PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, Man., – Terry Simpson disregarded his wife’s advice to back away from farming after the Crow Benefit ended.
He swallowed the government’s bitter pill and kept farming: growing grain, running a cow-calf operation and operating a hog feeding barn.
Then, the pig price crash hammered him in 1998 and the BSE crisis struck in 2003. He developed second thoughts about what he should have done back in 1995.
“I maybe should have listened to my wife,” said Simpson with a chuckle, remembering how he felt a couple of years ago.
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“It might have been smarter to downsize to a small holding and get a second job.”
But today things seem better, and he’s made the transition to a post-Crow world with a farm intact. It allows his two daughters to work with the cattle and offers his son, who works off-farm, the hope of taking over a viable farm.
“In Saskatchewan I think they call that child abuse,” Simpson joked.
Somehow, despite all the struggles since 1995, Simpson has found a way to survive and he’s not scaling down his operation, even though he’s 64 years old.
“I’m looking at expanding again,” he said of his hog feeding operation.
“It’s working good.”
Simpson knew the end of the Crow would compel changes on his farm, but he was only forced to act a year after the change, when his pocketbook started feeling light.
“I saw my income go down, even though I was farming the same land base and the prices were good.”
In response, he expanded his cow herd to 200 head from 45 and boosted his hog feeding to 600 head from 200.
In addition to the pig price crash and BSE, he’s had other struggles that have made the move away from grain a challenge.
He found he couldn’t get good weanlings in Manitoba because they were all exported to the United States. All he could get were “B” class pigs, so eventually he linked up with an Ontario company and now finishes hogs for it.
“I’m guaranteed to get paid,” said Simpson, who willingly traded independence for security.
He has survived, but he’s still angry that a government policy change could put his family through so much turmoil. Regardless, the farm has made the necessary changes. Remembering the “good old days” of the Crow Benefit does little good.
“I was making a pretty good living growing grain, but when the Crow changed, my life changed too.”
