KYLE, Sask. – Leonard Howes has to have a co-operative nature.
He and seven other members of the Matador Farming Pool farm together
near Kyle, Sask., much as their forefathers did.
As members of Canada’s only farm co-operative, they take salaries and
dividends in place of profits and losses. They share the labour and
each member works to his strengths.
The drive southeast from Kyle ends in a circular driveway ringed with
comfortable split-level, two storey and bungalow homes, vintage 1984.
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They surround a central park with mature trees. If not for the gravel
drive, this could be a residential area of a large town or small city.
The eight families who live here give Matador Farm Pool a larger
population than many rural communities.
The pool’s cattle brand, the 17V, reflects the nature of its founders.
Returning to Saskatchewan from the Second World War, 17 young veterans
founded the farm on 8,500 acres that were available to them under the
veteran’s land grant.
For the next 10 years the farmers farmed on their own, pooling
equipment and labour. In 1956, they decided to pool the land into a
co-op. By that time, several members left, leaving an 8,000 acre farm
plus a grazing allocation in the community pasture.
The Matador Co-operative Farm, as it was then known, had its own school
and raised everything from poultry and pigs to vegetables and grains.
In the 1970s, the surviving members decided to make it easier for their
children to take over the farm by selling the land to the Saskatchewan
Landbank, which then leased it back to a new Matador Farming Pool.
The pool now has eight members, all descendants of the original 17.
There have been changes over the years. The pool owns a 400-head
commercial cattle herd and seed cleaning operations in Kyle and Swift
Current.
Expanding the land base, however, has proven impractical because of the
lack of land ownership.
Howes, who is pool president, said co-operative farming is challenging
because decisions must be debated democratically and examined in depth.
“Sometimes it slows us down. You can’t always take advantage of a great
deal or something because you have to get everybody together to decide.
But it means we also research all of our major decisions.”
Board members, who meet twice a month, form smaller committees to
handle finance, equipment maintenance, the two semi-trucks, the seed
cleaning plants, fields and grain production, building maintenance and
livestock.
The co-op operates under a set of bylaws much like those established in
1956.
The working farmyard is a clean, businesslike place.
“We have an insurance policy to provide members with life, short and
long-term disability protection,” Howes said.
“We also have the ability to pick up the work of someone else if they
are sick or have family things to do. You always know somebody will
help you get the work done if you have to be away. That is better than
each of us having a single farm.”
The farm owns 200,000 bushels of on-farm grain storage plus the former
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator in Kyle that now houses the seed
cleaning plant.
Some buildings preserve the farm’s heritage, such as a former dormitory
for the unmarried original members.
These first buildings were split in half and floated across the nearby
South Saskatchewan River by ferry, brought up from the wartime St.
Aldwin Air Force Base near Swift Current.
“They asked the province for approval for that. It took so long that by
the time they said no, the buildings were already put back together at
the farm. That was the way they did things, it got a lot done in a
short time.”
A grain mill stands idle, and older poultry and hog barns have been
recommissioned as storage space.
The school that Howes and his fellow members attended until Grade 7 no
longer exists, but the community that they grew up in remains.
“We work together and live on the same place,” Howes said.
“It is an advantage and a disadvantage. Just like in town. Your pet in
my garden. Your kids in my yard. Socially it’s like living in Kyle or
anywhere else. But we have to get over our disputes. It’s too small a
place not to.”
The average member is now 47 years old and retirement is mentioned on
occasion at the boardroom table, but today, as in the early 1970s,
there are no easy answers.
“In the end it’s still a farm. It would cost someone too much to buy
out a member’s share and join in. The returns don’t cover the cost of
the land, buildings and equipment. We’ll come up with something,
someday.”
