting KAP’s farm members Divide and conquer The divisive nature of farm politics comes as no surprise to political scientist Grace Skogstad. A transplanted Albertan who grew up in an agricultural family, Skogstad now works at the University of Toronto where she has become a leading expert on the political discourse within agriculture and how it interfaces with the larger political issues.

Skogstad says a smooth, carefully planned transition like Wishart’s is more achievable at the provincial than the national level. The provincial groups have smaller tents to try to hold together, she points out, and while friction is always possible, it’s easier to avoid in smaller political units.

“The provincial groups have, by and large, done a pretty good job at remaining impartial,” Skogstad told Country Guide during a recent telephone discussion. “It’s at the federal level where it falls apart.”

At that federal level, the dynamic that emerges is of two competing sets of interests that can roughly be divided into whether the group’s core constituency is oriented towards domestic production, or toward exports. Politicians then go about busily playing these groups off against each other, or using them for their own purposes, Skogstad said. That can mean some groups become very closely tied with M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

certain parties, or that they’re driven into the arms of other parties because they’re rejected as being ideologically impure.

“The Canadian Wheat Board is a good example of this,” Skogstad said. “Were they a Liberal group, as they were often accused of being? Or was it that they found themselves continually attacked by the Conservatives and they found a friend in (Wascana Liberal MP) Ralph Goodale?”

A similar dynamic appears to be coalescing around supply management groups and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture which counts them as important members. This was highlighted at the time of the last federal election when the CFA’s highprofile president Bor Friesen, another Manitoba farmer, left to run for the Liberals.

Skogstad also pointed out the CWB and its supporters weren’t the only agricultural organizations to get sullied by this dynamic. On the other end of the spectrum, many of the grains groups became very closely allied first with the Reform party followed by the Conservative party, in no small part through an Alberta government strategy.

“The Alberta government supported, if not outright funded, some of the western grain groups Continued on page 10 country-guide.ca 9

business Continued from page 9

ELECT A FARMER It’s an old complaint that’s simply not supported by numbers. If you look at the numbers at all, farmers are actually over-represented in government.

It comes a surprise to many farmers across Canada, especially since it often feels like they’re up against the rest of the country, with a voice that gets drowned out by urbanites and non-farmers.

For the past 10 years, we’ve been electing 308 men and women to federal Parliament from constituencies from coast to coast to coast. At the same time, most popular estimates say that about two percent of the Canadian population are farmers (the exact number, according to the 2011 census, is 293,925 primary farm operators, or closer to one per cent of the population).

If farmers were represented at the two-per-cent rate, there would be six or seven sitting members of Parliament, or three or four, based on the census calculation.

Instead, there are 23 in the current 41st Parliament, according to a Parliament of Canada online database that tracks the previous occupations of our nation’s leaders (www.parl.gc.ca).

That includes 19 Conservatives, three Liberals and a lone New Democrat — which translates to almost 7.5 per cent of the House of Commons having farm roots.

To parse the numbers a bit further, let’s look as some other professions and how they stack up. Take teachers — both primary and secondary teachers. There are about 445,000 of them across the country, based on the same 2011 census secondary results, which is just over 1.3 per cent of the Canadian population. If they were represented at that level, there would be four teachers sitting in the House of Commons. Instead there are 25, or about eight per cent of the members, a very similar rate of overrepresentation.

How about the popular stereotype of the lawyer turned politician? That one hits the nail on the head, according to the numbers. The total number of lawyers practising is harder to track, but the best available estimate was from a Macleans article on the nation’s overabundance of legal eagles in Canada, which pegged it at about 90,000, or about a quarter of one per cent of the national population. There are 43 of them sitting in the current Parliament, or just under 14 per cent of the total.

What this likely reveals is that Canadians have a short list of occupations we feel comfortable electing to represent us. They tend to be white collar professionals or business people with a track record of public involvement.

Farmers also make the cut.

Less represented are the blue collar trades, or the service industry, perhaps most famously highlighted after the NDP’s “orange crush” surge in Quebec during the last election when the party’s unexpected winners were at times mocked for having nontraditional careers for parliamentarians, like bartender or interpretive guide.

This also seems to extend to other trades, for example electricians. There are about 86,000 licensed electricians in Canada, just marginally fewer than lawyers, again representing about a quarter of one per cent of the national population. Most people would probably agree it’s good honest work, and few can argue with the benefits of reliable electricity. However, there’s only one former electrician in the ranks of Parliament — the NDP’s Malcolm Allen, who also happens to be that party’s agriculture critic.

None of this really means that much of course. It’s just back-of-the-envelope figuring.

Having members of a profession participating at the legislative level is no guarantee their issues are being addressed — just ask a farmer.

So the question farmers should be asking is: If they’ve got good representation, are their issues being addressed adequately? And if not, why not?

23

farmers in the House of Commons That’s times farmers’ population rate

4

lawyers are times as likely to get in

6

10 country-guide.ca

because they wanted to put political pressure on the Wheat Board,” Skogstad said.

Make no mistake, political affiliation really can yield short-term benefits by opening doors and getting movement on important files when the political winds are blowing in the right direction.

But when the wind shifts, it can also quickly turn into a stumbling block.

After the last federal change in government, for example, it was an open secret that groups like the Canadian Federation of Agriculture were suddenly finding ministerial access to be a problem, while the newly formed Grain Growers of Canada seemed to find every door was open.

This is the real political danger of not playing nice, said Wishart.

“Governments change periodically,” he said. “It’s a very important part of our system of government. And if you’re seen as too closely aligned with one party or the other, that probably won’t work out too well for you.”

In fact, Wishart said nothing he’s seen during his time working as a member of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition has changed his thinking on this issue. He has encountered groups that do a very good job of working with everyone, and groups that are clearly also pushing a larger political agenda.

At times he’s even had fairly blunt discussions with some that have, in his view, crossed the line.

“I’ve sat down with them and told them, ‘I was a lobbyist’ and I’ve told them what group I represented,” Wishart said.

“Then I’ve told them they should be meeting and open to working with everyone.

Because if they’re not willing to, they need to understand that as the critic responsible for this portfolio, I am their advocate to my caucus. If they’re completely unwilling to work with me, it’s awfully hard for me to go back to my caucus and say ‘this is a good group and we should listen to them.’”

That doesn’t mean a good lobby group needs to pretend they believe something they don’t, or pander to any party’s agenda.

It just means they need to be open to the discussion, and to the possibility there is more common ground between most of us than a lot of true believers might think.

“I find, quite frequently, that if we get right down to it, our goals are the same,” Wishart said. “Where we disagree is on tactics, on what the right way to address the problem is. That’s a very worthwhile discussion to have.” CG M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

Greenbelt Fund Advertorial Series

Creating more capacity for local food As 100km Foods grows, so does the food being purchased from Ontario farms In 2008, 100km Foods was established to fill a basic need: farmers wanted access to city markets and chefs wanted food directly from Ontario and Greenbelt farms. Neither had the capability to do the driving in between.

Now, 100km Foods is one of the leading small distribution companies dealing exclusively with local products. It operates 12-months-a-year providing timely deliveries and supplying restaurants and large hotels across southern Ontario. This enterprise helps farmers to supply the increasing demand for local food in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and beyond.

With a desire for change, Grace Mandarano and Paul Sawtell left their jobs in the pharmaceutical industry. Through the launch of 100km Foods, Sawtell and Mandarano are championing the connection between where food comes from and how it is grown to create a strong, viable and fair local food economy that benefits consumers and farmers.

“I would never call eating local a trend,” says Mandarano. “It’s common sense. We hold power in knowing where our food comes from.”

The key to accessing local markets 100km Foods began delivering to restaurants in the GTA, exclusively in the downtown core. In 2013, the Greenbelt Fund invested with the goal of linking 100km Foods to a larger geographical area and more sources of local products.

“Our work is all about making sure Ontario and Greenbelt farmers and processors can access new and different markets,” says Kathy Macpherson, Vice President of the Greenbelt Fund.

As part of 100km Foods’ new infrastructure, they were able put four new refrigerator trucks on the road.

“When we put a new truck on the road, we’re often collecting food that wasn’t previously being sold off of farms,” says Mandarano. “Since the project began, we’ve doubled our capacity and increased the capacity on a number of different farms.”

According to Mandarano, 100km Foods has grown 20 to 40 per cent year over year.

“The Greenbelt Fund has been instrumental in funding projects that are aimed at building infrastructure to bring in local food,” says Mandarano.

Farmer recruitment Over the course of the project, 100km Foods has gained more than 66 new customers and brought more than 26 new Ontario and Greenbelt producers on board.

“We never used to be able to pick up from Grey County, but now we have a dedicated truck to do a farm route through that area and we’ve been able to access more than 20 farmers along the way.”

Paul Sawtell (back) and Grace Mandarano (front) unloading a refrigerator truck filled with local produce.

With more than 40 per cent of the Greenbelt’s nearly two million acres of protected land being productive farmland, the Greenbelt is a catalyst for strengthening the viability of farming–giving farmers the certainty to invest in their operations for the long-term.

A true partnership “Our farmers set their own prices,” explains Mandarano. “When we first started researching local food in Ontario we quickly realized that there were farmers in our own backyard who weren’t being paid fair wages for the hard work that they do.”

100km Foods has created a dedicated channel for farmers to access the market, not only in Toronto but across southern Ontario. Many restaurants can access local food that is grown in their region, but lack connections in other areas.

“The Greenbelt Fund is an organization that is dedicated to increasing the sale of local food and boosting economic growth in the province’s rural communities,” explains Mandarano. “The infrastructure they’ve funded has been the key. They’re funding action.”

With support from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) the Greenbelt Fund is investing in the agri-food system, not just in the Greenbelt, but across the province. It connects people throughout the food supply chain and makes investments at critical points to encourage more use of Ontario and Greenbelt-grown food.

The Greenbelt Fund’s goal is to create systemic change to permanently increase the amount of local food consumed in the province. For every dollar the Fund has invested, seven more dollars in Ontario food has been purchased.

GB1596 100km Foods#6_CGe_FPg.indd 1

2015-05-08 9:55 AM

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$12.8 billion net farm income

Six numbers

to chew on It isn’t as quiet as you might think on the home front. Yes, today’s farms seem stable, but the next evolutionary wave is gaining energy

By Maggie Van Camp, CG Associate Editor The spring rush is over, so now is the time to take a moment and reflect. As you gaze across fields flush with new growth, think about how much things have evolved in the last few years. Although that lone tree out there still leans to the east, and the sun still sets in the west, change has become the new norm. Today we need to understand, accommodate and capitalize on change.

Predicting the evolution of Canadian agriculture is never easy, mainly because the evolution of agriculture is driven by the accumulation of countless decisions by countless farmers in an industry so vast, so complex and so varied, it’s impossible to take every critical factor into account.

But here’s a start, in the form of six numbers that reflect some of the important national trends in the last few years.

Take them in, roll them around, and ask yourself: Where are these trends driving us?

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In 2009, total Canadian net farm income was $2.8 billion.

Four years later, it was $10 billion more, with Statistics Canada’s saying a $5.6-billion rise in the total value of farm-owned inventories from the year before accounted for almost all of the increase in total net income in 2013.

That inventory increase came from a record production of several field crops in Western Canada, coupled with greater onfarm storage capacity and a railway system that simply couldn’t keep up.

According to 2015 Canadian Agricultural Outlook produced

by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, aggregate net cash income for 2014 is expected to reach $14 billion, 10 per cent above the 2013 record.

Farm-level average net operating income is forecast to be $78,139, also an all-time high. Although grain and oilseed prices fell, strength in livestock prices and margins has buoyed average farm income.

Alberta fed cattle prices reached $202 on May 1, points out Jerry Klassen, a commodity market analyst in Winnipeg who maintains an interest in the family feedlot in southern Alberta. That is up 40 per cent over last year, while feeder cattle prices are up 40 to 50 per cent on average over the past year.

Lower energy values have resulted in larger disposable income for the average consumer, Klassen explains. Lower crude oil prices have also contributed to a weaker Canadian dollar, enhancing the competitive edge for Canadian cattle producers.

Finally, the North American economy is firing on all cylinders, causing a rise in wages, lower unemployment levels, greater disposable income and pre-recession-type consumer confidence levels that are causing a demand shift toward beef products.

Net operating income and wealth post all new highs

5.5

million acres of soybeans

Now the fourth largest crop in Canada, soybeans are projected to keep growing. In 2014 Canadian farmers planted a record 5.5 million acres, up nearly two million from 2011.

Notably, soybean acres in Western Canada have ballooned, with over one million acres in Manitoba alone. Better short-day bean varieties with herbicide tolerance have been the catalyst for the expanded acres, and this trend is expected to continue, thanks to more new varieties bred for Western Canada.

In response, a new national organization was formed last September replacing the Canadian Soybean Council and the Canadian Soybean Exporters Association. Members and directors of the board include representatives from each of the major soybean grower associations across Canada plus industry representing crushers, exporters and seed companies.

“Soy Canada will speak with a single voice for the industry and, working collectively, will develop and implement a strategic plan to grow the industry and maximize returns to all components of the value chain,” says newly hired executive director, Jim Everson.

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14.3% increase in average farmland values According to Farm Credit Canada’s (FCC) farmland report, the average value of Canadian farmland increased 14.3 per cent in 2014, following increases of 22.1 per cent in 2013 and 19.5 per cent in 2012. Average land values have increased every year since 1993.

FCC’s chief agricultural economist, J.P. Gervais, has been predicting a soft landing for farmland values since crop prices began moving closer to the long-term average, following abnormally high prices due to the 2008 U.S. drought.

Gervais doesn’t anticipate a collapse of farmland values, but he does see slower increases in the coming years. The most likely drivers of increased values are crop receipts and interest rates.

40%

The highest increase last year was in Saskatchewan at 18.7 per cent but this is slower than in 2013, when average value jumped a colossal 28.5 per cent following a 19.7 per cent jump in 2012.

However, farmland in Canada is not appreciating everywhere, with increases in the Maritimes being much slower.

Overall, average net worth per farm is expected to set new records of $2.0 million in 2014 and $2.1 million in 2015.

In agriculture, strong crop receipts have kept the debt-to-net-income ratio relatively flat for the decade. “It’s important to remember that even as farm debt is rising, land values continue to increase on average across Canada,” says Gervais. “Interest rates remain low, and asset value and farm size continue to grow.”

d rop in new combine sales

According to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), year-to-date sales of selfpropelled combines are very soft in Canada, dropping from 4,130 in March 2014 to 2,500 a year later. This big drop of 39.5 per cent follows a combine- and tractor-buying bump in October.

AEM, citing U.S. Department of Commerce data, sees similar 2014 trends around the world for all types of ag equipment. Exports of U.S.-made farm machinery ended 2014 down 29.2 per cent compared to 2013. Exports to Canada dropped 38.4 per cent.

All world regions recorded double-digit declines except Central America. Asia, Europe and Canada had the highest rates of decline.

AEM’s director of market intelligence Benjamin Duyck says the decline has continued into 2015. “We are currently experiencing a global ag downturn,” Duyck says. “The overall downturn is a combination of various factors, mainly economic, but some of it is also driven by legislation and issues regarding the strong dollar.”

