REGINA – With all the difficulties around agriculture these days, one might expect young farmers to be worried about the future.
But for the three couples who are Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 1994, agriculture is an industry of the future -something they’d like their children to remain with.
The national competition was founded by the Canadian Junior Chamber and is sponsored by John Deere. Eight couples from the Atlantic to the Pacific were brought to Regina during Agribition to outline their operations in presentations and speeches. Three couples were chosen as the winners.
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“There is definitely a future in farming,” said William Van Baalen of Langley B.C. “There’s lots of potential.”
Baalen and his wife Marlene operate an 80,000-square-foot commercial greenhouse operation. On the other side of the country, in Princeville, Que., Gilles and Marie St. Pierre, also winners, have been expanding their herd of dairy cattle, and view the future with confidence.
“We’re able to compete,” said Gilles through a translator. “With all the new technology there is little reason not to succeed.”
He said the family is so confident of the future of farming, they are already purchasing land in their three children’s names.
Technology helps
Sitting roughly halfway between the St. Pierres and the Van Baalens is Brent and Pam Sattler’s grain farm near Milestone, Sask.
The Sattlers spent years working off the farm and getting educated so they could one day run a successful farm. Regardless of the bad times agriculture went through in the 1980s, they both say they never questioned their commitment to becoming farmers.
Brent said “it never seemed like an option” to do anything other than farm. “I could see that the education I had obtained was going to give me enough income to pay off the farm, along with Pam’s income, before we came home to farm solely.”
Brent said the key to success as a young farmer is to stay debt-free. “If you can control debt, all you have to do from there is manage the farm well.”
Brent has an engineering degree and Pam has her master’s degree in engineering. Although people can educate themselves through everyday life, Pam said formal education is essential too.
“It certainly helps you move ahead and move with the times,” she said. “It’s going to be even more important in the future for people to be very, very well educated and to have their business plans, marketing strengths and planning procedures in place.”
Use each other’s skills
There shouldn’t be much problem dealing with planning issues on the Van Baalen farm, because Marlene is a registered planner.
“We complement each other’s strengths. All of our decisions are team decisions. You can’t just be husband and wife. You have to respect each other as a business relationship,” Marlene said.
She said her prominent role in running the farm and her involvement in planning and agriculture organizations still bring some funny looks from some men who aren’t used to women taking public roles.
“If I could motivate other women to take a higher profile in agriculture, that’d be great,” Marlene said.
“Women don’t need a more central role in agriculture. They just need more visibility.”
Pam Sattler agreed. “I look at our grandparents and I don’t see us living very differently.”
But she said many people in her parents’ generation “tended to think if a woman didn’t work off the farm you weren’t a good partner and you weren’t contributing to the family finances. I think it’s society’s view of equality that has changed, not the equality of the partners.”
