CAMROSE, Alta. – A lot of people want Bob Prestage’s opinion this morning. Six phone calls and three faxes bid for his attention before noon.
He juggles his interview time with planning for a trip to England, calls about Libya’s health guidelines for imported cattle and social chats. Life is as full as his black address book.
Prestage, an Alberta rancher turned livestock exporter, has been sending Canadian animals to various countries for 20 years. He can’t remember how many trips he has made, but his briefcase is stuffed with contacts.
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Prestage is involved in two exporting companies with 10 employees based in Camrose and Marsden, Sask. They specialize in cattle but are also ready to handle horses, ostriches, swine, sheep, goats and llamas.
Prestage doesn’t look or sound like a globe trotting businessman with his brush cut and brash talk. In striped shirt and cowboy hat he seems more like the rancher he was before switching to an exporting career. Prestage is deliberate as he makes tea and coffee, taking time to think over a response. Other times he’s barking out amusing stories or presenting advice in the serious manner he practises as a judge at 4-H and junior breeder shows.
Prestage got into the business when he met a friend judging a dairy show in Brazil in 1976.
“He said ‘Do you think we can find 300 bred Aberdeen Angus heifers? Do you think we can find 600?’ I said yes. We started that summer.”
Canadian animals are well respected because of the stringent government herd health and testing system, he said. But that system is threatened by funding cuts. There used to be 83 federal vets in Alberta, checking among other things for tuberculosis, brucellosis and rabies. There are now 47.
Prestage worries that without the vigilance of the herd health people in Canada, the good reputation could slip.
“I don’t say that things don’t change. They constantly evolve. Between this farm and Wetaskiwin there used to be 13 gates on the trail. It was an all-day job (to get there). Now it’s an hour. So times change.”
Prestage provides export services once handled by the government, but he passes the cost along to the customer in the other country. One expense he can’t avoid paying is the monthly phone bill. “You could live on it,” he said.
Prestage has a relaxed view of foreign oddities – he’s eaten many of them. In Arabian countries the delicacy is a goat’s eyeball. In China it’s dog meat. He has also been offered locusts and wax-covered bees. If he can’t avoid eating the local dish he tries to find some piece with a bone that is identifiable.
But he’s also had a steak at Chicago’s Saddle and Sirloin Club that was so rare “the GD thing was still bawling.” He can understand upset stomachs so he likes to balance off all the beef that visiting Asian livestock browsers get in Canada with a more familiar meal of rice.
Prestage likes the challenge of the export business and gets to meet new people. He held a dispersal sale for his herd of Angus in 1993 because they tied him to the ranch. But his base is in cattle and he chose Angus early on because of an experiment.
“When I was in 4-H, the first calf I purchased was a Hereford. Then this Angus breeder came along and said he had a better one. I joined two 4-H clubs, it’s illegal now, one with a Hereford and joined the other club with an Angus.”
On sale day the Hereford sold for a $10 profit; the Angus did much better. With the money he bought two more Angus and began working for the breeder who tipped him off.
It was that early mentor who fired Prestage’s enthusiasm for youth. As chair of the 22-year-old Canadian National Junior Angus Show held in Bashaw, Alta., he ensures young people get a full course. Not only are the animals shown but there is a judging and marketing contest in which the young people try to sell him a cow, embryo or semen lot. They do a sales pitch and also must write up an advertisement. Prestage thinks this benefits the young people who learn to speak with confidence and realism about their animals.
“If the agricultural industry is to survive, the young people have to come in and take our place. Knowledge is power but I could get run over with a truck and all that knowledge is gone and it has to be relearned.”
Education needs to be practical. Prestage said a doctorate from the university doesn’t make someone a good exporter, “it doesn’t even make you a good cowboy.”
Prestage does not expect to retire: “My father always said the human being will rust out before he wears out.”
Margaret Prestage is out in the truck today but Bob gives his wife plenty of credit in the sale catalogue as “a hired man that doubled as wife, mother, grandmother, cook, farm manager and business adviser.”
Prestage said the day he and Margaret married he told her she could handle all the minor decisions and he’d take care of the major ones. And in 39 years of marriage, he quips, he has never had to make a decision.