1farmsinchanging 3 hands The 2015 Canadian Agricultural Outlook Survey, conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of a collection of ag companies, including Country Guide, found a third of the farmers they interviewed expect their farms to change ownership in the next few years, with 62 per cent going to family members or partners. Yet according to the survey, only 30 per cent of these farm owners were doing any formal succession planning to ensure a smooth transition to the next generation.

Statistics Canada pegs farm assets in Canada at $285 billion. With rough math, that means about $95 billion in assets will be switching hands in the next few years.

That’s the value of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s business empire, or M ay / june 2 0 1 5

how much Brookfield Property Partners, one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated owners, has invested in real estate assets.

Gwen Paddock, national director for agriculture for RBC (one of the partners in developing the survey), says it’s difficult to quantify the amount of assets that will be involved in some form of transition over the next few years. It’s also difficult to nail down the impact that those transfers will have on the industry. Many are private, or there can be a complicated mishmash of ownership.

To make the process smoother, Paddock suggests farmers start planning at least five years before their projected sell date, whether it’s a partial or full sale. To start, she recommends getting professional help, such as financial advisers and accountants. Also begin gathering useful background information.

Early in your planning process, also involve key family members or partners, especially those who may be taking over the farm.

5,668 + 16,600 Twitter followers

Two farmers, 2,000 miles apart, are shaping Canada’s e-farm future, with their combined 22,000 social media followers.

Andrew Campbell, a young dairy farmer from near Strathroy, Ont., has about 18,000 followers between Twitter and Instagram. “Twitter makes up the bulk of that — but I do post the pictures to Instagram as well,” he says. You can check out his website at www.thefreshair.ca.

Nurse and mother, Sarah Schultz is also a farm wife to Jay Schultz who grows about 6,000 acres of wheat, canola and yellow peas in south central, Alberta. She also has a blog www.nurselovesfarmer.com and is on Facebook at fb.com/NurseLovesFarmer.

Schultz says the payback for being part of agriculture on social media includes all the connections she has made with people from all over the world, plus being able to have questions answered within minutes. “As a farm wife and mom who spends the majority of my time at home, social media has been a great way to still be social and have that human connection that sometimes gets lost living in a rural area,” Schultz says.

The downside includes getting pulled into arguments, and finding out how easy it is to be misunderstood. It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to interpret someone’s tone on social media, she warns, and it’s far too easy to have your words taken out of context.

Schultz has learned to choose her words wisely, and to be kind and respectful. “It’s guaranteed that you won’t agree with everyone on everything, but we can at least respect each other’s differences,” says Schultz. “I also go by the rule: tweet as if Grandma is watching.”

Andrew Campbell knows the impact that negative feedback can have in the social media world. Earlier in the year, he achieved some notoriety when animal rights advocates targeted him and his livestock farming, yet he also received praise for how he handled being a lightning rod for activism. “It just shows the importance of opening up our industry,” says Campbell. “We do need to address the issues and conceptions that the majority of consumers have, so we can continue farming the way we know is best for our land and livestock rather than being told how to do it.” country-guide.ca 13

A M E - ma n a g eme n t

Reap the value of personality testing

By Susan Martin, MBA

nderstanding ourselves and others is one of the increasingly important skills needed to be effective in agribusiness organizations.

In order to harness the full potential of their organizations and to hit the financial, strategic and operational goals of their businesses, the best managers report that they need to know how to get the best from their people. For this reason, in addition to strategic human resources management in both CTEAM and CFAME, we use the MyersBriggs Typology Instrument. We ask participants to complete a self-report that looks deeply at their own personality preferences and how the differing ones of others might be better appreciated and managed.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument (MBTI) is one of the most widely used psychologicaltype tools. The information it provides helps people identify their natural styles (TYPE) in four areas.

These include: • The way people gain and use their energy (extravert/introvert); • The way they take in information or gather data (through their senses or the big picture); • The way people like to make decisions or come to closure (through logical analysis or the impact on people); • The way they like to organize their lives (through structure or open-endedness).

These four areas, when combined, give us insight into why we sometimes act the way we do, prefer to do things in a particular way, or are disturbed when others do things differently. It is as if we are each wearing our own set of “life lenses” through which each of us sees situations in our own way.

In the work world, our own TYPE and the different types of our co-workers can influence how we behave and what we consider important. While the MBTI describes only one aspect of human personality and by no means is meant to compartmentalize, this knowledge adds another “set of tools to the interpersonal tool box” when working with a wide variety of employees.

The value of self-understanding and how others are different becomes particularly powerful when applied in our work situations.

Knowing more about your MBTI TYPE can help dramatically in understanding differing communication styles. While some prefer frequent face-to-face interaction, communicating by talking, with detailed information provided in a structured format, others prefer written communication, conceptual overviews without detail and more open-ended approaches.

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Ensuring that communication is effective for these different styles results in fewer misunderstandings and minimizes conflict over perceived misinterpretations.

What people find motivating and rewarding in their work environments also varies, depending on their TYPE preferences. While some individuals are motivated by continuing feedback and specific suggestions, others are much more energized by a broad reinforcement only at the completion of a project.

Team development can be enhanced by a thorough understanding of the style preferences and gifts of team members. Ensuring that the talents and differing approaches are being used maximizes the value of each member. For example, ensuring that those with “big-picture” talents are also talking with those whose talent is in the details creates a better result than if either is ignored.

Work styles can be dramatically different but still effective when individuals understand TYPE. Depending on different profiles, the pace of work, the tolerance for interruptions, the balance between discussion and individual time and the need to accommodate different time management approaches as long as the work gets done can either be sources of conflict or can create environments in which people can work to their full potential. Sometimes managers use their preferred style even though it ignores utilizing the full talent of their employees, simply because they imagine their way is the only way.

Understanding our own leadership style, its strengths and how it might be perceived by others can dramatically increase our leadership ability. For example, a strong, aggressive leadership style can be effective for some workers, but for others it shuts down communication and useful discussion, can curtail individual initiative and cause passive reactions by those intimidated by that style.

Understanding how our style may affect others allows us the flexibility to modify our approach to obtain the best result from each employee.

Research repeatedly shows that teams composed of diverse personalities outperform those where the members are similar-type individuals. The insight that MBTI provides can ensure that those diverse styles mesh into an effective, productive and satisfying work environment. We have seen the positive business and personal improvements when our course participants adjust their management processes after engaging in the Myers-Briggs module. CG Susan Martin in an instructor in AME’s training courses (www.agrifoodtraining.com). m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

The building of healthy topsoil depends on us, and our future depends on building healthy topsoil.

The greatest challenge and opportunity facing agriculture.

Soil Regeneration Workshop How to Restore and Rebuild Soil Multi-Species Cover Crop Demonstrations

Dr. Christine Jones is an internationally renowned and highly respected groundcover and soils ecologist with a PhD in Soil Biochemistry. She has worked with farmers on four continents – farmers intent on regenerating tired soil. She demonstrates how to restore the elements that will bring new life back into soil, build organic matter, improve soil structure, increase water retention capacity and create fertile ground.

Dr. Jones has a wealth of experience working with innovative landholders to implement regenerative land management practices that enhance biodiversity, increase biological activity, sequester carbon, activate soil nutrient cycles, restore water balance, improve productivity and create new topsoil.

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Progressive Cover Crop Demonstration Plots – from single to multi-species cover crops Anne Verhallen, OMAFRA, Cover Crops Specialist

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Multi Species Cover Crop Soil Pit

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Soil Structure and Water Filtration Demonstrations

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Optimal Use of Manure on a Predominately No Till Farm

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Registration opens at 9 am. Program runs between 10 am and 3 pm.

Hewitt Creek Farms, Innisfil, near Barrie, Simcoe County $75 for 1st registrant, $25 for 2nd registrant. Bring your neighbour!

Registration includes lunch.

Register at www.ifao.com

business

The From Prairie farm to ocean port, our rail lines still shock the imagination with their engineering and bravado

By Gord Leathers

journey

t’s a trip that is so formidable, it weakened the knees of generations of politicians, entrepreneurs and engineers alike. Everybody could tell the northern Great Plains would be an ideal place for growing cereal crops, and they knew too that the world would love to eat what we grow, but getting those crops to port from places like Bashaw, Alta., Wolsely, Sask., or Dugald, Man., would mean a long haul over hundreds of miles of prairie and then across a wall of mountains.

Then Canada got on with the job, creating the rail system that in turn created our country, and that keeps creating the West today. If it too rarely gets called one of the wonders of the world, that only shows how poorly we understand it.

“It’s distance and volume,” explains Barry Prentice, professor of transportation at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business. Trucks can’t do it, at least on the required scale. Nor is there a St. Lawrence system or a Mississippi in the heart of the West.

Instead, it’s got to be rail.

The secret of the railway’s efficiency is the steel wheel riding on a steel rail that is

anchored into a deep roadbed that supports the mass of a fast-moving freight train. This wheel and rail combination allows the use of heavy, high-capacity cars that, in spite of their size, have low rolling friction.

It’s a technology that came of age in Victorian Europe, about the same time the first generation of farm families settled in Western Canada, when the sheer expanse of the new land demanded some kind of connection with the heartland to aid settlement and cultivation.

The solution was to build a railway from the resource-rich west to the mills and factories of the east. The stipulation was that it had to be a southern route, close to the border to encourage new settlers to build political and economic ties with Ottawa rather than the expansionist United States.

The first Canadian transcontinental railway was the Canadian Pacific, running its mainline across the Prairies from Winnipeg to Calgary and then over the mountains to Vancouver. The Canadian National followed, although it was actually an amalgamation of several existing railways cobbled together by the Canadian government into one transcontinental carrier.

The CN paralleled the CP west from

Above: These steel wheels riding on a steel rail explain why railways are so energy efficient. Friction is reduced because the actual point of contact is very rigid and very small. By contrast, a rubber tire deforms, so it has greater surface contact and a larger “flat spot,” losing energy at every rotation.

16 country-guide.ca

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

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Above: The first railway locomotives were steam engines, such as the G5 light Pacific type above, built in 1944 and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Among the last built before diesel, these represent the peak of conventional steam technology.

Right: Today’s diesel locomotive is, in fact, a diesel electric, running a generator with current fed to traction motors on the axle.

The electric field of the AC motors delivers superior wheel adhesion to the steel track, enhancing pulling power.

Winnipeg but they crossed outside of Portage la Prairie where the CP headed for Regina while the CN swung north to Saskatoon. They met again in Kamloops, B.C., before heading down the Thompson Valley to the Fraser and on to Vancouver.

Six by rail, or 280 by truck Over a century of development, railway technology would evolve from tiny steamers pulling a string of boxcars over light gauge rails to the high-power diesel locomotives hauling the 120-car-unit trains we see today.

Those fragile 80-pound rails also supercharged the whole grain handling system, starting with country elevators on sidings, a length of track for 25 to 100 cars, Prentice says. “One of the advantages of our system is that it doesn’t require much labour. We use a lot of electric motors and diesel to move things around.”

The first railways put grain in boxcars.

The boxcar was suitable for its time because it carried merchandise west while hauling grain east, running loaded in both directions.

As more and more towns were connected to each other by road, trucks gradually took over the lucrative merchandise haul. Incoming loads got lighter while outgoing loads of grain got heavier, so the railways responded with the covered hopper car, a dedicated car specialized for grain transport.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

“A typical hopper car carries 92 tons of product, or the equivalent of 2.5 Super B trucks, so a full train of 112 cars is equivalent to 280 Super B truck loads,” explains Mark Hemmes of Quorum Corporation.

“If that train is carried 1,000 miles to port it will have three or four crew sets, six to eight people altogether, while the 280 trucks will need 280 drivers.”

So a 112-car train vastly reduces the person hours required to haul that much grain over that much distance. In doing this, that freight train also delivers over three times the fuel efficiency with one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions, with all of this at less than half the cost of a trucking fleet with none of the potential highway congestion.

Once our hopper car is full, it’s spliced into a train, and a lash-up of two or more locomotives is coupled to the front.

How many locomotives?

The number of locomotives is based on the weight of the train and the gradient.

“The rule of thumb is to have a horsepower to tonnage ratio of about .80 to .90,” Hemmes says. “For example, if you have 100 cars with 92 tons of grain each, by the time you’ve added the weight of the cars plus the locomotives you have a train weighing in at 11,000 tons. Two loco-

motives at 5,000 horsepower each gives you 10,000 horsepower and a ratio of 0.9 horsepower per ton of train.”

In the days of the boxcar, trains were pulled by steam locomotives, big external combustion engines that burned wood, coal or bunker C oil to make steam. This high-pressure steam was fed into a frontmounted cylinder that pushed a piston that then turned the large drive wheels.

The old steamers were magnificent beasts. They were immensely powerful but difficult to operate. Their energy efficiency was very low and they drank huge quantities of water, a scarce resource in many parts of the prairies. Beginning in the 1950s, North American railroads retooled for the more efficient diesels, and they’ve been running those ever since.

“Today locomotives are, in fact, diesel electric,” Hemmes says. “The diesel engine turns a generator and this powers traction motors that are part of the locomotive’s axle system. A typical locomotive has six axles and traction motors. A typical train will have two locomotives for every 100 cars and each locomotive will have between 4,000 and 6,000 horsepower.”

The locomotives are coupled to the front of the train, and O-ring-sealed air pipes Continued on page 18 country-guide.ca 17

business Continued from page 17 are connected to the cars. The locomotive’s big air compressors start pumping air into the braking system, and once the reservoir tanks are up to pressure, the crew waits for a clear signal from the traffic control.

When the line is clear, the engineer notches up the throttle and the train sets off with a full load of grain headed west.

If it’s a CP drag, it’s headed for Vancouver by way of Calgary. If it’s CN, then it’s going by way of Edmonton. Once over the B.C. border from Jasper it will head to Vancouver via Blue River to Kamloops, or it may take the north line from Red Pass Junction to Prince Rupert.

Over Yellowhead The CPR has the older route, and the first surveyors in the region proposed to run the line through the Yellowhead Pass between Jasper and Mount Robson.

It was the easiest route with workable grades but the government at the time was adamant that the railway should follow a south route. Today’s Trans Canada Highway parallels the CPR through some of the most spectacular scenery in Canada but, for the railway, this means a more difficult route with punishing grades over three formidable obstacles.

“When you have traffic moving through an area with a fixed capacity, like a section of track through the mountains, it’s a bottleneck that they call a pinch point on the railway,” Prentice says. “The railways are very conscious of this and they’re continuously working on relieving them, but it’s futile effort in some respects. As soon as you relieve one pinch point, the cars move freely to the next one and things get backed up there. You can improve the system gradually over time but it will never be perfect because you’re always running from one bottleneck to the next.”

If our grain train is running on the CPR, it stops in Calgary where one or more additional locomotives are spliced into the middle of the train in preparation for the two major pinch points along the way. One is the climb over the Kicking Horse Pass and the other is the brutal heavy haul over Rogers Pass between Golden and Revelstoke, B.C. Our train leaves Calgary and follows the Bow River to Banff, where it starts a long climb through Lake Louise to the summit of the Kicking Horse Pass. Then it drops abruptly into the valley of the Kicking Horse River where the grades 18 country-guide.ca

An engineering tour-de-force, the Spiral Tunnels east of Field, B.C., are a way to drop a train close to 1,200 feet over a distance of about 11 miles. The original grade did a straight drop, too steep and too dangerous for safe railway operation, so the solution was to drill two corkscrew tunnels.

