The future of farming seems obvious. At least, it can seem like that if we don’t look very hard. The only thing that’s certain is this: Farmers keep passing every test they face.
A decade is such a short time. Most farmers expect to be at the top of their game for something like four of them, back to back. So how much change can there be in any single one?
It’s not like the countryside is in a constant state of upheaval, after all.
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On any early spring day, if you look down the laneway and toward the road from almost any farmstead in Canada, what you’ll see won’t look so utterly different from what you would have seen 40 years ago.
But what you see can make it seem that the evolution of farming has a definite direction and some kind of plan in mind. Most notably, it can feel that we are inevitably on our way to bigger and bigger farms, with fewer farmhouses, schools and churches in sight.
Take that look in another six weeks or so, of course, and the picture that will hit you between the eyes will lead to conclusions of a different sort — the same kind of conclusions that you’d probably come to now if instead of looking down the lane toward the road, you turned around and looked inside your sheds or maybe at your grain handling equipment or livestock facilities.
No one from 40 years ago could help but be blown away by the size and power of today’s equipment and our electronic technology. So the conclusion has got to be that the passage of the years inevitably leads to a constant and continuous evolution of the farm’s productivity.
So there we have it. This is what evolution wants … bigger farms and bigger tools.
Except, it all looks so different if, instead of looking at the farm, we look at the farmer.
Imagine yourself 10 years ago, in the early months of 2013. How much of what has happened in the intervening years would you have been able to predict? Would the size of your tractor really be the biggest story?
In 2013, you would have forecast commodity prices would be volatile going forward — we talked about volatility even then — but you would never have guessed at the volatile extremes we have seen, or the reasons for them. And while you would have expected land prices to increase, you wouldn’t foresee today’s markets.
Mostly, though, you wouldn’t have been able to predict the amount of professionalization that farmers would soon be seizing on.
Nor — and more importantly – would you have been able to predict the impact that this professionalization would have.
In just 10 years, the role of the farmer has been significantly transformed, as have the farmers themselves.
Perhaps you can tell that when I get asked to speculate on the future shape of agriculture, I try not to seem too contrarian, but I always say, Can’t I talk about the future of the farmer instead?
I am convinced today’s farmers will build an agriculture that is what they choose, not what evolution has decreed. Are you certain of that too?
Are we getting it right? Let me know at [email protected].
