Today’s mid-career farmers have got things figured out. They know they’re different. They’re more professional, they’re more management oriented, they’re more strategic, but …
But, as a group, they’re at risk of getting outshone by the young farmers in the next generation that are starting to show what they can do.
You’ll see it in the pages of Country Guide this winter as we bring you in- depth interviews with farmers across Canada who are approaching their 10th year of active farming.
Read Also
Outstanding Manitoba farm couple harnesses innovation and data
For over a decade Paige and Marcus Dueck have embraced their passion for farming while striving to innovate and expand…
We’re doing this because we don’t listen to young farmers enough. None of us do.
Okay, I agree, that’s not quite right. We do listen to our young people to make sure they can sing from the farm songsheet. Agriculture is nothing if not rigorous in ensuring everyone is on message.
(Let me squeeze in a quick aside to complain again about how farm and agri groups across the country run myriad essay and speaking contests for young would-be farmers, with awards handed out for echoing the party line. Instead, shouldn’t we be asking young people: where is the older generation going wrong, what chances are they missing, how and why will your generation be different?)
When you read our interview with Manitoba’s Dane Froese in our January 3, 2023, issue of Country Guide, you will find lots that is comforting. You’ll see his respect for family, his inexhaustible ability to work, his passion for independence.
Read more closely, though, and you will see that, like a lot of his generation, he isn’t just independent, he’s self-directed. He knows what he wants and why he wants it, and it matters to him that he does the right thing.
He doesn’t want to be what he calls a factory farmer, and he sees no contradiction between his being open to the idea of building greenhouses and still considering himself a mainline farmer.
Most of all, he wants to do what’s right, and it matters to him that it’s right because he feels it is right, not because of some allegiance to what the rest of agriculture thinks.
It’s true that his is a generation that sometimes gets sneered at by established farmers for having a sense of entitlement.
The criticism is sometimes justified. We’ve all seen it. But also listen to Andy Junkin in his piece on partnerships, also in our January 3 issue, when he says that if the young have a sense of entitlement, so do their elders. Or can mid-career farmers take credit for the black swans like the war in Ukraine, global droughts or the low Canadian dollar, things have contributed materially to their success?
Multi-generational farms will be crucial to Canada’s agriculture future. And if they are crucial to our agriculture, they will be crucial to our country too.
And so will farms headed up by today’s beginning farmers, full of energy, determination, professionalism, and their own take on farm values.
Let’s listen to them, not in social media blips, but in the sustained conversations that Country Guide always aims for. I can’t wait.
Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