That made the trip down almost four miles longer but only half as steep. This tunnel is the lower tunnel, drilled through Mount Ogden, and the locomotives emerging are pulling the hopper cars over top. The higher tunnel is on the other side of the valley in Cathedral Mountain.

The engineering challenges are staggering… ragged mountains, roaring rivers, extreme cold, and avalanches measure in at around 2.2 per cent, i.e. for every 100 feet our westbound train moves forward, it drops two feet.

“It was worse than that before,” Prentice laughs. “Before the Spiral Tunnels were built they had a grade that was 4.5 per cent or something and they had a few runaway trains.”

The original Big Hill was a treacherous stretch that required all the skill the running crews could muster to keep a descending train under control. To solve the problem, the CPR had to lengthen the line and, in doing that they managed to reduce the gradient from the ferocious 4.5 per cent to a stiff but manageable 2.2 per cent. To do this, they drilled the two Spiral Tunnels, among the great engineering wonders of the railway world, just east of the town of Field, B.C. As our train enters the upper tunnel it begins a long left turn that takes it into the core of Cathedral Mountain. It continues the turn and follows a giant corkscrew path, still descending, until it pops out of the lower portal in a cloud of acrid brake-shoe smoke. At this point the engineer and conductor can actually look up and see the last of the train going the other way about 40 feet above them.

From there the train crosses the highway and does a right hand bend into the upper portal of the second tunnel drilled into Mount Ogden. From here the train rolls out of the tunnel, the diesels once again watching the last of the cars moving over top, and carries on through Field following the Kicking Horse River to Golden.

Railways often follow river courses because, in the mountains, one of the rivers will point to the summit of the pass.

Once our grain train leaves Golden, it parts company with the Kicking Horse River and runs along the Beaver River into Rogers Pass. This is the Selkirk Range with spectacular Alp-like mountains marked by sharp peaks, steep slopes and deep valleys.

The grades are steep, sitting around the 2.2 per cent mark, so again the going is slow.

Breathtaking Rogers Pass The original line actually climbed to the summit and crossed over the top of the pass. Nowadays, beside the highway on the western side of the summit, a series of huge stone bridge piers still stand. These piers supported a series of S-curve bridges that the old steam locomotives blasted over in order to crest the pass.

One of the old piers now lies on its side, knocked over by the careening snow packs that fall from the peaks, mute testimony to one of Nature’s formidable forces.

Still Rogers Pass vexed the company.

Those heavy grades required big power, and this was the territory of the Selkirk-type steam locomotives built by the CPR, the largest steamers operated in the British Empire, although the Americans had even bigger ones, giants such as the Continued on page 20 M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

Calling all farmers We need your help to tell a story that directly affects your livelihood.

As farmers we need all of the tools in our tool box, be they aspects of conventional, or organic production. The use of GMO technology is one of those tools and we need your help to protect it.

KNOW GMO the MOVIE will be “an uplifting discussion about food” and is going to be a world-class, science-based documentary designed to show consumers what the words genetically modified actually mean. It will demonstrate how biotechnology is contributing to global food security, decreasing disease and conserving land, all in a sustainable manner. Filming across North America has already begun.

If you care about how the story of agriculture is being told, we need your support to make this movie a reality. Please go to www.knowGMOtheMovie.com to learn more and to donate.

Robert Saik PAg, CAC Executive Producer

“Fear sells and is easy to believe.

We made a mistake in not telling agriculture’s story.

We assumed people understood what farmers did” lorie farrell

Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United

Donations are tax deductible through the Farm & Food Care Foundation (KNOW GMO MOVIE)

We need the help of farmers to tell the story. Please visit

www.knowGMOtheMovie.com to learn more and to donate.

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EMPOWERING FARMERS

Continued from page 18 Big Boys that hauled trains for the Union Pacific and the Great Northern’s Yellowstones that roamed the passes to the south.

Until the ’80s, westbound trains would stop at the helper station in Beavermouth, where another lash-up of six diesels would set shoulder and help push the trains over Rogers Pass, but projected increases in traffic prompted the CPR to drill another tunnel under the pass. Now, heavy westbound trains take the lower route through the nine-mile MacDonald Tunnel and then roll downhill along the Illecillewaet River to Revelstoke. From there it’s on through the Eagle Pass in the Monashees to Kamloops, where our train meets both the Thompson River and the CN line.

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July 21 – 23, 2015

15 min. NW of Saskatoon on Hwy. 16

Rogers Pass: A logistical bottleneck on the CPR is the fearsome climb up the eastern slope to the summit of Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Range. There’s a sustained grade of 2.2 per cent over a distance of 22 miles, which necessitates low speeds and reduced capacity. The initial solution was to keep a fleet of locomotives at Beavermouth as additional pushers. A westbound freight would stop and six SD40 diesels would be spliced in, and a long slow grind up to the summit requiring the brute force of up to 12 SD40 diesels would commence.

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In 1984 the Mount MacDonald Tunnel was drilled. The new route cut an additional 280 feet off the climb and reduced the eastern grade from 2.2 to a much more agreeable one per cent.

Joining forces with CP After Kamloops the CPR encounters its third major obstacle, one that it shares with the CN. Once again the railways follow the rivers, in this case the Thompson as it carves a deep channel through interior B.C. At Lytton, the Thompson flows into the Fraser, and the Fraser cuts its own deep gorge through the Coastal Range to Vancouver.

These precipitous trenches were the site of some of the most difficult railway construction in the world. Both lines cling to the sides. Sidings are few and far between.

Running trains in both directions faces tough limits, which has led to another of the wonders of the railway world, but this time, it’s a wonder of a different sort.

“The railways have entered into a co-production agreement,” Prentice says. “There’s no room to put in a double track in the Fraser Canyon so one railway takes all the eastbound trains and the other takes all the westbound trains, and then they move back onto their own tracks outside the canyon.”

At Napa, close to the town of Ashcroft, B.C., the two lines run side by side, and it’s here that they trade routes. All trains bound

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The Cisco Bridges: Nowhere is the challenge more evident than at the two bridges across the Fraser at Cisco Flats, where the CP crosses the Fraser and then goes right into a tunnel.

Tunnels and bridges are expensive so surveyors and engineers avoid them if they can. for Vancouver, whether they’re CN or CP, take to the CN line, while all eastbound trains come up the canyons on the CP before moving back onto their own tracks.

Our CP grain train moves through the crossover onto the CN mainline and runs the canyons on the CN side of the river past Hell’s Gate and Yale. It then rejoins the CP mainline in Mission City in the Fraser delta and moves on to the port elevator in Vancouver.

It’s here that the journey ends and the

train is unloaded in much the same way that farm trucks unload at the inland elevator. The car’s lower doors open over a collecting hopper and the grain pours out.

Then do it again The empty cars then head back east for another load, and the cycle starts all over again. The cycling time for an B:8.625” empty car arriving at an inland elevator T:8.125”and return empty to be filled, shipped again is about 14 days.

S:7”

That car cycle time has been coming down, thanks to longer train lengths of 50 to 100 cars and the hook and haul idea, which means the cars don’t have to come into a classification yard like Symington in Winnipeg.

Even so, to put this haul into perspective, the distance from Minneapolis to ports in New Orleans is around 1,200 miles as compared to a 1,400-hundred-mile run from Winnipeg to Vancouver.

Don’t forget the mountains that our trains face, though, or all the other obstacles. Ice and snow on the tracks make moving difficult, and the cold compromises the O-ring seals on the air braking systems, forcing the railways to run shorter trains below -25 C. Canada’s railways are vital for getting grain to customers all over the world but it’s not an easy job. Again, it’s all that land between the points where it’s grown and the points from which it’s shipped.

Says Prentice, “We’re a long distance from the water, and that’s the truth.” CG

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First-gen

farming Like other new farmers across Canada, Barrie and Merel Voth may not produce the commodities you’d expect, or farm at the scale you’d like, but they’re committed, brave, and very, very smart ow serious are Barrie and Merel Voth about their startup goat dairy venture? Serious enough that they wrote exactly two exit options into their farm lease agreement. Bankruptcy. Or death.

“Oh, but don’t write that!” says Merel.

In April last year, when they signed on the dotted line for their five-year lease agreement at Silver Creek, between Vernon and Salmon Arm, B.C., they tied themselves — and their landlords — as tightly as legally possible to the contract. And no wonder: Hillside Dreams Goat Dairy represents more than a 12-hour-a-day job, and more than every nickel of their savings. This start-up farm is the culmination of 16 years of Barrie’s dreaming and scheming, apprenticing and planning.

Admittedly, the Voths’ farming venture might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Even by agriculture’s fairly extreme standards, the hours at Hillside Dreams are long, physically demanding and labour intensive. But both Merel and Barrie agree: the joy found building this dream, the family time it affords, and the opportunity to work the land together make it worth all that effort and more.

The alarm clock rings at 3:30 a.m., seven days a week, 365 days a year. With more than 300 not-so-patient four-leggers in the barns across the laneway, hitting snooze isn’t even a possibility.

By 3:45 a.m., Barrie is forking hay, pouring grain, checking mamas, moving newborns, mixing bucket after bucket of formula. An hour later, he pulls a lever, making the gates of his high-tech milking parlour whoosh open.

With surprising orderliness, the first of 145 full-uddered milking goats separate themselves from a milling, maa-ing flock and slot themselves into milking position, ready to contribute their share towards the 250 litres Barrie collects at each milking time.

Though the incredibly early morning start can be tough, especially in the dark and cold of winter, the early hours allow intentional family downtime once the earliest chores are done.

Continued on page 24

The sacrifices are real, the work is long, but the joys, say Barrie and Merel Voth, are worth it all 22 country-guide.ca

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Photography: Shari Saysomsack • Dolcetto Designs

By Madeleine Baerg

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business

Finding balance, especially because they are proud parents to six-month-old baby Mattias, is a top priority.

“One of the best parts of farming is that we always have a fancy breakfast.

That’s when we spend quality family time together, just hanging out between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., doing some devotions, and taking Mattias for a walk,” says Barrie.

Granted, by breakfast Barrie will already be four hours into his work day.

By many people’s standards, that many hours of hard labour would equal a workday half done. Not on this farm.

After breakfast and family time, Barrie will still have another eight or more hours

instead we went in search of a place we could rent,” says Merel.

Finding a suitable place with the right kind of space and buildings, acceptable on-site accommodations, and reasonable proximity to the processing plant that buys their milk was a longshot.

“I drove around all these little farm roads, knocking on doors at any places that looked like they could maybe suit us.

I knocked on a lot of doors. In January, I drove by this place. It had the barns and, by chance, it had been a cow dairy until just three or four months before, so the place had potential,” says Barrie.

“Perfect!” I say. “Almost like it was meant to be?”

“Oh, so, so not perfect,” counters Merel.

equipment, ordered directly from Holland, was delayed and then delayed again resulting in Barrie hand-milking, up to 40 milking does (nanny goats) four hours per day for weeks.

The hottest days of the summer fell on “goat moving day”: Merel and Barrie managed to corral, load, and truck 180 worried goats, 40 goats at a time, the 50 km from their old farm (now sold to finance the business startup) to the new farm.

“I never had postpartum depression but I probably had some form of postfarm-starting depression. You just can’t catch a break some days,” says Merel.

That said, much more important to the Voths than the hard times and learn-

of barn-time to go before he tucks his four-legged ladies in for the night. And with baby Mattias strapped to her back for many of those hours, Merel will work right alongside.

Barrie has dairy farming in his blood but, because his dad gave up a (cow) dairy quota when he was two, Barrie can’t claim being born and raised in farming. Still, there’s little question that every part of him was born to be a farmer.

At 16, he got his first goats. By 22, he’d bought his first farm house, started breeding goats, and was already six years into a 16-year, self-made apprenticeship at cow and then goat dairies. Now, at 32, he’s weeks away from celebrating a huge milestone: the one-year anniversary of officially rolling their very own goat dairy into production.

“We realised we could afford to buy a farm or start a farm, not both. We could afford land but then we’d have no animals because land is so expensive. So, we decided to hold off on buying our own place for another five to 10 years and

The house needed serious work to be liveable; the barns needed even more. And so, in the midst of Merel’s last trimester of pregnancy, her last weeks of thesis completion towards a masters degree in social work, and the 14-, 16-, even 18-hour days of grinding, sawing, chiseling, and constructing to convert a former cow dairy into a goat-appropriate operation, Merel and Barrie lived in an RV. A rough RV. A rough RV with a leak in the roof right above their bed.

“It gave us a true appreciation for a flush toilet, a kitchen and a full-size bed with headroom,” says Merel. “It was a strength-building exercise for our marriage.”

And that’s just the start. In fact, if adversity builds strength, Barrie and Merel must sport some very big muscles.

On their first goat-buying trip east, they managed -35 C temperatures only to have their truck break down, leaving them wondering whether it was meant to be, says Merel.

Delivery of the high-tech milking

ing experiences have been the wins and many successes even in just this first year of operation.

“So far, I think we’ve been pretty lucky and we’ve made a lot of good decisions,” says Barrie. “Ask us in five years what we’d do different because we’re still in too much startup mode to be able to answer that now. But overall, I’m happy with the choices we’ve made along the way.”

Partially, that’s because the Voths know how to ask good questions of people who can provide good answers.

“It’s great to have a dream and a vision but you need certain people on your team: people to help us be realistic, like a great landlord, a mentor, a lawyer, an accountant, a good feed rep, a good vet. That way, it’s not just us on our own, and our decisions can be grounded in good economics, not just a love for goats,” says Barrie.

In the midst of farm startup last year, Barrie competed in a program called Launch-a-preneur, a competition supported by Okanagan University College,

Continued from page 22

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business the Shuswap Community Futures, and his town’s economic development society. The competition is exactly what it sounds like: a takeoff on popular TV show “The Dragon’s Den.” The competition strives to support and help establish innovative, local, brand-new entrepreneurs. The competition connected Merel and Barrie with a business mentor who has since become an invaluable resource.

“You can say you want to milk this many goats, but how much does it cost to keep each goat per day? Where is that going to take us in five years? That’s what our business mentor helps us with. She’s crazy about numbers, but in such a good way,” says Barrie. “We want to grow — I’m hoping to be milking 250 goats by the

fall next year — but we need to be growing using good economics.”

One person who hopes to take a slightly more backseat role on the farm is Merel. When her maternity leave is over in November, she plans to return to full-time social work at the local hospital.

By then, they hope to have hired a parttime employee for the farm. But for now, Merel is a hands-on, heart-in part of this team, moving goats, cleaning machines, lugging pails of milk replacer formula to hungry goat kids.

“The reality is, I’ve never wanted to be a farmer’s wife. That was never the dream,” she says with disarming honesty. “There are a lot of ways to support this farm’s success. For now, that means I’m here; later it’ll

mean I’m contributing to keeping us going by going back to off-farm work.”

Back in July last year, B.C.’s Agriculture Minister Norm Letnick went for a drive along a quiet country road, looking to chat with a farmer or two along his meandering way. By chance, he pulled over beside a faded red, quintessentially “farmy” barn, deceptively quiet in the mid-morning sun. There, he met a couple who in words and work ethic prove that agriculture has a bright future.

