CARMAN, Man. – Ken Goudy can see a time when consumers are brought to their knees with worries about food shortages.
He can see a time when farmers bring to heel the companies that make money off farmers’ backs by lending them money to buy inputs, handling their grain in return and charging them interest for the favor.
He can see a time when wheat is worth twice what it is today, when farmers make better returns than they did in the mid-1970s.
But Goudy says that time will come only when farmers stop lobbying governments for help and start taking control of their own destiny.
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“The fact of the matter is, you can’t continue to farm at the prices you’re getting,” he said.
“The only one who has something serious at stake to change things is you.”
These are the revelations of Goudy, who has been traveling around the Prairies and the American Midwest in his white mini-van, taking his message to farmers.
With quiet, confident zeal, Goudy persuades farmers to sign cheques for $250 for a membership to Focus on Sabbatical Inc.
At this stage, the money goes toward Goudy’s travels to educate farmers and gauge their interest in not doing what they do best.
He wants to convince 130,000 farmers to commit to not growing at least eight billion bushels of grain.
He reasons that, in a year when prices are below farmers’ costs of production, a man-made production disaster of this magnitude would drive up prices.
Instead of earning income selling grain, Goudy said farmers participating in the sabbatical would make their money in the commodities markets – up to $250 per acre.
In his mind, it makes perfect sense, and he said he has no doubt that anyone who hears his spiel will agree.
“For farmers to resist it, I question the logic.”
But his first hurdle is getting farmers to hear his message.
He describes how he can turn a room full of skeptics into believers, and sell memberships to half of them.
It happened in North Battleford, Sask., not too long ago, he said.
But the further he gets from the Saskatchewan border, the fewer farmers come to his meetings.
In Carman, Man., where farmers enjoy some of the most productive farmland in the province, the Chicken Delight on Main Street is filled with chatter and smoke from coffee row.
There are far more farmers outside the small banquet room than inside. Only three farmers show up.
Goudy is disappointed, but he gives them the full two-hour pitch.
After some quiet discussion, one of the farmers writes a cheque.
About 650 farmers have bought memberships, two-thirds from Saskatchewan. Goudy wants to see 35,000 members from the Prairies by next winter.
“I guess it concerns me that it’s so hard to get people out.”
The group has just been registered in 12 states as a non-profit company, but no American farmer has yet bought a membership. Goudy has made contacts, he said, and he is cheered by their enthusiasm for his concept.
Even in Iowa, the most productive state, farmers seem easier to convince than their Canadian counterparts.
“If there’s any place making money, it’s Iowa.”
Even though American farmers get more help from their government in this time of low prices, Goudy said they are excited by the notion of a set-aside program with teeth – teeth to bite back the multinational companies, who they perceive control the business.
“In reality, the trade has you working, making them a profit, when in reality you’re losing money,” he told farmers in Carman.
He said input dealers have sold farmers the lie that if they increase yields, they’ll reap rewards. Farmers can’t grow their way out of a glut, he added.
“The industry knows exactly how to play the farmer. They know it very well. As much as we like to think we’re very independent, we’re very predictable.”
Goudy worries that Canadian farmers’ reluctance to sign on may threaten his efforts in the American corn belt.
“We are far more desperate than the Americans,” he said. “We certainly don’t want to be a stumbling block for them.”
Goudy and wife Mary Lou are planning to move at the end of May to Iowa from Melfort, Sask., their home for 30 years.
They raised their children there, and Ken worked for a chemical company, selling inputs to farmers.
Later, he spearheaded Focus on Inputs, a group determined to force the price of Roundup by raising money to produce glyphosate themselves.
He came up with the germ of the idea for Focus on Sabbatical in October, and refined it over the winter.
Goudy, 55, is not a farmer, although he said he identifies with their plight.
So why is he going to all this trouble now?
He says he has the experience and the will. He is paid a wage, but it’s clearly more mission than job.
“Nobody else will do it,” he said.
