It is time for grain farmers to ditch their negative Nelly attitudes and start talking positively about their industry, says a Manitoba farm leader.
Growers in the three prairie provinces posted record crop receipts of $18.3 billion in 2012, according to Statistics Canada.
That is up 15 percent over last year and more than 2.5 times the revenue their grain farms generated at the start of the new millennium.
Farmers should be proudly celebrating their good fortune, said Doug Chorney, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.
“I’m 48 years old and we’ve never had better times in grain farming in Western Canada than right now,” he said. “I have never been more excited about a crop being planted and harvested than I have been the last couple of years.”
Read Also
Crop conditions a pleasant surprise
Market analysts found some stressed crops and some good ones on pre-Ag In Motion 2025 crop tours,
Chorney hesitates to share his enthusiasm about the industry because his fellow producers don’t like him talking about the money being made in grain farming.
“I’ve taken a lot of criticism from my members at the district meetings last fall for being too upbeat,” he said.
“But if we’re going to attract our own kids to be interested in agriculture in the future, I think we have to start talking about some of our successes.”
National Farmers Union president Terry Boehm doesn’t share that view.
“There’s no point attracting new entrants to agriculture with their eyes closed,” he said.
Boehm believes young farmers should be aware of what he sees as the dismantling and erosion of agriculture, such as the loss of CWB’s single desk and community pastures and the watering down of the Canadian Grain Commission.
He said high grain prices are masking a lot of underlying problems in farming.
“Agriculture has always been a cycle of boom and bust, and the political landscape that I see in front of us will actually exacerbate that boom and bust situation because those mechanisms that balance some of the power are being eliminated.”
For instance, young farmers need to know that seed technology companies are heavily lobbying Ottawa for increased plant breeder’s rights so they can squeeze more money out of growers.
“They’re relentless, relentless, relentless. They’re never off message,” Boehm said. “They’re going to give us innovation, but they need just this extra return that this legislated protection will give them.”
He said one pound of canola seed sells for 36 times what a grower receives from the elevator, which hurts the bottom line.
Chorney has heard that popular lament: that rising input costs are negating the benefits of higher grain prices. It’s not the case on his farm, which is making money these days.
“I can afford to pay for fertilizer when I sell canola for $15 a bushel.”
Statistics Canada says crop receipts for the prairie provinces are up 68 percent since 2007, which was the year before the run-up in grain prices.
Expenses for fertilizer, pesticides and seed are up 44 percent over that same period.
Chorney said there is a “culture of complaining” in farming. Growers have griped for generations about things such as too much rain or not enough rain and they never seem satisfied with their returns.
“I’m going to take heat for saying that, but that’s the truth,” he said.
“We’ve become part of a pattern of negative outlooks. Maybe it’s time to temper that message a bit so that we can ensure renewal in our industry.”
He said his own mother gave him hell for quitting a job to return to farming. Chorney has been hearing similar comments his entire life, and he’s sick of it. He believes farming is a great career.
“There’s a lot of positive news coming out of agriculture and we’re sort of embarrassed to admit we’re successful because it has been such a common theme of negativism through the generations,” he said.
Boehm disagreed, saying farmers have bona fide reasons to grumble.
“I know from the outside it looks like farmers are squawking all the time because there’s always something wrong,” he said.
However, he sees an industry where seed technology companies are gaining power at the expense of farmers, land prices are so high that they have become a barrier to entry and a bushel of grain doesn’t have the purchasing power that it did in the 1970s when his father experienced similar high grain prices.
“He could buy a new tractor for 4,000 bu. of wheat. Now you can’t even imagine that,” said Boehm.
Chorney thinks it is time farmers stopped being so hesitant to admit they have a brand new combine or they just bought an expensive parcel of land. However, he also said he knows that not all farmers are riding a wave of good fortune.
For instance, he knows many Manitoba hog producers are under tremendous duress.
Chorney also pointed out there is considerable risk in grain farming. While the input costs are a given, the revenue side is subject to the vagaries of the weather.
So it’s not all roses, he said, but it’s not all thorns either.