“He wanted to talk farming: to hear about what we’re doing and to find out about our plans for the future,” Barrie says. “We told him we’re planning to be in this for the long haul, one April kidding season at a time.” CG

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business

Save the farmer, save the farmland

10 years later, was setting up the Ontario’s Greenbelt

By Lois Harris worth the pain? More farmers are saying yes apidly rising populations, sprawling cities, shrinking farmland, and the feared effects of climate change prompted the Ontario government to create its Greenbelt around Toronto 10 years ago, with the goal of protecting some of the nation’s top agricultural land from development and fragmentation.

After a decade, it seems it may be working.

The greenbelt approach to land use planning has garnered mostly cheers — but some jeers too — from municipalities, environmentalists, planners, developers, farmers, academics and others. The plan’s future is currently being discussed by all of them under a comprehensive review with many, sometimes conflicting, ideas being offered up about its legacy and impact, and where it should go from here.

“ It won’t be there by accident,” says Caldwell. “There have to be intentional policies to support agriculture.”

At stake is 1.8 million acres of highly productive farmland, natural treasures, and environmentally sensitive ecosystems right beside some of the most densely populated land in the country. The Greenbelt encircles what is called the Greater Golden Horseshoe, home to more than nine million people (i.e. a quarter of Canada’s population) including the cities of Hamilton, Toronto and Oshawa.

To farmer Jason Verkaik, however, the perspective is exactly wrong.

“We should have greenbelted the whole province generations ago and put up the cities and towns around the protected area,” says Verkaik, who grows mostly carrots, onions and beets on 220 acres of the Holland Marsh and who is president of the Ontario 26 country-guide.ca

Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. The Holland Marsh, north of Toronto, is part of the Greenbelt, and its rich soil makes it a key producer of vegetable crops.

While Verkaik knows his idea is no longer a real option, he’s not anti-city. He is a progressive farmer — he tries new vegetable varieties, is plugged into the latest muck crop research, and appreciates his urban customers. He says things like “farmers feed cities, but farmers also need cities.”

But Verkaik draws the line at letting urban people decide policy for farmers because he feels non-farmers don’t have a full perspective of all the issues. He recalls, for instance, attending one of the province’s stakeholder organization meetings in March, and emerging with a clear take-home. “Some people have pretty intense agendas,” Verkaik says. “Not always do they balance that out with people’s need to eat.”

Still, Verkaik stuck to his message at the meeting.

If you want to protect farmland, he told everyone who would listen, you have to protect the farmer and his business.

“We have to have a system in which the next generation wants to continue the business of farming as a great way of life that’s good for the world, where you can make a profit at it and have some security,” Verkaik says.

Many of the academics and non-profit organizations who have studied the Greenbelt agree with Verkaik.

In 2013, Wayne Caldwell, the University of Guelph’s director of its School of Environmental Design and Rural Development published a study about the Greenbelt called Possibility Grows Here.

He feels that farmers’ needs and concerns must be more clearly on the table in the Greenbelt Plan.

“If agriculture is to be there, it won’t be there by accident — there have to be intentional policies to support agriculture — both nationally and provincially, and in terms of economics and land use,” Caldwell says. “There’s a need for a vision to clearly state what we want agriculture to be like in 20 or 30 years, and policies to adequately support it.”

The Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP) also agrees. As its 2010 study that M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

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covered the Greenbelt in an international context says: “Protecting the Greenbelt’s valuable agricultural land base from loss and fragmentation needs to be complemented with measures to ensure the continued economic viability of near-urban agriculture. Municipalities and the provincial government should collaborate with local agricultural action committees and others to develop and implement supportive policies, including expansion of markets for locally grown foods and other more direct farm-to-consumer mechanisms, diversification of on-farm activities, and strengthening of farming capacities.”

The CIELAP study compared Ontario’s plan with other greenbelts in Denmark, England, Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and the U.S. Ontario’s version, while being the youngest, was also the most effective, the report says. It concludes, “Compared to other greenbelts around the world, this Greenbelt is underpinned by one of the strongest legal frameworks, impressive political commitment, a clear diversity of benefits, enthusiastic community organizations, and a supportive public.”

When asked what it is doing for farmM ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

ers, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH), which is conducting the current review, says the province “has a wide range of economic supports, programs and resources to support the agri-food sector.”

MMAH says the early feedback from the farming community includes support for several key planks, such as strengthening agricultural land protection, providing flexibility for on-farm economic activities, streamlining implementation and approval processes that affect farming, and supporting farmers.

Some of the support that farmers have received has come in the form of grants from the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation and later the Greenbelt Fund.

The foundation, created in 2005 shortly after the Greenbelt legislation was passed, has put nearly $36.7 million into farming, environmental, tourism and other projects in the area. The Holland Marsh Growers’ Association was set up in 2008 with $400,000 from the foundation.

The Greenbelt Fund, started in 2010, helps businesses and organizations all across the province. Between 2010 and 2014, it invested $7.9 million in local

food-boosting projects — about 80 per cent in the form of grants. The organization says that for every $1 it invests, local food sales increase by $7.

The fund also sponsors Ontariofresh. ca, an online business connector that puts farmers and customers together.

While there is much to recommend the Greenbelt Plan, there are also some downsides, including the vast array of regulations and legislation that affect and overlap it.

The current province-wide review is called “co-ordinated” because it includes not only the Greenbelt, but also the Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, the Niagara Escarpment Plan and the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan. The government set up a series of public consultations around the region to garner input into the plans’ future.

Most participants at the Caledon Continued on page 28 country-guide.ca 27

business Continued from page 27 Town Hall meeting in late March agreed that it was wise to look at the four plans together. But some questioned why there had not been better co-ordination in the first place, and asked if there could be more consolidation coming out of the talks.

With 78 per cent of his municipality in the Greenbelt, Caledon mayor Allan Thompson expressed his frustration as a municipal leader trying to help farmers and businesses with all the rules: “We need one set of policies for agriculture, and one set for businesses and small communities,” he said after the initial presentation. “I don’t have a comfort with what you’re showing here — are you bringing this all together?”

Thompson pointed out that a Greater Toronto Area Agricultural Action Plan already existed and it covered the entire area, from Durham Region to Niagara. That plan was published around the same time the Greenbelt legislation was passed in 2005, and was supported by the federal and provincial governments, the Golden Horseshoe municipalities, and all the local federations of agriculture. It offered recommendations related to economic development, education, marketing, land use policy, and accountability and responsibility.

Over and above the four plans being reviewed, the Planning Act and Provincial Policy Statement (PPS) set the basic ground rules and directions for land use planning in Ontario. In addition, there are no fewer than 18 other laws, strategies, plans and guidelines that affect what happens in the area.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing says that changes made to the PPS in 2014 provided added flexibility for on-farm economic activities. It also says that the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is developing a “Farms Forever” program to complement steps already taken to better protect farmland and to support the growth of the agri-food sector.

Keith Currie, vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) was also at the Caledon meeting as part of the panel heading up the province-wide review. Two of the six panel members represent farm groups. Former Toronto mayor David Crombie chairs the panel, and Debbie Zimmerman, CEO of the Grape Growers of Ontario, is the other farm representative.

Currie says that while the OFA was initially against the Greenbelt legislation, in his words, “time heals, and the Greenbelt is not going away.”

The OFA is Canada’s largest farm organization, with 37,000 members. In its December 2004 submission on the draft Greenbelt Plan, it said the province could not protect a greenbelt without providing for the economic viability of farming, and that it mustn’t impose a one-size-fits-all approach to a diverse region.

There were concerns about making sure everybody knew that lands in the Greenbelt were privately owned, but that since environmental and drinking water protections are a public benefit, everybody should pay for the work farmers do in this regard.

28 country-guide.ca

Currie pointed out that some concerns have persisted including the “leapfrogging” effect that the Greenbelt has produced, with urban sprawl stopping at the city limits, but picking up again on the other side of the restricted area.

“There are certain unintended consequences that have happened over the years, and leapfrogging is one,” Currie says.

Currie thinks that some of the confusion could be taken out of the entire process by maintaining what is unique to each of the four plans, and referring their common aspects to the overarching Provincial Planning Statement.

Currie also thinks that the size of the Greenbelt should not be expanded until some of the more contentious aspects of the plan are fixed. He, too, agrees with the concept of protecting not just the land, but also the farmers, which extends to supports like good transportation routes and available suppliers.

One of the biggest concerns in 2005 was the possibility that agricultural land values inside the protected Greenbelt would plummet — something that would be confirmed, somewhat, by research.

A study from the University of Guelph published in 2010 found that the value of land under immediate development pressure (within five kilometres of the Greater Toronto Area) fell by about 24 per cent or $3,000 an acre as a result of the Greenbelt legislation. The agricultural land between five and 40 kilometres of the cities showed no drop in value.

One of the main goals of the Greenbelt Plan is to “prevent the loss and fragmentation of agricultural land” — something it has not yet achieved. In fact, the current review’s discussion paper says, “Between 2006 and 2011, the region as a whole lost 4.4 per cent of its total farmland area — just over 160,000 acres (65,000 hectares) — an area larger than the City of Toronto.”

Part of the problem, however, may be the grandfathering of land deals that were approved prior to the legislation taking effect.

“The land counts as agricultural until it is taken out of production,” says Wayne Caldwell. “It could be years between the purchase and actually doing anything other than farming on the land.”

Caldwell is currently looking into official plan amendments and anticipates that some approvals were granted decades ago and don’t reflect current planning practices.

“It doesn’t mean the Greenbelt Plan isn’t working,” Caldwell says.

Where the future takes the Greenbelt is in the hands of the many residents, farmers, environmentalists, organizations, experts and others who are weighing in at the 16 regional town hall meetings.

Written submissions are also being received via the Environmental Bill of Rights registry and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, with a draft document that will be submitted to provincial government in the fall. CG M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

™

EmpOwEring FarmErS  Ag in Motion brings innovation to the field

All fArmers know decisions are made in the field. Imagine a place, an event, created to empower farmers by providing the information they need to make these important decisions. A place where they can see the latest equipment in action, in the field – operating in the same environment it’s made for. A place where farmers can see multiple varieties of live crop plots growing side by side in the field.

This summer, such a place will exist. Introducing Ag in motion, Western Canada’s newest and only outdoor farm expo. Debuting July 21 to 23, on a half-section (320 acres) near Saskatoon, SK, it’s the only show that provides an outdoor venue for progressive farmers in Western Canada that want to see and experience the latest agricultural innovation, all in one place. Ag in motion will feature field equipment demonstrations, live crop plots and interactive exhibits such as “ride and drives” and smaller equipment demos.

“Ag in motion will offer farmers a unique opportunity to compare crop plots and machinery, in action, and ultimately help them make decisions about the best products for their operations,” says Show Director Rob O’Connor. “There’s nowhere else in Western Canada where farmers can actually see multiple pieces of farm equipment in operation, take a test drive, or compare different crop varieties all in one place.”

What does an outdoor show look like?

The Ag in motion team brings together the expertise of seasoned farm show organizers. The Expo is operated by Glacier FarmMedia, who owns Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, the country’s largest outdoor farm show held annually near Woodstock, Ontario. Also part of Glacier FarmMedia are Western Producer, Manitoba Cooperator, Grainews, Country Guide, Canadian Cattlemen, Alberta Farmer Express and AgDealer. The team knows what’s involved in delivering an outdoor show, and the potential such a venue provides.

Now in its 22nd year, Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show delivers 750 exhibitors and 42,000 visitors each year. Most attendees come to

see the newest technologies in agriculture. Its success is based on the fact that active farmers attend to do business – make decisions – and the show is dedicated solely to agricultural products, equipment and services.

Ag in motion is applying the same model and will become a must-see event by showcasing cutting-edge agricultural advancements that empower Canadian farmers to help meet their goals in producing high quality, safe food in a competitive marketplace.

To learn more about how an outdoor show looks and operates, view the videos on the Ag in motion website, www.aginmotion.ca.

Live Demos and Interactive Exhibits The number of Ag in motion exhibitors is growing steadily each week and includes seed and crop protection companies, field equipment and livestock handling manufacturers, financial services, nutrition, baling products, tires, fertilizers and much more.

SOmETHing nEw iS in THE FiEld. ViSiT ag in mOTiOn THiS SUmmEr - JUlY 21-23 For more information about Ag in Motion please call toll free: (800) 563-5441 or email: info@aginmotion.ca www.facebook.com/AginMotion

SEE Technology

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@AginMotion

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When organic isn’t enough Their consumers don’t just want organic, says Martin de Groot. They want animal welfare, cow comfort, energy self-sufficiency… and they want to see it all in action

By Helen Lammers-Helps

ith the milk from their 60-cow, mostly Holstein herd, Martin de Groot, his wife Ineke Booy and their family make their Mapleton’s Organic line of ice creams and fresh and frozen yoghurts in their on-farm dairy at Moorefield, Ont., shipping their winter surplus through Harmony Organic Dairy Products.

What they sell is much more, however, including a way of farming that has become a top priority for their customers, coupled with a policy of transparency that lets those customers roam the farm at will.

But that doesn’t mean he’s inefficient.

Two years ago when de Groot built a new barn, for instance, he chose a Lely robotic milking system for maximum cow comfort. “With a voluntary milking system, the cow can get milked when she wants to… most of them choose to be milked every six to seven hours,” he explains.

Yet it also means he can capture reams of data to help his herd management, making it easier to track heat cycles and mastitis, for example. And after 35 years, de Groot himself is freed from milking, so he can allocate his time where it pays the most.

Photography: david charlesworth

Becoming customer focused doesn’t have to mean you sacrifice efficiency, de Groote says

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De Groot’s cows do seem the epitome of relaxation as they chew their cuds while lounging on the compost bedding pack in the free-stall barn. But that bedding not only boosts cow comfort, it boost efficiency too, generating heat from the composting process to keep the barn warm in winter, explains de Groot.

Although the compost bedding pack isn’t common in Canada, it’s popular in Europe where there is more concern about greenhouse gas emissions, says de

Groot. The aerobic composting process ties up the nutrients and prevents greenhouse gases from forming, which also means there is minimal smell.

Another co-comfort feature of the barn is the flexible feeding fence. The plastic uprights move with the cows allowing for access to the feed while preventing neck abrasions.

Cows also have access to a Luna Lely cow brush which allows them to get a good back scratch. They use it several

times a day, making for a happier, healthier, more productive herd, says de Groot.

A Ventec Polymat G3 insulated curtain shields the cows from adverse weather but gives the cows a lot of natural light year-round. When the weather is good, the cows have access to pasture.

Signs in the barn explain to visitors the various features that optimize cow comfort, and a glass viewing area allows visitors to watch the cows being milked.

Mapleton’s Organic has a diversified marketing strategy. De Groot sells their ice cream and frozen yoghurt nationally and through stores in Toronto such as Whole Foods, Fiesta Farms, The Big Carrot, and some Sobey’s stores as well as through many smaller stores in Ontario such as Pfenning’s Organic in St. Agatha and Fiddleheads in Kitchener and Cambridge. Ice cream cones are sold at local shows and festivals such as Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock and at the Hillside Continued on page 32

Grow informed.

