BOWDEN, Alta. – After living through the worst crisis to ever strike the Canadian beef business, Ian and Karilynn Marshall are planning their family’s future with optimism.
Named Alberta’s outstanding young farmers in 2004, the owners of this family-run feedlot east of Bowden are talking expansion to make room for their two sons and daughter.
They lived through the stress of riding down the deepest plunge in market history when BSE took prices to 30 cents a pound from more than $1 in 2003.
They were still able to show judges they could survive and make progress as nominees in the outstanding young farmer program. They did not know much about the program before they were nominated and are now are involved as alumni with others who have been nominated the past 25 years.
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Their greatest gain from the program has been meeting other young farmers brimming with optimism and innovative ideas to continue producing food.
“Everybody in that program is so upbeat. You come away with a lot of optimism,” Ian said.
The Marshalls met as students at Olds College. Ian was studying agricultural mechanics and Karilynn was enrolled in agriculture business. Ian had grown up on the feedlot his father Art Marshall had started.
Karilynn was born in Calgary but longed to be in agriculture after visits to her grandfather’s Saskatchewan farm. She did not plan to meet and marry a cowboy but she found that she and Ian had common interests including a love of the land. They married in 1988 and soon started a family.
Their world is the beef business and activities with their three children, Katie, 16, Garnet, 15 and Ky, 13. All the kids are avid 4-H beef club members, train horses and in recent years, have turned high school rodeo into a family passion.
Rather than being perched in front of a television or video game, these teenagers spend more than six hours a week practising rodeo events over and above their regular farm chores. In a tight labour market, they have become the hired help, working alongside their parents, grandparents and two employees.
“Our goal is to give them the option of agriculture, but we’re not saying they have to be in it,” Ian said.
“We want to be here to help the kids the way Ian’s dad did for us,” said Karilynn.
Soft spoken and introspective, Ian is concerned fewer young people may choose farming as a career because the price of land and equipment is so capital intensive that they need a family or other mentor to start them in the business.
His father immigrated from Scotland 50 years ago and was able to buy a farm and start a feedlot. He bought his first quarter of land for $8,000.
“It was realistic that you could buy a quarter section and the odd time if you had the right crop, you could damn near pay for the quarter that year,” Ian said.
“Now, you can’t even pay the interest on a quarter no matter what you are growing.”
Today, living just off the Highway 2 corridor, they see fewer neighbours making their living on the farm. Land carries a real estate value rather than agriculture price, so more property has been turned into acreages and small holdings.
Ian is confident agriculture will turn around.
“I think that we are in the toughest era of agriculture right now. I actually think it is going to get a lot better.
“People have to eat but until people go hungry they don’t realize how important it is.”
The Marshalls found it worth their while to join the verified beef program as part of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association food safety program. After taking the workshop they found they were doing almost everything right except they needed to document their activities.
Everyone on the farm has been trained to follow the rules and as food producers they want to guarantee the quality of beef leaving their operation.
“We should be able to guarantee the product we send out of here. If you buy a car from GM, you expect a quality product. If we send cattle out of here, I want to send the best quality we can,” he said.
While they do their best in the feedlot, they would like to encourage cow-calf producers who sell them calves to support the program as well.
The Marshalls’ feedlot has a 9,000 head capacity and they keep about 300 cows. About 3,500 acres are farmed, mostly for animal feed, and recently the family bought grazing land near Edson, Alta., for expansion plans.
That new property in northern Alberta could be an added opportunity for their children if they choose to farm. However, Ian and Karilynn reiterate the children must be interested in whatever career they choose.
“I would hate to go to work at something I didn’t want to go to every day,” Ian said.
