BSE is a hot topic in Alberta, but a group of farmers were shocked to see four police cruisers outside the county office in St. Paul when they walked out of their BSE information meeting.
“I knew BSE was bad, but I didn’t know it was this bad,” joked Gordon Graves, an Iron River farmer and the meeting organizer.
The alarm in the county office is set to turn on at 11 p.m., but when the farmers hadn’t left the building by then, police were automatically called to check out the problem.
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The shock of seeing four police cars wasn’t such a bad thing, said Graves. It was one of the few laughs farmers have had in the past 10 months since BSE was discovered in a northern Alberta cow.
Graves and 40 other farmers, machinery dealers, feedlot operators, government leaders, MLA and MPs met Feb. 26 to try and come up with some solution to growing desperation in rural areas from the collapse of the cattle markets.
“We will leave no stone unturned. If we’ve turned it, we’ll pick it up and turn it again,” said Graves.
After four hours of discussion, the group could think of no other short-term solution than asking the government to pull out the chequebook once again.
“As much as we hate to see a Band-Aid solution, that’s what we have to have in the short term,” said Graves.
For the mid-term, the group considered asking farmers to delay or not breed a percentage of their cows and heifers this year.
Canada’s cattle herd has grown to 14.7 million, the largest in history because the closure of international borders gave hundreds of thousands of cattle an extended lease on life.
Producers worry the backlog of cattle will drive the price down even further.
With signs that the American border, Canada’s largest export market, may not be open for another year, farmers across the province are gathering to find ways to help them keep their farms and communities alive.
“We know that optimism is dying fast,” said Graves.
A day earlier in Camrose, members of the National Farmers Union held the second of seven industry meetings to discuss the beef industry and possible solutions.
More than 100 farmers packed the tiny conference room hoping they would find some hope.
“Your presence here is a measure that the industry has reached a crisis point in the history of the cattle industry and the history of family farm agriculture in the province,” said Roger Epp, the evening’s moderator and professor of political studies at Augustana University in Camrose.
“It’s a time when all confident answers and ideological responses are getting a shaking up.”
In the chairs were farmers and ranchers who wouldn’t normally attend an NFU meeting.
Together the group passed a resolution to encourage the government to have mandatory testing for animals older than 30 months.
Jim Anderson of Daysland doesn’t understand why the government is reluctant to introduce mandatory testing of older animals.
The markets are closed and cattle producers are almost giving away their animals.
“If we test every cow over 30 months, it would allow us back into the export market,” said Anderson.
Chris Berkley of Calmar said he’d be willing to pay $30 per animal to test each of his cattle if doing so would reopen the border and allow his cattle to be sold.
Elgar Grinde of Holden, an Alberta Beef Producers delegate cautioned the group not to ignore the science behind the government’s refusal to test all animals for BSE as some countries want.
“Let’s follow the science,” he said.
Dan Johnson, a Camrose dairy farmer, said he thinks the beef industry should put its free market ideology aside and take a second look at the supply managed dairy industry.
“We have a system that sure works for us,” said Johnson.
Jon Slomp, Alberta’s NFU co-ordinator and a Rimbey dairy farmer, said dairy is one of the few industries where the family farm is still viable.
“We need to change the political system and get away from industrialized agriculture.
“We need to finish those animals right on the farm where they are born.”