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business Continued from page 31 Music Festival in Guelph. More recently, Mapleton’s Organic has also begun selling soft-serve frozen yoghurt through ice cream chains.

Ideally, de Groot would like to sell all of his products in Ontario to cut down on shipping.

In 2005 he built an on-farm store and café to attract urbanites on their way to their Lake Huron cottages, and now in summer the store is very busy on Friday nights with cottagers stocking up for the weekend and stopping on Sunday nights on their return home. The store is ideally located at about the halfway point for cottagers, and also sells lunches and meat from the other animals they raise on the farm.

In addition to the retail outlet, Mapleton’s Organic has a small demonstration barn with an assortment of animals, a crop demonstration area and a maze.

“The little demo barn was the best investment,” says de Groot. “People love it. The children go to the barn first and then to the store,” he says.

Mapleton’s Organic also tours up to 1,500 school children through their barns every year.

Originally, de Groot sold his organic milk to Organic Meadows, a co-operative organic milk dairy, but left the co-op in 2000 to build his ice cream plant.

The biggest challenge, he says, has been marketing. It was slow in the beginning and the ice cream side of the business lost money for the first few years.

“Nothing comes overnight but if you believe in it and have perseverance, it will come,” he now says.

In keeping with the farm’s commitment to sustainability, wastewater from the dairy is used to heat the farm store and office through in-floor heating, and solar panels were installed on the barn roof this past March, making Mapleton’s Organic a net energy producer.

Coming of age on a dairy farm in the Netherlands in the 1960s, de Groot says his original plan was to help the world’s poor. He graduated from university with a degree in tropical animal husbandry and worked in countries including Ghana and Indonesia. Meanwhile, Booy’s parents had moved to Canada and purchased the dairy farm at Moorefield with the plan for her two brothers to take over. When the boys changed their minds, her parents asked de Groot and Booy if they wanted to take over.

32 country-guide.ca

Organic initially hurt their bottom line, de Groote admits.

Now, organic adds to it De Groot said it seemed like a good opportunity and in 1980 they settled on the farm where they raised four children.

De Groot says the neighbours were very helpful as he learned to farm in Canada and he appreciates how welcoming Canada is to immigrants of all ethnicities.

Although de Groot had some experience with organic farming in the Netherlands, he hadn’t planned to farm organically. It was Booy who became concerned about conventional agriculture’s impact on the environment. Although he was initially skeptical, after meeting some successful Ontario organic farmers, de Groot became convinced it could work.

While health and sustainability helped the plan make sense, de Groot also embraced the the idea of selling real food to real people. “I am a food producer, not a commodity producer,” he says.

De Groot grows all of his own feed on his 450 acres, all of which is certified organic. The transition to organic was hard, admits de Groot. It took time for soils to adjust and he took a hit financially at first, and there was also an impact on their social life.

Today he has a new social network of organic farmers and customers, and in

summer, they host Fridays on the Farm with people gathering for food, fun and a sense of community.

De Groot has eight full-time employees including his daughter, Arwa, the farm’s herdsperson for the past two and a half years. In the summer they employ several summer students and also take on several WOOFers, volunteers who want to experience the organic lifestyle through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms program.

Mapleton’s Organic sells 400,000 litres of ice cream and frozen yoghurt and 100,000 litres of fresh yoghurt each year. They sell nine flavours of ice cream wholesale but even more flavours — some of them seasonal — are sold direct to customers.

Flavours include ginger, lavender and maple, with seasonal flavours including dandelion in the spring, pumpkin in the fall and candy cane at Christmas.

De Groot sees more opportunities for farmers to produce what consumers want.

A quarter of consumers say they want to know more about where their food is produced, he points out. And, de Groot adds, they’re willing to pay for “a good story and to have faith in the product.” CG M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

Irish forage specialist brings research expertise to Canada

By Duncan Morrison — Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association

a NSERC visiting post-doctoral fellowship at the Lethbridge Research Centre with Dr.’s Karen Beauchemin and Tim McAllister. The opportunity to apply for a position in the U of M’s Department of Animal Science arose in late 2012.

“Manitoba has a strong agricultural sector and a well-respected faculty of agriculture at the University of Manitoba,” says McGeough. “The position involves systems-based research in which I had particular interest.”

Emma McGeough’s Irish eyes were likely smiling indeed on that day back in 2010.

As a recently successful PhD candidate for her doctoral thesis on the use of ensiled forages for finishing beef cattle and effects on methane production and animal performance at University College Dublin and Teagasc Animal & Grassland Research and Innovation Centre in Ireland, McGeough came upon the opportunity to pursue her interests in forage, grassland and livestock systems research in Prairie Canada.

“I grew up on a mixed beef, dairy and poultry farm in Ireland and so my interest in cattle, nutrition and forages stemmed from there,” says McGeough, who now spends her days as an assistant professor, Sustainable Grasslands/Livestock Production Systems in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Manitoba.

While the university has been her home base for two years and a bit, McGeough started her Canadian journey in Lethbridge, Alberta where she completed

CANADIAN FORAGE & GRASSLAND ASSOCIATION www.canadianfga.ca Ph: 780-430-3020

McGeough has seen some similarities in livestock and forages between her homeland and her new home.

And — as one might predict — some obvious differences.

“There are many similarities in terms of the type of livestock and the extensive use of pasture that exist between the two regions with the most notable difference being in terms of the climate,” she explains.

“Ireland has a much more temperate climate and does not face the same winter challenges, namely the extreme cold and snow. Thus winter hardiness of forages is an important factor here.”

and myself and Dr. Tim McAllister and Dr. Karen Beauchemin at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), Lethbridge Research Centre in Alberta,” she says.

“We are taking a holistic approach to calculate how improvements in the efficiency of beef production in Canada over the past 30 years have impacted the environmental footprint of beef.”

McGeough says the second study is the evaluation of perennial and annual forages for stockpile grazing of beef cows in late fall/early winter, a project between several researchers at the U of M, Dr. Paul Jefferson (Western Beef Development Centre), Dr. Bruce Coulman (University of Saskatchewan), Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Development and Manitoba Beef Producers that aims to provide new knowledge on stockpiled grazing to extend the grazing season.

When not teaching the agricultural minds of the future in the classrooms and study halls of the U of M, McGeough has been involved in a number of research projects.

Two of these studies are funded by the Beef Cattle Research Council and are national in scope with outcomes that will be applicable to producers across Canada.

“We have five sites across Manitoba and Saskatchewan which will allow us to assess the suitability of forages for extended grazing under a range of growing conditions including soil type, topography, and precipitation,” says McGeough. “Through consultation with producers and other stakeholders via an industry-led steering committee the project aims to provide Prairie producers with information that will allow cattle to remain on pasture longer and reduce the economic and environmental cost of raising cattle. Both of these projects will be completed by 2018.”

“Determining the environmental footprint of beef production in Canada is a collaborative project between the U of M’s Dr. Kim Ominski, Dr. Getahun Gizaw

McGeough is also excited to be a part of the new Beef Cattle Research Council New Researcher Mentorship Program launched in the summer of 2014.

business

Digital Marketing 101 In this last column of our value-added series, we look at how social media can boost your value-add project

By Helen Lammers-Helps

nyone can tell you (in fact, they probably already have, more than once) that the Internet is too powerful a tool to ignore for marketing your valueadded products. But exactly how can you harness its potential to reach your own goals?

When creating an online presence, Nigel Gordijk, owner of Common Sense Design in New Hamburg, Ont., aims to develop a website using a content management system which allows his clients to update it themselves.

This way, the client can keep it relevant without the added expense of going back to the website designer for changes every time, explains Gordijk, who specializes in marketing for small and medium businesses, many of them agricultural.

Gordijk also recommends you develop a conversational tone in your writing that is more friendly and engaging than corporate-speak. “Just imagine you are speaking to the person in front of you,” he advises.

People do business with people, Gordijk emphasizes, so he recommends farmers profile the people involved in making the product. “It gives a genuine sense of the unique character and personality,” he says. People buy at supermarkets for the convenience, but they buy direct from the producer for the farm connection, so include information on the care and attention to detail that goes into the product. Many consumers appreciate the labour of love involved in farming, says Gordijk.

Testimonials by satisfied customers are very effective too, Gordijk adds. “Third-party feedback always has more credibility than a sales pitch. After all, these are people who have given you their money.”

If you are actively involved in your community, celebrate this on your farm website, says Gordijk.

“This creates a sense of goodwill and encourages others to participate as well,” he says.

Don’t forget to let people know how to reach you, especially including a good map. Gordijk says you can add a vicinity search engine to a website so people on the go can find you.

On the technical side, make sure your website works with different-size screens, including smart34 country-guide.ca

phones. If your customers are out driving around and decide they want to pick up some farm-fresh strawberries, make sure they can find you.

And remember that your website is never done, adds Gordijk. “Launch with the basic information and then build on it over time,” he says.

Cindy Wilhelm, owner of Dragonfly Garden Farm in Chatsworth, Ont. says her website includes their farm philosophy and business hours. “This saves me explaining to each customer why our farm is wonderful,” she says. Her website also has an online store which is important for generating sales. Wilhelm says her e-newsletter is one of her main sales tools.

But a website should rarely be your only e-tactic.

Consider social media too, with their online platforms for sharing opinions, experiences and other content. Here, your goal will be to create content for others to respond to, explains Dr. Andreas Boecker, a professor in food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph. These platforms include but are not limited to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, blogs and Instagram and can be used in conjunction with your website.

For example, you could use a YouTube video to demonstrate how you make your cheese.

Canadians are among the most active users of social media, and at present the two most important social media platforms are Facebook and Twitter. Your market will determine which one is most important to your business, says Gordijk. Twitter users tend to be younger and Facebook users tend to be older, explains Gordijk. Although things can shift rapidly in the online world, Facebook currently has 1.32 billion users worldwide and is most popular in the 35 to 54 age group. On the other hand, Twitter which has 271 million users is most commonly used by those aged 18 to 29.

When it comes to social media, Gordijk advises that you should avoid bombarding your followers with sales information. Think of it as cultivating a community instead, he says. “You can be a source of information on the industry,” says Gordijk who emphasizes the need for patience. “You won’t build an audience overnight.”

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

business One of the advantages of social media is the opportunity to engage your customers and create a two-way conversation.

Consider encouraging participation by sponsoring contests.

For example, Cambridge asparagus grower, Tim Barrie, hosts a “guess the first day of asparagus harvest” contest every spring.

Before creating a social media account, it’s important to understand what you are trying to accomplish. It should be part of a larger marketing strategy. Whichever social media channels you choose to use, designate someone who is passionate about your business to be in charge of it. It’s important to be adding fresh content on a regular basis.

Use photos as much as possible. It’s OK to use your smartphone to take pictures. “People know you are a small business and expect a certain amount of spontaneity,” says Gordijk.

Murphy’s Bakery near Alliston, Ont. has been very successful using social media. They take pictures of their cupcakes or pumpkin pies using an iPhone and then post them to Facebook.

Many of the people coming in to buy them say they came because they saw the photos on Facebook.

Meghan Snyder, co-owner of Snyders Family Farm near Ayr, Ont. says Facebook is a very important marketing tool for their family-focused daytime activities. However, they also run a Halloween-themed Fear Farm at night, and for that market, Twitter is more important, she says.

Having Facebook and Twitter accounts is essential, says Snyder. “It’s equivalent to having a Yellow Pages ad back in the ’90s,” she says. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, Snyder uses Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube, but she admits she struggles to tap into the full power of social media. “It takes time away from other work, but I think it’s important,” she says.

Social media is just one marketing tool that Snyder uses.

Others include networking, word of mouth, and print advertising. Snyder also buys ads on Facebook and will likely buy ads on Twitter this fall. She sponsors events which she promotes through her social media channels.

“Cool posts, contests, great images and social media take most of the money I used to use for print advertising,” Snyder says. “I still do a lot of radio though.” CG

Get more from social media If you’re new to social media, you’ve got some learning to do. But it isn’t that tough. To begin, just “listen” in on a social media channel for a while to get a feel for it before you post.

Also check out books, even if it sounds counterintuitive to buy a paper book to learn about paperless communication. A good place to start is UnMarketing by Scott Stratten (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2010), although of course you can also check out Stratten’s website at www. un-marketing.com.

Even when you begin posting, recognize that you will need to continue to learn. When it comes to Twitter, for instance, try posting at different times of day to see what time is most effective. Then repeat your tweets for greater effectiveness.

“Think of it like showing a car commercial,” says Nigel Gordijk of Common Sense Design. Not everyone is on at the same time, so you need to show it more than once.

Use separate accounts for personal and business social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Keep it positive. For example, don’t complain about the problems you are having getting a building permit from the municipality. And don’t bash the competition.

Use photos as much as possible.

Also let your customers know when you are at an event and invite them to come and visit you.

To build a following, follow others in your industry. They may follow you back.

And don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Social media is more forgiving if your language isn’t perfect, but avoid the overuse of exclamation points.

“Don’t use three exclamation points when one will do,” says Gordijk.

- Jen C., Ontario, 2014 AWC Delegate

y! . da ed to it er lim st s gi g i Re atin Se

“If it weren’t for the messages from some of the leaders I connected with, I wouldn’t have this clear vision nor the motivation to go after it. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

Open your mind to endless possibilities. Gain the skills needed to fulfill all your dreams.

Prepare to be inspired. This conference could change your life! Join women from Ag and related businesses as they reveal the secrets to their success. Early Bird and Group Rates available now.

Register today! Visit advancingwomenconference.ca or phone 403-686-8407.

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country-guide.ca 35

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CropsGuide

By Ralph Pearce, CG Production Editor

The neonic debate

gets real

With tough new regulations on the books, even some beekeepers are calling for compromise wo months have passed and it seems the adage, “time heals all wounds” just doesn’t hold up. Instead, we’re further into the debate on neonicotinoid seed treatments, but farmers seem no closer to a solution. They may even be a step backwards.

There is still no compromise with the beekeeping sector, or with provincial politicians or the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC).

“ You tell me when there’s going to be a pest outbreak; I’ll tell you when we need to use neonic seed treatments.”

— Wayne Black, Devolder Farms

During events such as the London Farm Show in early March and the Grain Farmers of Ontario’s March Classic later in the month, discussions displayed the full spectrum of emotions, from a reluctant “wait-and-see” approach to a growing sense of frustration, culminating in calls for everything from legal action to “tractorcades.”

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club has been acknowledged as the key supporter behind the anti-chemical stance of the Ontario Beekeepers Association’s board of directors. Late in March, Lee Townsend, the commercial beekeeper whose “Alberta Buzzing” posts 36 country-guide.ca

have tracked much of the debate, reported on the March 24 visit to Edmonton of the Protect the Pollinators Tour, organized by the Sierra Club.

Townsend takes John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, to task for unsubstantiated claims that the Pest Management Regulatory Agency is in bed with neonic manufacturers, as well as for saying that honeybee numbers are falling, despite Statistics Canada reports from 2014 proving that they are at record numbers.

When Townsend pressed Bennett to divulge how much of the Sierra Club’s funds go to research pollinator health, Bennett’s reply was, “We do not fund any research, only promote awareness.”

