One vice-president had COVID. So did the organization’s policy manager.
They both took part in the meeting through a Zoom link.
One farmer from a long way away was there in person. The internet service on his farm is so bad that trying to participate through Zoom is impossible.
Some farmers and observers were there in person for Keystone Agriculture Producers’ November policy meeting in Portage la Prairie. Others were online.
Trying to run a farm meeting during these waning days of the pandemic is still a challenge, even though most people are acting like we’ve moved on. Just when we let ourselves think that everything’s “back to normal,” some complication gets thrown in our faces.
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November marked the effective beginning of the annual meeting season for farmers, which will run until early March, when everybody in farm country needs to get out into their machinery sheds, seed cleaning plants and input outlets and make sure everything’s set up for spring.
For the next few months, farmers and the rest of the prairie agriculture business can occasionally take a day or two to attend a meeting or a conference to talk about the issues. What will those meetings be like, with the two-year COVID pause behind us?
How much of the pre-pandemic meeting season world will return after this break?
Will farmers be willing to drive hundreds of kilometres to attend meetings they got used to watching on Zoom? Some, like KAP with the November meeting, have provided a hybrid Zoom/live choice. Others are expected to go back to live-only. And some organizations, or at least their managers, found doing everything on Zoom suited them just fine, so they might try to stick with the digital service as much as possible.
One thing that’s likely to be different at many in-person conferences at city hotels will be the level of service from the hospitality staff there. Banquet departments almost everywhere laid off virtually all their staff when lockdowns happened. How many experienced staff will return?
I doubt there will be many. I was a banquet porter/waiter/bartender when I was young, and at that time my colleagues were a mix of young working guys and gals trying to figure out what better-paying/more-stable job they should try to get, university students earning rent and beer money, and a thin handful of long-term skilled staff. The cooks were a motley collection of guys, including quite a few who’d picked up their skills in the Prince Albert penitentiary, who needed to work.
That sort of workforce isn’t likely to sit around at home for two years waiting for their unpredictable, low-wage jobs to come back. Don’t expect things to run smoothly.
What will it be like booking hotel rooms for big farm shows? Will everybody that used to go to shows still be going?
Will people be keen or willing to travel to farm shows in sunny and warm locations during the brutal prairie winter? Will people have grown used to staying around the farm more and be satisfied with watching curling on TV?
I know a couple of farm leaders who have admitted they haven’t missed the weekly flights to meetings all over the country and continent. So much, they have noted, can be done by video link, why waste so many hours driving to airports, flying, staying in hotels and waiting for brief meetings in person?
On the other hand, so many of us are so sick of being stuck around our homes, farms and offices that this winter could offer a chance to break out of the cabin fever and get away to more shows, meetings, getaways and possibly deductible trips than we’ve ever taken before.
This post-pandemic world is still evolving and it isn’t going to be smooth. Farmers and farm organizations are going to find out about it firsthand.
I hope to see lots of you out there. If you know me from this column and you see me at a show, come up and say “hi.” Lots of you I’ve never met in person. With others, it’s been a few years since we’ve been able to be out at shows together. You might look different now. I certainly do.
Who knows? Maybe we can lend a hand if the catering staff is too green to know how to handle a banquet hall full of hungry farmers.
