Agriculture reigns in Taber and everybody knows it the minute they hit the town limits.
Driving in from the west, you pass the usual restaurants and gas stations, but mostly you notice the farm equipment dealers and agribusinesses standing shoulder to shoulder along Highway 3. Or if you make the trip in from the east, you see Rogers Sugar in all its blue and white glory rising above a host of other agri-food processors, including Frito-Lay.
Then the farm links continue right into the heart of town. In fact, most of the houses in the new subdivisions are agricultural too, even if there aren t any pickups parked out front, and most of the businesses owe their success to their farm clientele.
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This is a town that knows what side its bread is buttered on, and because it does, it s actually helping to fuel the surge in the region s farm outlook.
Tabre and its 8,000 residents are a long way from Alberta s tech, tourist and commercial industries. But they do have one thing going for them.
There are a million acres in the municipal district surrounding the town in the south central part of the province, 45 minutes east of Lethbridge and an hour north of the Montana border. And it s quite a million acres, with about a third in native grassland and another third dryland farmed with durum and hard red spring wheat, plus 151,000 head of cattle under cow-calf production and 110,000 hogs.
Then there s roughly a third of the district s acres that are irrigated, growing a long list of crops from sugar beets and sweet corn to peas and lentils, including a big chunk of the province s 50,000-acre potato crop.
When you look at the total production of the municipal district s 768 farms, with gross farm receipts of $500,000 million, the intensity of agriculture is quite significant, says Derrick Krizsan, administrator of the Municipal District of Taber and its 6,700 people. The intensity is what s impressive about this area.
It s a two-way street. Intensive production of specialty crops has led to job-intensive agri-food processing in the town.
To grow, the town of Taber needs high-value farming. Equally, farmers in the area need the processors and services in the town.
Of course, as everyone in the area knows, there s a third leg to this stool.
It s water that makes the area so productive, says Greg Sekura, talking into his cell phone while spraying fields about five miles southeast of the town. Also, our hot days and cool nights help crop
