The beginning of autumn is often a time of nostalgia tinged with sadness.
This year, farmers across Western Canada are feeling a sense of loss and sadness, but it’s not for nostalgic or sentimental decisions. Many thousands are facing the prospect of half-empty bins and depleted bank accounts as they head toward that annual stressor: input bills coming due.
For most farmers, it’s likely to be a very concrete sense of loss, perhaps one they haven’t grappled with much while the crop has still been growing, the cattle have been grazing and they’re busy the growing season.
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For some it’s going to be a dark time, as the days grow short and cold, as the reality of those half-empty bins becomes obvious. There will be time to think about what might have been, and that isn’t always pleasant.
Farmers need to look out for their neighbours, because there’s going to be a lot of hidden trauma out there. People who have had to liquidate herds of cows built up over years or decades of careful breeding; people caught with sensible grain contracts that they don’t have enough crop to fulfill; people who won’t have the cash flow to cover bills or mortgage payments.
I hope the people that farmers do business with understand the situation their clients are in, and don’t just treat it as a business matter. Farming is a business, but it isn’t just a business. I know there are lots of businesses that are doing everything they can to help farmers through this crisis. They deserve praise.
But I fear some will see producers’ vulnerability as an opportunity, in some way, to gain an advantage on them. I hope not too much of that goes on this winter. When cases of crisis opportunism appears, I hope farmers inform their agricultural organizations, politicians, government regulators and we in the media. Sometimes a bright light shone upon an opportunist is all it takes to send them scuttling back to the shadows.
It’s going to be tough on all the thousands of companies and service providers that rely upon farmers. They have their bills to pay. They have payrolls to meet. They have obligations they also can’t get out of. They can’t act like charities.
Farmers need to think about those realities beyond the farmgate when they think about the implications of this drought.
But with enough forbearance up and down the agricultural chain, many more farmers and businesses can probably make it through the crisis than would if people don’t care about their neighbours, partners and clients.
The dark months beckon, and some face grim days in the private realities of their individual lives, but the light can linger longer than we expect, and sometimes that’s enough to tide people through to brighter times.