It’s a tactic that seems effective. Ontario has announced sweeping amendments to the Pesticide Act, including a declaration that all neonicotinoid seed treatments be classified as a pesticide under a Group 12 designation. The new measures are to take effect July 1, 2015, and will create new barriers in 2016 that will tighten in 2017.

Ontario’s new regulations In the first year covered by the new Ontario regulations, farmers will be allowed to self-declare the need to treat 50 per cent of their seed without any advance work to determine the presence or threshold levels of target insect pests. If the need or desire is there to treat more than 50 per cent of seed in the initial year (2016), the farmer can perform a Continued on page 38 M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

CHRISTIAN FARMERS FEDERATION OF ONTARIO 642 Woolwich St. • Guelph, ON • N1H 3Y2 Voice: (519) 837-1620 Fax: (519) 824-1835 Email: cffomail@christianfarmers.org Web site: www.christianfarmers.org

CFFO Policy Tour: Protecting Prime Farmland

E

Paul Bootsma

arlier this year the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) introduced its policy tour for 2015. This tour would involve all the districts of the federation discussing a variety of issues related to Ontario Agriculture across the province.

The tour held its last sessions last week in Thunder Bay and Emo Ontario getting a good perspective from the North, the previous week meetings were held along the highway 17 corridor. The entire tour has been successful with good attendance and lively conversation during the meetings.

The food producing industry in Ontario should remain healthy for the next decade, especially with the projected population growth both in Canada and globally. When the subjects of farmland preservation and land use planning were discussed many members are hoping for strengthened provincial regulation protecting Ontario’s prime agricultural land. Recognizing that we do need to provide housing and transportation for this expected increase in population, members express concern that some of Ontario’s best farmland is taken out of production and used for development.

Members are supportive of the need for aggregates in Ontario since this is where raw resources come from for infrastructure, but are also hopeful that CFFO’s call for complete revitalization will become a required part of

aggregate licencing. The growth of cities is inevitable for a growing nation and civilization but how cities grow and develop has an impact on the surrounding countryside. CFFO would like to see more growth upwards before cities grow outward. Brownfields and grey fields should also be developed before more land is annexed for development around cities, with the current review of the Provincial Policy Statement, now is the time to add this to municipalities’ official plans.

Many rural people like the idea of preserving farmland but do not realize that there are many other activities in rural Ontario. We need strengthened regulations to protect land in food production from other notions as well, ditches meant for land drainage should not be considered habitat for other species, native or endangered; these ditches were

A general farm organization that is rooted in faith and guided by values

developed for a specific reason.

Species that have been relocated or introduced to specific areas should not be protected when they begin to do damage to farmers crops or animals. There needs to be an understanding that rural Ontario has an industry within it and is not all parkland.

CFFO is confident that with good dialogue we can influence the Ontario government to strengthen regulations protecting farmland and maintain the ability to produce food in Ontario for the local and global population.

Ontario and Canada depend heavily on exporting much of the agricultural products we produce.

This industry creates many jobs in Ontario and the Ontario economy benefits greatly from it. This year’s CFFO Policy Tour, shows that the industry is doing well and wants to continue to progress in Ontario for many generations to come.

• 21 District Associations Across Ontario • Supporting our members since 1954 • A Professional Organization of Entrepreneurial Farming Families

www.christianfarmers.org

A professional organization of entrepreneurial farming families

CropsGuide Continued from page 36

Surveys — Who’s the most trusted?

For decades, farmers have enjoyed an envied position of trust among Canadians.

Yet times are changing, as is the reputation of farmers. Starting in 2002 and spanning seven years, Montreal-based Leger Marketing conducted a sponsored annual survey to measure the trust among various professions and vocations in Canada. In its inaugural year, more than 1,500 Canadians were asked to rate their level of trust among 18 different professions, including doctors, police officers, lawyers and politicians. During the run of that study — from 2002 to 2008, during which the list expanded to 23 professions — “farmers” never fell below the 90 per cent mark, consistently ranking third behind firefighters and nurses.

Leger Marketing discontinued the survey after 2008 (from 2002 to 2007, the survey was sponsored; the company conducted it for one more year out of its own funds). After that, Reader’s Digest introduced its “50 Most Trusted Canadians” feature, but its results were little more than a popularity contest. Participants were given a list of 50 prominent Canadians and instructed to rank them in order of their trustworthiness.

In 2014, Ipsos Reid conducted a new poll of Canada’s most — and least — trusted professions. In all, there were 34 professions in this survey, with the level of trust rated as a 6 or 7 — with a 7 being “extremely trustworthy.” More than % Rated 6 or 7 4,000 Canadians were asked for Professions (7 being “Extremely trustworthy”) their opinions for this instalment, Firefighters 77% with firefighters again topping the list, but at a drastically reduced 74% Ambulance drivers/ level, earning the trust of 77 per Paramedics cent of respondents. Farmers were Pharmacists 70% seventh on this new list with a trust Nurses 69% level of 58 per cent.

It’s also interesting that in the Airline pilots 69% Leger survey, politicians rated marDoctors 65% ginally ahead of used car salespeople Farmers 58% (eight per cent in 2008 versus five Canadian soldiers 58% per cent). In the Ipsos-Reid poll, it was telemarketers who scored only 52% Teachers four per cent trust, two points lower Veterinarians 51% than politicians (both “Local” and Source: Ipsos-Reid “National”) at six per cent.

Professions/vocations

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

Firefighters

99%

97%

96%

97%

97%

96%

98%

Nurses

96%

94%

95%

94%

95%

94%

96%

Farmers

96%

92%

92%

91%

91%

91%

93%

Teachers

91%

89%

88%

88%

88%

88%

—

Doctors

90%

87%

89%

89%

89%

89%

92%

Source: Leger Marketing

“ Involuntary collaboration is really difficult, and that’s — Hugh Simpson, commercial beekeeper the problem.”

38 country-guide.ca

self-assessment by going into the field, digging five holes per 100-acre increment and trying to find wireworm, European chafers and other target species.

For 2017, however, that 50 per cent threshold will be gone. Farmers will be required to have a third-party assessor confirm thresholds and the need for any level of neonic treatment.

Farm groups say that, in principle, establishing thresholds isn’t bad. After all, they’re consistent with integrated pest management (IPM). Yet the groups say the new pesticide regulations fail in two ways: • To perform a self-assessment next spring, a farmer must first complete a certification course this fall (i.e. during harvest). The course has yet to designed.

• S econd, there aren’t enough thirdparty assessors. As of mid-April 2015, it’s estimated there are only two such assessors, both certified crop advisers (CCAs). Farm groups are asking where Ontario will find these highly trained, highly qualified individuals for the planting season in 2017.

Of course, there is also concern about the new layers of costs to the farmer.

To Wayne Black, seed sales and production specialist with Devolder Farms near Chatham, Ont., the province is trying to employ more of a cookie-cutter approach to the use of seed treatments, believing that what works in Lanark County in eastern Ontario will fit conditions on the sand plains in Norfolk County in the south.

“You tell me when there’s going to be a pest outbreak, and I’ll tell you when we need to use neonic seed treatments,” says Black, echoing similar sentiments of Dr. Cynthia Scott-Dupree of the University of Guelph. “I believe there are more pests in some parts of Ontario than other areas, which is why farmers are not all on the same side of the fence when it comes to insecticides and pesticides. Farmers need to understand that just because that’s the way it is in Perth County, the circumstances in Essex or Renfrew counties could be totally different.”

Simply put, says Black, there isn’t enough time to lay out the certification requirements, to train advisers, or to generate reliable research.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

the neonic debate Caught in the middle As discussed in the April 2015 issue of Country Guide, the stance taken by directors of the Ontario Beekeepers Association (OBA) and the Sierra Club has created a significant divide, not just between beekeepers and agriculture, but between commercial beekeepers and part-time and hobbyist beekeepers as well.

Many of the former have worked to distance themselves from the “ban-neonics” contingent.

Although some acknowledge there’s been considerable damage done in agricultural-beekeeping relations, they hold to the belief that there is still room for negotiation.

John Van Alten and Hugh Simpson are commercial beekeepers in Ontario. Both express their desire to see a compromise, yet also acknowledge that the current climate between the government, the beekeepers (and the OBA) and agriculture as an industry has become toxic. Van Alten raises bees on a farm based near Freelton, with a packing plant and retail outlet in nearby Carlisle, located just northwest of Hamilton. This is his 35th year in business as a beekeeper, and he’s a former president of the OBA who makes no secret of his feelings about the direction the association is taking.

“We need to negotiate, and to come to some sort of a compromise that works well for beekeeping and ‘big ag,’” says Van Alten.

“We’re tied to the hip with big ag — we can’t get away from that.

We depend on landowners, primarily farmers, to put our bees on their property so that we can run our businesses. If we’re seen as a liability, we’ll have trouble finding locations to put our bees, so we need to stay at the table and work out a solution.”

On one hand, Van Alten feels the OBA’s directors are leaning too hard on neonics. On the other hand, he credits some for shedding light on this issue.

Everyone on both sides simply wants to earn a living, Van Alten says, and he suggests that agriculture understands that the status quo is not an option either.

But that doesn’t mean agriculture is ready to have unpalatable new regulations forced on it, Van Alten says.

“We don’t want to have a winner and a loser in this — what we want to have is both sides feeling as if they’ve accomplished something and that they can still respect each other and run their businesses successfully,” Van Alten says. “There is a solution out there, we just need to find it. Both sides have people on the fringes who are willing to say that neonics are the devil incarnate or that they’re the best things in the world. The answer’s probably somewhere in the middle.”

Hugh Simpson shares many of the same notions. Simpson considers himself a moderate voice as a beekeeper, often bridging the gap between the beekeepers and the farming community.

Operating Osprey Bluffs Honey on Blue Mountain outside of Collingwood for the past six years, Simpson has his beehives distributed around 20 different farms. He spends a significant amount of time during the off-season speaking about this issue, and he has a unique perspective on beekeeping: that it’s just the same as any other livestock farming with the key difference being that his “animals” have wings and six legs.

Like Van Alten, Simpson believes compromise is possible. He just doesn’t know if either side wants it, for an understandable reason.

“We’re now dealing with this environment where the stakeholders aren’t feeling voluntarily collaborative,” says Simpson.

“Involuntary collaboration is really difficult, and that’s the

“ We don’t want to have a winner and a loser in this; we want both sides feeling as if they’ve accomplished something.”

— John Van Alten, commercial beekeeper problem. It’s not that the stakeholders aren’t talking, it’s not that they’re not sharing information, it’s that it’s in an environment of involuntary collaboration.”

As a result, suggestions come up, such as an 80 per cent reduction in neonic use. “That’s not a collaborative solution, it’s not a compromise,” Simpson says. “It’s one side getting more than another in the imposed measures.”

Simpson finds it difficult to keep one foot balanced in each camp. He has friends and neighbours who are growers, and he obviously shares a strong bond with beekeepers, who are also friends and colleagues. Now he worries that the neonic issue is driving a wedge between them.

So does Van Alten, who says, “If this legislation goes through as it’s written now, my feeling is that there are going to be a lot of Continued on page 40

> Empty Pesticide Container Recycling Program

There are many reasons to rinse. #1

Only rinsed containers can be recycled

#2

Helps keep collection sites clean

#3

Use all the chemicals you purchase

#4

Keeps collection sites safe for workers

#5

Maintain your farm’s good reputation

No excuse not to!

more information or to find a collection { For site near you visit cleanfarms.ca

Now, take your empty fertilizer containers along for the ride!

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

country-guide.ca 39 10901A-CFM-5Reasons-QRTPage-CountryGuide.indd 1

4/2/14 11:59 AM

CropsGuide Continued from page 39 growers who will be looking at the bee yard on their back 40 and wondering whether they really need that liability back there.”

Is there still time?

On what might seem like the other side, Paul Thiel, vice-president of innovation and public affairs for Bayer CropScience is also looking for positives.

“Farming is more sustainable than it’s ever been, and that’s the bottom line,” says Thiel, adding that simply banning a product is not a solution. “It’s not just substituting another product, it’s substituting a number of management decisions alongside that single action. And we in agribusiness must help the public understand that we are constantly evolving regarding biodiversity and enhancing the natural capital we enjoy. Farmers do care about diversity and the environment on their farm. It’s their most important asset and their livelihood, and hopefully it’s going to be their children’s livelihoods.”

As much as he also wants to be positive, Stephen Denys finds the challenges daunting. Denys, vice-president of sales and marketing with Pride Seeds, near Chatham, has been watching the battle over neonicotinoids since 2012, when he was president of the Canadian Seed Trade Association, and he’s concerned that time is running out on the opportunity for compromise Denys was involved in meetings with the province, the seed industry and the retailers association just prior to Easter, and it became clear to him that OMAFRA was no longer the “go-to” ministry on this issue — it was MOECC.

Who will be left to speak for me?

Seeds of this debate go back to the days of the cosmetic pesticide ban, Denys believes. He says many in agriculture felt they could ignore that debate, for two key reasons. One, it was happening to the lawn care sector, not on farms.

Two, few believed the Liberal government would last as long as it has.

“The reality is the exact same people who were involved in the cosmetic pesticide ban within the government are the ones leading the charge now,” Denys says.

Denys believes those government insiders have only got shrewder. He 40 country-guide.ca

“ If we’re seen as a liability, we’ll have trouble finding locations to put our bees.”

— John Van Alten, commercial beekeeper believes they’re telling farm groups outside the grain and oilseed sector to stay out of this issue, that it isn’t their fight, and if they do become embroiled, the government will do to them what it’s doing to row-crop farmers.

In reality, says Denys, once the government is done with the cropping segment, they’ll go after horticulture and other sectors.

“The biggest concern I have as a farmer is that the government, without using sound science, is going to start to make it difficult for me to use any technology that has helped to give me an increase in yield over time,” says Denys.

Denys believes the government can claim that its goal is to keep the family farm active and promote the buy local approach, when it’s enacting policies that will do the opposite, promoting larger-scale farms to support higher volume, least-cost production because farmers can’t get their hands on sound technology.

Denys is also skeptical about the intentions of beekeepers. In situations where agriculture has tried to work co-operatively with beekeepers, he says, the OBA directors have dismissed the attempts.

What’s left?

Bayer’s Thiel believes there’s still an opportunity for the agri-food and agribusiness sectors to come to the fore with positive messaging.

“People have to understand that farmers care — they care about what they pro-

duce, they care about the environment,” Thiel says. “I think people get behind organizations like the Sierra Club because they share a concern about things like the environment, but we have to make sure that people understand that farmers also care about the environment.”

Denys also thinks agriculture needs to do a better job of making their case to provincial and municipal politicians, both rural and urban. “I don’t know if we’ve done that as an industry as a whole effectively enough.”

Frustration may be building, Denys adds, but even that has some positive impacts. Frustration may turn into determination and a drive towards mobilizing an industry-wide effort to create awareness in the non-farming community of the important role of production agriculture.

“If we look at the neonic debate in the crop production sector, we have exacted no pain on the government — nothing politically, economically or otherwise,” says Denys.

Will farmers opt for more aggressive protests, like traffic slow-downs on the way into Toronto?

