By Jan. 22, give or take a few days, Dawson Creek, B.C. farmer Nick Parsons intends to cross two mountain ranges, travel an exhausting stretch of highway and cross the Georgia Strait by ferry to park in front of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria.
All in his 1981 Massey Ferguson combine.
There he plans to meet Jan. 26 with about 45 other farmers from the B.C. and Alberta Peace River regions who will ask the government to acknowledge a two-year crop disaster and provide financial assistance.
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“I’ll take it right to the front door,” said Parsons before leaving on his trip Jan. 10. “I see it as a lever. The combine stays there until we see a solution to the problem we have here.”
The problem is two successive years of excessive moisture in the Peace River region that prevented farmers from harvesting the 1996 crop in good shape, limited the ability to seed a 1997 crop, and then extended the harvest so many people were still trying to combine in December.
Parsons gave up on his crop Dec. 16, when many swaths were frozen to the ground and straight-cutting caused equipment damage.
That’s when he decided to make the trek to Victoria.
Parson’s combine is winterized, fitted with chains and has extra fuel tanks installed in the hopper.
“I shall take a generator, welder, air compressor, all my tools and all the necessaries,” he said.
Parsons and others in the northeastern B.C. community, some of them members of a crisis committee formed to seek government aid, raised about $18,000 to fund the journey and pay the way for farmers who plan to meet him in Victoria later this month.
But the danger of Parsons’ mission isn’t lost on his counterparts.
“I’m really concerned about that,” said Jarvis Taylor, a seed cleaning plant operator who helped organize the trek.
“But I guess when people are fed up, they’ll do anything. I’ve been in this business 34 years and I’ve never seen it this bad. (Farmers’) bins are empty, their chequebooks are drained and they have no money to seed a crop.”
The idea of a combine trek was first raised by Parsons in November and attracted the attention of B.C. agriculture minister Corky Evans. He flew to Dawson Creek to announce government guaranteed loans of prime plus two percent, and increased funding for the provincial crop insurance program.
The province also recognized the region as a stress area.
But after they analyzed the government programs, Parsons and other farmers deemed them insufficient.
“Those are long-term programs, and that’s not what we need,” said crisis committee spokesperson and farmer Rod Strasky. “None of the programs that they’ve announced are going to give farmers any cash to put the crop in this spring.”
Bull by the horns
While the committee pondered its next move, Parsons decided to proceed with a one-man trek, said Strasky. The trip is supported by the committee, but he said the original plan involved trucking the combine through the more perilous parts of the journey. Now Parsons intends to go the distance, through mountain passes and all, on combine power alone.
“It takes a lot of guts to do something like that,” said Strasky. “I can’t fault him for having the determination for doing that.”
Already Parsons’ efforts have generated government and public interest in the plight of the Peace River region, and visibility is exactly what is needed, Strasky said.
Ag minister Evans has said money isn’t available for greater financial assistance to weather-stricken farmers, but Strasky has doubts.
“If the will was there, the money would be found,” he said.
