Christoph and Erika Weder from the Peace River district are Alberta’s 2006 outstanding young farmers.
“It’s quite an honour from our standpoint. There are very few young people in my age group or my area,” said Christoph.
“We do a lot of things that are out of the box for our region so it was nice to be recognized.”
Both were born in Switzerland but met in Guatemala where Christoph toured range operations and Erika was travelling. She came from a Swiss dairy farm and emigrated to Canada in 2001. They married and settled at Camrose, Alta., where Christoph already had a cow-calf operation close to his parents’ farm and worked with Alberta Agriculture as a beef specialist for nine years.
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Erika is chief financial officer for the ranch and works in the consulting business with Christoph. They have two children, Pasco, 2, and Nero.
Christoph received an agriculture degree from the University of Alberta in 1993 and completed a masters in 1996 at OregonÊState University in animal science and range management.
He received his doctorate in 2006 in ruminant nutrition and management, which he completed via e-mails, phone calls and occasional trips to the University of Alberta.
Their life changed in 2002 when severe drought forced them to send their cattle to the Peace district for grazing. That same summer Christoph was offered a transfer to the area with the provincial agriculture department.
They moved their herd and started Spirit View Ranch between Spirit River and Rycroft and eventually decided to ranch and consult full time. Besides beef production, the ranch produces alfalfa for export, honey, traditional grain crops including wheat, oats, barley, peas and canola and grass seed.
They keep an intensively managed cow herd of about 300 head using artificial insemination and home-raised bulls.
Along with 15 other ranchers and a feedlot in their area, they have started marketing a natural beef program on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.
Their consultant business is connected to the sustainable grazing mentorship program where Christoph is a mentor for the Peace region of Alberta and British Columbia. Working with groups or individuals, the couple helps others create grazing plans and analyze the economics of their operations. The program is partly funded by the greenhouse gas mitigation program.
SVR Ranch Consulting also helps people with rangeland, pasture and grazing management planning and beef nutrition.
Another arm of the business helps with grazing livestock and planning for winter nutrition to help producers match their livestock to the available forage production on their land while being mindful of environmental
concerns.
The service also helps clients establish cost of production data with goal setting components for better management.
TheWeders will join six other young farm families in Saskatoon at the end of November for the national finals of the outstanding young farmer program.