Denys sounds like he fears anything less may be ineffective: “We may get to that stage because the people making the decisions today are such strong ideologues, they do not want to look at common sense, they do not want to look at the benefits or the science of the technologies we’re using.” CG M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

Spotlight on Crop AdvAnCeS Crop Advances is an annual report that summarizes applied research projects involving the OMAFRA Field Crop team, in partnership with commodity groups, industry and the OSCIA. www.ontariosoilcrop.org/en/resources/cropadvances.htm

Rye offers good winter cereal forage opportunities after corn or soybeans

By Lilian Schaer

Farmers looking for additional forage opportunities in early spring should take a close look at rye. It’s been coming out on top in southern Ontario plot trials evaluating the best winter cereal forage crop opportunities over the last two years.

According to cereals specialist Peter Johnson (formerly with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs) who has been working on the project, fall rye has not only had the highest yields and best winter survival, but also reached its target stages 10 days sooner than triticale, which has previously been suggested as the crop of choice based on data from New York State.

How was the research conducted?

Small plot, four replicate trials were established at two locations in the fall of 2012 and six sites in 2013. Only two sites were planted in fall of 2014 due to late corn and soybean harvest and wet planting conditions.

Fall rye, triticale, winter wheat, and winter barley were no-tilled at 140 pounds per acre into corn silage, soybean, or wheat stubble at the sites from early September to mid-October; the variation in seeding dates was to evaluate potential impacts on crop performance. Five different nitrogen (N) rates were applied at 0, 30, 60, 90 and 120 pounds per acre.

What has the project found?

Across all sites, rye had the best winter survival, proving its hardiness over the other trial species in the hard, cold winter of 2014.

Sixty pounds of nitrogen has been found to be the optimal rate for rye, which also showed the highest revenue of the four trial crops at every N rate based on current production costs.

Triticale had yields almost equal to rye, but with much higher seed costs.

“Rye comes out on top regardless of N rate, with triticale next and wheat last, all at flag leaf stage,” Johnson said in a presentation at the 2015 Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) annual meeting. “The harvest date makes a big difference too. The earlier the harvest date, the more season I can give my soybeans.”

“Rye comes out on top regardless of N rate, with triticale next and wheat last, all at flag leaf stage,”

In fact, a 10-day delay in planting the subsequent corn or soybean crop could have significant impact on yields, up to 10 bushels per acre in corn and four bushels per acre for soybeans. Wheat was found to have the highest relative feed value, but doesn’t offer the yields that would make economic sense for farmers. Here too, rye was the winner.

How was the research funded?

The project is funded by Beef Farmers of Ontario, Ontario Forage Council, OSCIA, and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs/University of Guelph research partnership, as well as the Elgin, Oxford and Middlesex Soil and Crop Improvement Associations. OSCIA assisted with communication of research results.

“Can I make money out of it? Rye will give you 300 to 350 pounds of beef per acre.

As a free crop that’s a pretty good gig,” he said, with added benefits of the root system in the soil building up organic matter and the cattle manure going on the fields.

The trial will be repeated once more in 2015.

Where can I get more information?

More information on this project can be found in the Crop Advances section of the OSCIA website at http://bit.ly/1Gqlqxc.

ONTARIO SOIL AND CROP IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION

— Peter Johnson, Cereals Specialist (formerly with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)

How rye stacks up as winter forage* • Highest yields • Strongest winter survival • Best revenue • Quicker to reach target stages • Optimal N rate of 60 lbs/acre * Compared to triticale, winter barley, winter wheat in this project

Mission: Facilitate responsible economic management of soil, water, air and crops through development and communication of innovative farming practices

www.ontariosoilcrop.org

CropsGuide # PestPatrol

with Mike Cowbrough, OMAFRA

ave a question you want answered?

H Hashtag #PestPatrol on twitter.com to @cowbrough or email Mike at mike.cowbrough@ontario.ca.

A farmer asks me, “I’m worried about giant hogweed because I hear it causes severe dermatitis and blindness. How do I identify it?” hen plant parts of giant hogweed are torn open, the plant exudes a sap that contains lightactivated chemicals known as furanocoumarins.

When these compounds come in contact with the skin, they cause burn-like rashes and/ or blisters, the severity of which will depend on how much sap you are exposed to.

There is one very common look-alike species called Angelica, which often gets confused with giant hogweed but is completely harmless and is often used in alcoholic drinks to enhance flavour.

Most of the giant hogweed in Ontario is along water courses, which means you would normally have to go out of your way to come into contact with the plant. But it’s always better to be safe than sorry! CG

Figure 1

1

The leaf of giant hogweed is quite large, shown beside a jackknife for reference, and is divided into three broad leaflets that are deeply lobed and toothed.

Figure 2

The flowering heads of giant hogweed are umbrella shaped.

Figure 3

The stem of giant hogweed is covered is short whiskerlike hairs and is green with purple blotches.

Figure 4 

The leaf of Angelica is much smaller, and is comprised of many small leaflets with toothed margins.

2

3

Figure 5

The flowering heads of Angelica are completely round or “globe shaped.”

Figure 6

The stem of Angelica is completely hairless and takes on more of a reddish/purple colour.

5

 An Angelica-based spirit brewed in Ontario.

42 country-guide.ca

6

Figure 7 

Dermatitis caused by making contact with the sap of giant hogweed; the more sap your skin is exposed to, the more severe the injury.

7

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

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life

Bring them back home Saving our small communities has less to do with keeping our kids at home than giving them reasons to return

By Helen Lammers-Helps

ural communities across Canada know the challenges all too well. Populations are shrinking, and services of all kinds are getting harder and harder to maintain, not only for businesses but also for new Canadians, the disabled, the elderly and those suffering from mental health challenges or addictions.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Doug Griffiths, a former Alberta minister of municipal affairs and author of a book on community building says these problems are not inevitable.

Griffiths knows a thing or two about small towns. He grew up on a ranch and visited hundreds of communities in Alberta while doing the research for a comprehensive report called Rural Alberta: Land of Opportunity. The report lists 70 recommendations concerning education, health care, transportation, community infrastructure, arts and culture, and more.

After writing the report, Griffiths went on the speaking circuit to share what he’d discovered, when one day it dawned on him that people weren’t really getting the message. So he used a trick he had learned when he was teaching school. He turned his message around and developed a presentation which he called 13 Ways to Kill your Community.

Griffiths explains his rationale. When he talked to his students about what success looked like, they would tell him, “Yeah, yeah we know.”

But when he turned it around to, “What would you have to do to fail?” they were able to recognize their destructive behaviour.

Griffiths used the same principle for his presentation on rural communities, which he then turned into a book (published by Frontenac House). That book then went on to become a national bestseller and is now in its fourth printing.

44 country-guide.ca

Questions to ask What’s the most important factor when it comes to whether or not your small town will succeed?

No. 1 is your attitude, says Griffiths. “As the old saying goes: If you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right,” he explains. “Attitude creates the culture and that’s what’s most critical to success or failure.”

Then Griffiths makes his point: “The community itself has to decide it wants to be successful. And it has to believe that it can achieve its goal with or without government participation.”

Griffiths lists the factors that must come together for healthy communities, ranging from a good water source to creating a welcoming atmosphere, supporting local businesses and the arts, and more.

Griffiths knows that the one you thought would be on the top of the list is the one that’s missing.

The fallacy that Griffiths repeatedly heard from well-intentioned people when he was on the speaking circuit was that communities must keep their young people at home.

It’s a misconception, Griffiths says. Instead, young people should be allowed to go off and explore and learn new things. The point is not about finding ways to keep the youth from leaving, says Griffiths. “It is dependent on you finding a reason for them to want to come back.”

Rural communities can have a lot to offer, agrees Dee Ann Benard, executive director of the Alberta Rural Development Network, a not-for-profit partnership of Alberta’s 21 post-secondary institutions whose goal is to enhance communities.

Healthy communities that are welcoming can be good places to raise kids in a more relaxed environment where people know each other, Benard says.

“It’s amazing what people can do in rural communities.”

Benard points to the success of Olds, Alta., a town of 8,500 people an hour north of Calgary.

When companies began leaving town due to slow Internet connection, a non-profit corporation was created to install a high-speed fibre optic network.

Now residents and businesses have access to Internet speeds 10 times faster than what’s available in cities across Canada, and at competitive pricing. This is a

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

life

boon for business, residents and the agricultural college located there.

Like the other provinces, rural Prince Edward Island is also experiencing an aging and shrinking population. Tired of governments that didn’t seem to be doing enough, in October 2013 Prince Edward Island community newspaper publisher Paul MacNeill organized a conference that brought together key people from the four Atlantic provinces. The grassroots event was funded by the province’s community newspaper industry association, which put up $25,000 for the event.

MacNeill says they were very selective about who was allowed to participate. People had to apply and there were no government bureaucrats allowed.

With the funding, they were able to pay

ewan in Saskatoon. The centre hosts an annual conference and provides training, mentoring and resources to help rural clergy of all denominations better serve their rural congregations and contribute to the development of healthy communities.

“Clergy can help people by forging strong social bonds, by improving communication, and by offering free counselling and rituals that help people look forward with hope,” Harder says.

There’s also a need for leadership development and capacity building in rural organizations, says Rob Black, chief executive officer of the Rural Ontario Institute (ROI) in Guelph. “There are a lot of organizations doing good things, but the members are getting older. We need to find ways to engage younger

“ The community itself has to decide it wants to be successful,” Griffiths says. “And it has to believe it can achieve its goal with or without government participation.” travel expenses for those who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to attend.

Some 250 people participated in the conference in Georgetown. “It was fascinating to see how energized people were when they came together,” says MacNeill. The conference was a great success and several positive initiatives have resulted from the conference, he says.

Dr. Judith Kulig, a professor of health studies at the University of Lethbridge found some common elements that helped small towns cope with natural disasters. Communities that were better able to weather a natural disaster had a positive attitude and a willingness to work together across different ethnicities and religions. They also had a sense of belonging, good communication, and strong volunteerism and leadership. However, the trick is that these things need to be in place before the disaster hits.

Clergy can be an important resource for a town dealing with a natural disaster or other problem, says Dr. Cam Harder who established the Centre for Rural Community Leadership and Ministry (CiRCLe M) at the University of Saskatch-

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

members and rebuild and reinvigorate the leadership,” Black says. Black works to strengthen rural organizations by helping them with succession planning, leadership development and board governance.

Some rural organizations may need to consider amalgamating, says Black. “You need to be open to change, to doing things differently,” he says. “It’s a mindset, and the words you use can make a difference.” Black prefers the term amalgamation over merger. “Merger sounds like a takeover, but amalgamation sounds more co-operative.”

Black knows about the pains of amalgamating two organizations. The ROI was formed five years ago from an amalgamation of two organizations: the Centre for Rural Leadership and the Ontario Rural Council. “It can be tricky when you have two boards, two staffs, etc. but if we don’t change, maybe none will survive,” he points out.

Community building can also happen on a more informal scale. Coming together around a humanitarian project can be a good way to build community,

says Glen Whetter, a minister at the Fellowship Community Church in Goodlands, tucked away in the southwest corner of Manitoba.

Whetter was involved in an auction fundraiser organized jointly by several churches of different denominations which raised $16,000 for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.

Individuals can make a difference too.

In addition to being a minister, Whetter is also a cattle farmer and together with his wife, Erma, they host a post-harvest potluck. “People are very appreciative of the opportunity to meet their neighbours,” Whetter says. “Farms are bigger, people are more spread out and they travel more. People are so busy they don’t have much chance to get together.” CG

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country-guide.ca 45

w e at h e r NEAR NORMAL

t Ho pells s Dry

ONTARIO

Cha n Sca geabl sho ttered e wer s

NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES

Hot periods Scattered t/storms

NEAR-NORMAL TEMPERATURES AND RAINFALL

Ho Isot spe t/s late lls tor d ms

HOTTER AND DRIER THAN NORMAL

MILDER THAN NORMAL

DRIER THAN NORMAL

d ere s / t t a Sc ower s sh storm t/

June 14 - July to August 8, 2015

June 14-20: Seasonal temperatures with mainly sunny skies aside from shower or thunderstorm activity south and occasional rain north.

June 21-27: Sunny. Often muggy and warm with scattered showers or heavy thunderstorms on a couple of hotter days.

June 28-July 4: Seasonal to hot under sunny skies. A few more humid days trigger thunderstorms, heavy at some localities.

July 5-11: Sunny and hot most days. On two or three occasions expect passing thunderstorms to bring rain and wind, sometimes severe.

July 12-18: Sunshine dominates with seasonable to hot temperatures and spotty thunderstorms.

July 19-25: Sunny days prevail apart from heavier thunderstorms with heavy rain and gusty winds on a couple of occasions.

July 26-Aug. 1: Expect pleasant settled weather most of the week aside from isolated thunderstorms at a few localities.

Aug. 2-8: Temperatures vary as warm humid air interchanges with cooler, blustery days. Scattered showers, thundershowers.

QUEBEC June 14-20: Sunny with highs often in the 20s but showers or thunderstorms on a couple of more humid days.

June 21-27: Seasonable to hot most days along with with heavier thunderstorms on two or three more humid days.

June 28-July 4: Warm, sunny weather dominates the week but scattered showers or heavy thunderstorms here and there.

46 country-guide.ca

July 5-11: Generally hot and often muggy with passing thunderstorms resulting in locally heavy rain and gusty winds.

July 12-18: Sunshine dominates with seasonal to hot temperatures. Scattered shower or thunderstorm activity.

July 19-25: A few heavy thunderstorms rumble through bringing the chance of heavy rain and strong winds to a few places.

July 26-Aug. 1: Highs level off in the 20s most days under sunny skies but thunderstorms in a few areas on two or three days.

Aug. 2-8: Comfortable temperatures as brisk winds bring slightly cooler air southward. Sunny aside from scattered showers.

ATLANTIC PROVINCES June 14-20: Sunny, warmer west with a few showers, chance thundershowers.

Seasonable, blustery east with intermittent rain and fog.

June 21-27: Some sunshine east with scattered showers. Warm west with a few showers or thunderstorms. Coastal fog.

June 28-July 4: Pleasant most days with some shower activity east and thundershowers west. Seasonable to warm with fog patches.

July 5-11: Warm to occasionally hot under considerable sunshine. Shower or thundershower activity on a couple of days.

July 12-18: Sunny apart from scattered showers on two or three occasions. Chance heavier thunderstorms west. Seasonable to hot.

July 19-25: Warm with showers or thun-

dershowers here and there. Risk locally heavy thunderstorms on hotter, more humid days.

July 26-Aug. 1: Sunny with pleasant temperatures often in the 20s. Cooler with fog on the coasts. Scattered showers or thunderstorms.

Aug. 2-8: Mostly sunny with comfortable temperatures but showers on two or three days with a chance of heavier thunderstorms west.

June 14 through July to August 8, 2015 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Hot, dry weather is expected to scorch British Columbia this summer and very likely spread eastward across the Prairies and into northwestern Ontario. Elsewhere across Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, look for more typical summer conditions with temperatures averaging close to normal but with an occasional hot, humid spell. Showers and thundershowers should bring average amounts of rain to most of Eastern Canada. Although thundershower activity will be welcome in most areas, a few thunderstorms will have the potential of creating locally heavy rain, strong winds and bursts of hail.

Prepared by meteorologist Larry Romaniuk of Weatherite Services. Forecasts should be 80 per cent accurate for your area; expect variations by a day or two due to changeable speed of weather systems.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

h e a lt h

Drugs and pregnancy: To take or not to take?

