I always try to keep lessons like that of Deutoronomy 9:6 in mind.
“Understand then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Quite a few times in the Good Book, God gets angry with the Hebrew tribes as he leads them towards the Promised Land, and is exasperated by their “stubborn and stiff-necked” nature.
I am positive that neither this passage in the Bible nor the other references to stiff-necked people has anything whatsoever to do with modern hog industry or with contemporary farmers, but I must admit the principle of the passage has often popped up in my mind as I have covered the farming industry over the past 20 years.
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Often it used to be in a bad way, when I would be covering something in which farmers were responding to public pressure to change some farming practice for environmental or animal welfare reasons. Until a few years ago, there tended to be a lot of defiance and denunciation of anyone who dared criticize a farm practice, and an unwillingness to consider altering methods.
That stiff-necked attitude certainly doesn’t seem to exist among most farmers today, or at least not amongst those I meet at farm events and shows. I saw a lot of evidence for that less-defiant attitude at two events last week, events that showed that farmers are listening closely to urbanites and are willing to consider the views of others beyond the farmgate.
The first was the release of a wide-ranging report on hog industry sustainability by the Manitoba Pork Council, something that contained a de facto moratorium on new stalls for gestating sows. While the European Union has banned gestating sow stalls and there are pressures to change the practice in North America, there are no open  attempts right now to ban their use on the prairies at any serious level.
If producers wanted to be stiff-necked and deny that group housing is almost certainly the way of the future – something some have been and have done over the years – they wouldn’t be putting out this policy now. Already the Hutterites are building non-stall barns, and when the industry finally gets back to building new barns en masse – in a few years – it will probably go the same way. That should disarm the main attack on the hog industry today and set up the industry for long time safety from most animal rights attacks.
I asked the council’s director in charge of research if grassroots farmers were likely to accept the call to move to group housing from stalls, something they have been resistant to in the past, and he said most have already accepted the change as necessary and doable.
“Their backs aren’t up and they aren’t resistant or defiant,” Rick Bergmann told me.
The other event I went to yesterday that was also stiff-necksless was Agriculture in the City, an event in Winnipeg that gives farm and agriculture organizations a chance to talk about what modern farmers do with cityfolk.
The pork council was there, canola growers were there, buckwheat producers were there, Ducks Unlimited was there, Keystone Agricultural Producers was there, grain companies were there, etc. Most of the major ag organizations in the province were there. It’s a smart event, one that gives farmers the chance to mingle and chat casually with thousands of Winnipeggers in a fun and relaxed environment.
I took my kids and my mother to the event, and it was a fun day out. My kids liked munching on pulse and barley based cookies and they got to meet a few farmers. My three-and-a-half year old was disappointed that there was no barn at The Forks, and that the milking cow wasn’t real, but I expect most of more senior years understood that there wasn’t actually going to be a farm at The Forks yesterday. I should have explained that better to my daughter before we went down there yesterday, because she’s still reporting to my wife that “Dad made a mistake” on the barn issue.
Here are a few pictures from the event, and you won’t find a stubborn or stiff-necked farmer amongst them.
