Like every other issue of Country Guide, our pages show Canada’s farms are getting more and more individualistic. That’s a good thing. It’s a professional thing. And it won’t stop
If you’re having a bad day, you’ll find our January 2023 issue of Country Guide a pretty easy target.
That’s okay.
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For example, Richard Kamchen writes a story about how the local food market isn’t growing nearly as fast as most Canadians (although perhaps not most farmers) appear to think.
You’ll also find writer Trevor Bacque launching into the details of how Saskatchewan farmer Matt Enns is breaking through with his value-add malt business, largely thanks to beer drinkers who love local.
So, which is it? Is local a lot smaller than its fans hoped? Or is it a rich seam to be mined?
Well, it’s both.
Everybody who reads Country Guide knows that I’m blown away by the increasing professionalization of Canadian agriculture. In fact, I don’t see how anyone could thumb through a year’s worth of the Guide and not be similarly wowed.
We don’t exaggerate. We talk to farmers, we engage with them about what they’re thinking, what they’re doing and what they’re planning to do, and we also probe what their major learnings have been. Then we write it down.
You might also like to know this. When I send writers out, I do it with a simple instruction. When they file their stories, I want to see their farmers portrayed as competent, not boastful. Those are exactly the words I use, “competent, not boastful” because that’s what I believe farmers are, and because I also believe that the farmers we profile in our pages are typical of the great mass of farmers across this great land.
They are representative of every one of you.
In a similar way, when I send a photographer out to a farm and the photographer asks me what I’m looking for, I tell them, “I want to see someone I can relate to. I want to see someone who, if they were talking, I’d slow down a bit so I could hear what they have to say.”
Professionalization doesn’t mean our farms are getting more and more the same. If anything,
they’re getting more different, not necessarily in what they produce but more often in how they are structured, how they are organized and how they see themselves moving into the future.
Much as they love their home farms and take pride in what they produce, their professionalization arises from how they value the skills and the attitudes they bring to the table, not just with what they grow.
Besides, as we know, every farm has its challenges. Jeanine Moyer’s story on cutting-edge business management strategies and Ralph Pearce’s on a succession plan gone awry show this. Everyone is continuously improving, just not all at the same speed in all directions.
I wish all Canadians could see this, but for those of us who can, it creates both a sense of joy and mission to be involved in ag today. Am I getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
