KILLARNEY, Man. Ñ Kevin and Glenda Archibald tug twines from a round bale and scatter the straw with pitchforks.
They are bedding down a barn where cows are kept when due to calve. The sky is cast in blue, the sun radiates warmth and a gentle wind carries the scent of silage across the farmyard.
The Archibalds are in their element here. Glenda thrives on tending to the cattle while Kevin is enchanted by new ideas that will benefit the management of their land and livestock.
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It wasn’t always like this.
In the late 1990s, Kevin was president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association and his family’s farm southeast of Killarney was devoted mainly to crop produ-
ction.
Making a living from growing crops was challenging. More daunting was the task of being a farm leader caught in the fiery debate over grain transportation reform and the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly. Even within the wheat growers there was dissension, particularly about how to crack the monopoly.
“It was a tumultuous time,” Kevin says. “If I had to make the choice, I wouldn’t trade this for that anymore.”
The shift to livestock production and the withdrawal from farm politics seems an unusual twist in the life of someone whose name still resonates within grain industry circles and whose steadfast opinions at times made him a target for threats and harassment from his detractors.
However, for Kevin, the changes fit with what he wanted for his family and their farm.
He saw the promise of a better livelihood from cattle and says he never wanted to use his farm leadership credentials as a stepping stone toward a full-time political career.
Glenda never would have embraced life as the wife of a career politician.
“I couldn’t live like that,” she says, between wrapping up twine from the round bale and forking straw around.
“I wouldn’t even think of it. I’m afraid I married a farmer. I am a farmer.”
A few years ago, the Archibalds were like many grain farmers in their area. They were taking on more grain land, hoping profits would come from being market savvy and finding ways to produce crops more efficiently.
But that didn’t happen. Costs kept rising while profits remained elusive from their 2,000 acres of grain land.
Kevin was also frustrated by what he saw as lost opportunities to make grain transportation more efficient in Western Canada, partly by restricting the wheat board to a grain marketing role with no control over grain transportation.
And the weather wasn’t always helpful, either.
“You could do everything right but Mother Nature still bats last.”
One year, after seeding a runway to hay to prevent soil erosion, he learned that forage production could be more profitable than grain farming.
The next logical step was to buy cattle that would work as forage harvesters, limiting the need for costly farm implements.
“It’s not new ideas that are hard,” Kevin says. “It’s letting go of old ideas.”
Two years ago, he and Glenda were enthusiastic about the transition to cattle farming. They were gleaning ideas from grazing schools, holistic resource management courses and cattle marketing workshops.
Then came a jarring test of their commitment to cattle farming. Exports of Canadian cattle and beef shuddered to a halt in May 2003 while Canada’s trading partners mulled over the impact of BSE in an Alberta cull cow.
The Archibalds’ commitment held, supported by a belief that they still controlled how they managed their farm and marketed their cattle, regardless of when the border might reopen.
Glenda remembers a time when her reading interests leaned toward magazines like Cosmopolitan. Now, it tends to be literature about the genetics of bulls that could be a good fit for their farm.
For the Archibalds, this time of year is devoted mainly to feeding cattle, bedding pens and checking on cows due to calve.
“I think my official capacity here at calving time is gate opener and closer,” jokes Glenda, swinging a steel gate open so that Kevin can pass through with a bale clutched in the claws of their tractor’s bucket and grapple forks.
Kevin’s involvement in farm policy went beyond the wheat growers. He still is involved with Pesticide-Free Production Canada and a related marketing effort that continues to be thwarted by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s refusal to allow the term pesticide-free production to be trademarked for marketing purposes.
The agency insists such a logo would mislead consumers into believing no pesticides were used in producing the grain used in food.
“It’s unfortunate because there was opportunity there,” Kevin says.
Pesticide-Free Production Canada supported research on ways to reduce farmers’ reliance on commercial crop inputs, especially pesticides.
The movement’s marketing arm was meant to capture premiums for producers opting for a production method where no chemicals are used from the time of planting until harvest.
Until recently, Kevin was also an outside director of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange and was a founding member of Grain Growers of Canada and a former director of the Canada Grains Council.
While returning from the field with the feeding cart in tow, he says it was rewarding to see Grain Growers of Canada established as a national organization that brings more of a free enterprise viewpoint to farm policy discussions.
While frustrated that the grain handling system did not become as commercially driven as he would have liked, he remains encouraged that he had a hand in getting a new pricing option established through the wheat board. That option allows growers to sell wheat priced off the futures exchange, rather than having to sell it all through a pooling account.
Kevin believes it allows producers to make more money from their grain and to more closely time sales revenues to a farm’s cash flow needs.
“I felt pretty good that I was one of the drivers behind it,” he says, noting that the pricing option was once jokingly referred to as the Archibald clause.
“That pricing option was actually my idea.”
He viewed it as a middle ground between those entrenched behind keeping the wheat board monopoly intact and those who wanted it abolished.
To him, it was time to move the issue beyond a stalemate, especially since it was clear to him that Ralph Goodale, the minister responsible for the wheat board at the time, had no intention of ending the monopoly.
“I just felt it was time to end the debate,” he says. “It was going nowhere.”
Although he viewed the pricing option as a way to at least soften the wheat board monopoly, there were those within the wheat growers who felt anything less than complete abolishment of the monopoly was a sellout.
The disagreement was part of a rift that had been developing for years between those taking a more moderate approach to gaining reforms and those with their minds set on crushing the monopoly.
The Archibalds have three children: Kristin, 23, earned a bachelor of science degree in agro-ecology from the University of Manitoba and works for the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration in Winnipeg; Marina, 20, is in her third year of bachelor of science studies at the University of Manitoba; and Cory, 15, attends school in Killarney and works on the farm.
While not sure whether any of his children will one day become farmers, Kevin believes they have been given an appreciation of the importance of farming and its relationship to the environment.