By Marie Berry

or pregnant women, taking drugs can be a real concern. They may need the drug to control or treat a condition, but there can be a balancing act between their health and their baby’s safety. It is estimated that two to three per cent of babies are born with birth defects which can range from minor and correctable to more serious.

Besides drugs, birth defects can be caused by infections of the baby during pregnancy; genetic material of either or both mother and father; environmental exposure to harmful substances; or even a mother’s medical conditions. But sometimes the causes are never known.

During the first three months (i.e. the first trimester), a baby’s systems are developing and are most vulnerable to harmful exposure, but sometimes a mother may not even know she is pregnant during this time.

The term teratogenetic refers to a drug or other substance that causes birth defects. It comes from the Greek word “teratoid” meaning “monster” because sometimes the baby’s appearance is not normal.

On the other hand, however, because drugs are not studied in pregnant women, there is little or no data regarding safety. Drug manufacturers usually include a statement that the safety of their drug is not known in pregnant women.

If you do take drugs to control a medical condition or even use non-prescription medicines or natural remedies and are considering starting a family, it is a great idea to check out your list of medications prior to conception. Changing to another drug, using a non-drug remedy, or even stopping the drug completely may be options for a healthy pregnancy.

Some drugs are recognized as harmful, for example male or female hormones, cancer drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs. Seizure medica-

tions such as phenytoin and some diabetes drugs can be harmful too, but you still want to control your condition.

Often, you will be changed to other, safer alternatives. Vitamin A and its derivatives, for example isotretinoin, are used for serious acne, yet birth defects are possible as a result of either mom or dad taking it. The recommended option is to stop the drug well in advance of pregnancy.

Lithium used to treat psychiatric conditions, anticoagulants such as warfarin, and the cardiovascular drug group known as ACE inhibitors are all contraindicated during pregnancy. A change to another effective, but safe, drug is the suggested course of action.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ASA, ibuprofen, and naproxen can increase the risk of bleeding and are found in many non-prescription medicines.

Medicated skin creams and ointments are usually safe. However, if they are applied to damaged skin, absorption into your body is possible.

Non-drug approaches are also considered safe, for example moisturizing creams for dry skin, steam and increased fluids for coughs and colds, ice or heat and massage for aches and pains.

Contraception is usually recommended if you regularly take any medication that does have teratogenetic effects. This includes non-prescription medicines and natural remedies with these effects.

If you are considering starting a family or you are pregnant, remember to always read the package information prior to taking any medication because once you swallow the tablet or capsule, it may be too late. And keep this in mind too. The only safe amount of alcohol during pregnancy is none!

Marie Berry is a lawyer/pharmacist interested in health and education.

If you have ever been told to take iron tablets because your “blood is low,” you will have been amazed at the number of available options. Choosing one can be difficult and confusing! Next month we’ll look at the various formulations and provide you some hints on selecting the one that’s right for you.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

country-guide.ca 47

acres

The dog in the night

By Leeann Minogue

Dale gets an answer to his question, “What do I have to pay to get a decent sleep around here?” ale was out in the shop alone early on Tuesday morning, bent over the collie as it slept in its cushioned bed.

Dale was barking at the dog. Loudly.

“Ruff! Ruff!”

Jeff came in to pick up a wrench to tighten a dripping hose fitting on the air seeder before he took it to the field. He saw what his father was up to and froze in his tracks.

“I knew this day would come. You’ve lost it.”

Dale straightened up, trying to pretend he wasn’t embarrassed. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just giving that mutt a taste of his own medicine. He kept me awake, now I’m keeping him awake.”

Jeff shook his head and walked past Dale to the workbench.

“Damn dog’s been barking all night for the past two nights. It’s hard to get any sleep around here!

Don’t you hear him?”

“Didn’t hear a thing,” Jeff said. “Buddy must be barking at something on your side of the yard.”

“It’s not bad in the winter,” Dale said, “but now that it’s warmed up we like to sleep with the window open. Damn dog. If I lived next door to me, I’d call the cops.”

Jeff laughed and left with his wrench, talking as he walked out. “Don’t know how they’d stop it.”

That night, all was quiet when Dale was pulling back the covers to get into bed.

“Guess my barking back at the dog worked,” Dale told Donna. “Listen to that!” And just as he cocked his ear toward the window to draw Donna’s attention to the silence, Buddy started barking again. Dale cursed.

“Why don’t you put in some earplugs?” Donna asked, reasonably.

“Don’t be crazy. Earplugs are for tractors with no cabs. If I sleep with earplugs I’ll be dreaming about plows all night.”

Dale tossed and turned. Once in a while Buddy 48 country-guide.ca

would take a break from the barking. Dale would almost fall asleep, but just as he was drifting off, sudden sharp barking would wake him up again.

The next morning he drank as much coffee as he could.

“I can’t keep working like this,” he said to Donna as he refilled his cup. “Seeding is hard enough without me being awake all night. What’s Jeff going to say when I have to knock off in the middle of hauling fertilizer to take a nap?”

“Look,” Donna said. “I know it goes against your beliefs, but you can’t go on like this. Why don’t you just turn on the air conditioner?”

“We’re not going to do that when there’s perfectly good air right outside. We’re not made of money.

What if people found out?” When Donna started to smile, before she said anything out loud, Dale realized he sounded just like his father and stopped talking.

On Thursday night, Donna put in earplugs and went straight to sleep. Dale tried sleeping with the window shut. The house was warm. He turned his pillow over and over, looking for a cool spot. He woke feeling like he’d barely slept.

On Friday morning Dale saw a chemical company truck pull into the yard. When they saw a young woman park by the shop, both Dale and Jeff went over to say hello. Just as she stepped out of her truck, Buddy tore around the corner of the shed, sped toward the slough and pounced on a muskrat.

The three of them gaped at the ruckus, trying to figure out which animal was doing more squealing.

Eventually, Buddy emerged from the mess, brandishing a dead muskrat in his teeth.

The woman introduced herself and asked a few questions about their fungicide use, but Dale and Jeff could tell she was in a hurry to get away. “Good thing I’m already married,” Jeff said.

“Me too,” Dale said. “Lots of women wouldn’t stick around after that.”

“Guess we found out what Buddy’s been barking m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

at,” Jeff said. “Maybe now you can get some sleep. It would be good if you could put in a full day’s work without having to lie down in the middle of the day.”

Dale glared at Jeff and headed for his truck. But he wasn’t hopeful. Dale thought the worst of Buddy’s barking had been aimed more to the north side of the yard.

There was some barking that night, but Buddy was quiet enough that Dale opened the window. When he went to the bathroom around 3 a.m., it was still silent.

“You OK?” Donna murmured when he came back to bed.

“Shhhh!” Dale hissed at her. Then he stage-whispered, “Don’t wake up Buddy. I think he’s listening at the patio doors. If he hears us, he’ll start barking again.”

Of course, the dog started barking.

Donna had hit the end of her rope. “Dale, we both like the fresh air. I know running the air conditioner in May is a crazy luxury. And God knows I know what your father would say if he found out. But we’re not going to live like this anymore! Close that damn window and turn on the AC.” Dale grunted, scowled at Donna and got out of bed.

But instead of closing the window and resetting the thermostat, he opened his dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of socks.

“What are you doing?” Donna asked.

“What do you think? I’m going out there to find out what the heck he’s barking at and get rid of it so we can get a decent night’s sleep.”

“Be careful,” Donna said, snuggling back into the covers and closing her eyes.

As soon as Dale stepped out onto the deck, bare knees on show between his boots and the bottom of his warm spring jacket, Buddy stopped barking and ran straight over.

“All right, boy,” Dale said, squatting down to put his hands on either side of the dog’s head and look it in the face. “Where is it?”

As if he was auditioning for the part of Lassie in the next remake, Buddy nodded at Dale and headed straight for the trees at the north side of the yard. Dale followed, cursing when the evergreen branches scraped his calves.

Dale followed the dog through the rows of evergreens and into another row of poplars that his father had planted decades ago. They were more overgrown than Dale had realized. “Have to get out here and clean this up,” he muttered.

The dog sat down and gave one more loud bark. Dale followed the dog’s gaze and realized that less than 10 feet away, a mule deer had braced herself in the tall grass, using her body to guard two tiny spotted fawns cowering behind her.

“Twins,” Dale whispered. “Gorgeous.” The doe looked straight into Dale’s eyes. Dale looked back for a good 20 seconds before he sighed and turned back to the house.

Before he took his boots off, Dale gave Buddy a dog treat from the jar by the door. On his way back to bed he stopped at the hallway thermostat to turn on the air conditioner. Buddy was barking again. Dale closed the bedroom window, muting the sound, and crawled back into bed.

Leeann Minogue is the editor of Grainews, a playwright and part of a family grain farm in southeastern Saskatchewan. m ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

“Do you have questions about my display?” A fresh-faced young girl peers up at me. Displays created by children in Grades 4 to 8 fill a large room. The exhibitors are hoping to advance to a provincial competition. Topics range from the 50th anniversary of the Canadian flag and the invention of the iron lung for polio patients to the Keystone XL pipeline, Nellie McClung, Tommy Douglas and rodeo queens.

The young girl catches me looking at a photo of female air force pilots posing in front of a Second World War airplane. She explains that female pilots flew in wartime for several countries, “but not in Canada.” They ferried airplanes from place to place, towed targets for aerial gunnery practice, served as flight instructors and flew check flights on recently repaired airplanes. “The women were better pilots than the men.”

“Tell me why?” I query.

“Women were required to fly many types of airplanes while men were trained to fly only one type, usually a fighter. When the women were assigned to an airplane they had never flown, they would read about its peculiarities and eccentricities in the Ferry Pilots Manual.

Then they would climb into the cockpit and fly away, sometimes across the Atlantic Ocean.” Female ferry pilots in England had no armament. If pursued by an enemy plane they had only their wit and flying skills for protection, while men had fire power.

The young girl taught me something new. I reflected that learning is a process that goes from the inside to the outside.

Her curiosity took her back many years before she was born.

Her pride in the achievements of women was obvious.

As a preacher, I sometimes forget that learning cannot be injected. John Westerhoff in his book Building God’s People writes, “Too often we try to push things into people, and our pushings are brushed aside. Learning is like the process of a chick hatching from an egg: the chick hatches by pecking from within.

A blow from the outside will destroy the hatching process.”

Michael Yaconelli in his book Dangerous Wonder repeats an often-told story about the well-known pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski. “His concert in New York had been sold out for six months. When the night arrived, people came dressed in tuxedos and fancy dresses. A mother brought her nine-year-old son who was complaining about piano lessons. The mother thought hearing a great pianist might motivate him to practise.” The boy was restless and impatient during the concert. His mother admonished him, “Sit still and don’t move.” During the intermission, the mother was distracted by adult conversation. The boy walked onto the stage where a fine Steinway piano stood. He began to play “Chopsticks.” People in the audience were furious and his mother was horrified. Paderewski heard the commotion. He quickly left his dressing room and returned to the stage.

There was a collective hush. What would the great pianist do? Paderewski whispered to the boy, “Don’t stop. Keep on playing. You’re doing great.” Then he put his arms around him and began playing a concerto based on the tune of “Chopsticks,” still saying, “Don’t stop. Keep on playing.”

Jesus says we should be like children. Ready to learn, listening for the voice of God and taking time to play. “Don’t stop.

Keep on playing.”

Suggested Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-15, Mark 10:13-16 Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon. country-guide.ca 49

HR

Do you make smart mistakes?

By Pierrette Desrosiers, psychologist and coach

et’s be honest, even though we don’t want to admit that we make mistakes.

We do make them. It seems that it is inherent to the human condition. Human beings are error prone. I am a human being; therefore, I make mistakes.

In fact, the more decisions we make, the more mistakes we will make. This is a law of statistics.

But the true challenge for leaders is, “How do you react to your mistakes?” Studies have looked at what happens in people’s brains as they make errors. In one study, researchers set conditions where people had to make decisions. They gave them direct feedback, providing the opportunity to learn for the next decision. People seemed to react in two different ways when they made mistakes. For some people, mistakes triggered the “wake-up call.” The brain became more attuned to find solutions and fix the problem.

These individuals were much more prudent in the next decision. In short, they learned from mistakes and improved their performance. Like our ancient ancestors who realized that they had to learn from their mistakes in order to survive, these people “woke up” and got better the next time.

However, not all brains react like this. In some, a “shut off” was triggered. The brain reacted to the error as a threat against itself. It produced anxiety and a protective instinct around its ego. To avoid feeling bad, these people pushed away the feedback and tried to forget, deny or ridicule it — anything to restore their value in their own eyes. As a result, this type of person does not learn anything from their mistakes and will selectively seek positive feedback.

This phenomenon is called “confirmation bias.”

People want to feel good about themselves. Therefore, we often look for feedback that is consistent with our self-image. When we need to boost our ego, this can be helpful. However, confirmation bias is the enemy when we need to avoid mistakes.

Are you more of the “wake-up call” profile or the “shut-off” profile?

If you think that intelligence is malleable — that we can improve, and even get really good at something when we practise deliberately — you are more the “wake-up call” type, likely to pay more attention to mistakes and to learn from them.

However, if you think that your intelligence and talent are fixed — i.e. that you’re either good at something or you’re not — you are likely to be the “shut-off” profile.

Alternately, if it seems to you that the more experience 50 country-guide.ca

you have, the more you trust your judgment, this also make you more prone to being the “shut-off” profile.

Other studies show that narcissistic personalities will “shut off” because they cannot stand to be wrong.

So, as a leader, what attitudes can you develop to help you learn from your mistakes?

First, embrace mistakes as opportunities to improve, to learn, and to perform better. Don’t put too much trust in your judgment and your experience. Instead, recognize that issues are complex, so we always have to learn. Keep your ego in check; it can blind you and prevent you from learning.

What do you do after you realize that you have messed up?

Admit your mistake rapidly. Don’t wait until others discover it and take it to the next level.

Ask yourself, “What did I learn about the situation, about me, about others?”

What do we learn as a group? Could I have prevented it? How? What was a sign that I didn’t listen to?

It’s your team; it’s your mistake. Take all the responsibility. Whether you have a direct role or not, don’t put the blame on others. People admire leaders who take responsibility.

What will we do differently next time?

In the agricultural world, we now have to make more complex decisions more quickly. Our industry is unlike it was 30 or 40 years ago, when one year was like any other and we tended to repeat the same decisions over and over. Because the rate and complexity of decisions is higher, the rate of our mistakes goes up too.

If you want to have an edge over your competitors and be a better boss, you have to approach errors differently.

Seize the moment of truth. You need time to stop, reflect, then to act differently afterward. This greater consciousness allows us to improve ourselves. Look at your and your employees’ habits and belief systems to help prevent other mistakes. This will help lift your farm’s performance to another level.

If you live long enough, you will make mistakes.

But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better, more successful person. CG Pierrette Desrosiers, MPS, CRHA is a work psychologist, professional speaker, coach and author who specializes in the agricultural industry. She comes from a family of farmers and she and her husband have farmed for more than 25 years (www. pierrettedesrosiers.com). Contact her at pierrette@ pierrettedesrosiers.com.

M ay / j u n e 2 0 1 5

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