Rural Manitoba is a beautiful place to farm, whether it’s in the forest fringes of eastern Manitoba, the valley-facing lands of the Souris, Pembina and Assiniboine, the lakeside lands of the Interlake or in the lees of the Duck, Riding and Turtle mountains.
But it sure is a tough place to run a business.
The local “labour supply” might be a handful of people in villages and towns far from the farm, or people overseas who might be willing to come and work in an isolated part of a foreign-speaking land.
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Professional services might be in one of those nearby-ish towns or villages, but often it means a drive to the city instead. That’s not great for a busy farming operation.
For farmers who are aging and hoping to entice the younger generation to move into the business, the fact that access to health care or education is getting more and more distant is a disincentive to stay on the farm or to move to the farm.
Running an increasingly digitized business and industry in areas where cellphone coverage is weak or non-existent isn’t just a continuing challenge, it’s an increasing challenge as more and more systems require farmers to be in constant contact. Half-million dollar combines get a little frustrated when they can’t communicate with the rest of the farm and the wider world.
These are all issues Manitoba’s new NDP government can address.
There might not be much agricultural depth in the new, Winnipeg-based provincial government, but MLAs and perhaps future cabinet ministers Ron Kostyshyn and Diljeet Brar both understand farming and can speak the agricultural language.
Premier-designate Wab Kinew struck a conciliatory, respectful and constructive tone in his victory speech, encouraging rural Manitobans to give him and his government a chance to win them over.
Why not take him up on that?
Nobody should expect to see the NDP government make agriculture a focus, but nothing from Kinew or the NDP this election seemed antagonistic toward agriculture.
The NDP is the party that believes government can do real good for people. Well, there are things that the government could do to improve life for farmers and everybody in rural Manitoba, including those issues I trotted out above.
Perhaps the now-departing Progressive Conservative government did its best to address these issues while it was in power, but that doesn’t mean they tackled the issues in the best way, and they certainly didn’t resolve them.
Perhaps they didn’t tackle these issues as aggressively as they could have. One negative aspect of rural Manitoba voting so predictably and overwhelmingly PC is that the party could take rural Manitoba for granted with little danger of losing seats. Did it do that?
I doubt it intentionally ignored rural issues, but without having its butt on the burner as it has been in Winnipeg’s critical seats, maybe those issues were just managed rather than tackled.
The NDP has the chance to surprise everybody by fighting for the hearts of minds of rural Manitoba by improving people’s lives. Farmers should give them that chance.
This new government could fall back into the skeptical, antagonistic approach of the previous NDP government, when farmers were seen more as problem-causers than something to support.
But this is a new crew. Kinew is a new man in charge.
There’s a lot that could be done to make operating a farm in Manitoba better.
The PCs are going out one door. The NDP is coming in another.
Let’s say “welcome” — and hand them our agricultural wish list.
