Of all the interviews I’ve done with farmers who have taken business courses or who have done detailed business planning for their farms, I’ve never run into one who has said they thought it was anything less than a very good investment. They may have wished it didn’t take as much time as it does, but they’re glad they did it.
Always, they considered it one of the most important decisions they had every made.
So while we don’t usually cheerlead for government, today is different. This time, government has it right. Even better, their timing is right too.
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It’s true that the educational and training opportunities in the new Growing Forward programs will never make up for the lack of a clearly articulated federal vision. Nor can education programs can make up for Ottawa’s weakness in dealing with our trading partners, or its inability to help sectors in trouble when the help can still do them maximum good.
But under any scenario, whether Canada’s agriculture is firing on all cylinders or if it’s battered and bruised, mid-career education and training for the country’s farmers is an essential ingredient — especially business education and training.
If you haven’t checked out the opportunities in your province, it’s worth at least making the call to investigate them.
Agriculture is one of the few industries still grounded enough so that all of us know a farmer who barely scraped through Grade 10 and then went on to become so successful at farming, they could buy up all their neighbours.
What they did is no small thing. Really, though, these farmers succeeded because they had shrewdness by the pound, and often more than an ounce of cunning too.
Today, shrewd isn’t enough. It takes tools. Markets change so quickly and so violently, and the cost of getting into and out of any line of farming can be so extreme, you can’t survive by only using the techniques you learned at your father’s knee. And if agriculture seems volatile and uncertain now, just imagine what it will look like in 10 years.
We aren’t pessimists. The amount of progress that agriculture has made in the last couple of decades has been amazing. Farmers have picked up financial skills with incredible speed, but that same intelligence means they’re more than up to the task of learning another new generation of business skills.
With mixed uptake of the farm business program in the last APF round, Ottawa could be forgiven if it had backed off. That fact it didn’t shows determination, and I am betting that this time farmer acceptance will be much higher too.
Finally government is heading in the same direction as farmers and at the same time.
Let us know what you think about the new Growing Forward programs. Did we get it right? I’m at [email protected],or you can reach me at 519-674-1449.
