After almost three decades in business, you’d think an easy retirement and comfortable living would be at hand. But a strange thing happened on the way to success for Garry and Donna Jackson
An expanded version of this story will be coming soon to The Farm Crisis for Non-Farmers, a special report on The Western Producer’s website. Go to www.producer.com and click on the link.
Garry Jackson’s yard is a testimonial to defrayed expenses: the Quonset, tractor and combine all need repairs. (WP photos by Bill Doskoch)
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Garry and his wife, Donna, operate a hardware store, but find there are too few loyal customers.
If he sold everything tomorrow, Garry Jackson figures he could walk away from farming owing nothing. But he wouldn’t own anything either.
The 49 year old would have to start over again with his financial clock set to zero after 27 years in agriculture.
Jackson farms about 12 kilometres north of Plunkett, Sask., a hamlet of about 60 people located an hour’s drive east of Saskatoon. He is a director with the Sask Rally Group, an organization seeking assistance for prairie farmers in financial need.
Garry and his wife Donna operate a hardware store. That store and a hotel are the only two businesses left operating in town. The hotel owner is trying to sell, and if many more people leave the area, the Jacksons will be forced to close their store too. That would eliminate the postal outlet.
“Our customers have been very loyal. There just aren’t enough of them,” Garry said, as a country singer on the radio sang how “daddy’s gonna sell the farm.”
In a drive out to his farm, Jackson pointed out the vacant houses in town. He talked about the mechanic’s business that used to operate in a now-empty building, and noted that three holes in the ground beside the railway tracks represent grain elevators that have been torn down.
Another body blow was losing the school eight or nine years ago.
“This town has been cleaned right out. It’s just incredible. There’s no tax base. How do you run a town with nobody left to pay taxes?”
The grid road north to his farm is dotted with long-abandoned farms.
“When my dad was growing up, there was almost a family on every quarter. Things prospered. Times were great. Look at it now,” he said, gesturing at the silent, empty, snow-covered fields.
There are farms doing well in the area. They tend to be “guys who had a good head start,” Jackson said, meaning they inherited land or machinery.
Bigger operators are also doing OK. But Jackson is not one of those. He farms 1,100 acres and has another 400 on which he runs cattle.
His land has a lot of gullies, so that precludes him from growing chickpeas or lentils, two of the only crops that were profitable in 1999. This year he grew wheat, oats, barley, mustard and flax.
“It was a terrible year for mustard. I think I went 10 bushels (per acre).” Wheat yielded about 35, barley about 50 and oats 75 to 80. Quality was good, but the wheat was low on protein.
“You hear stories of 50-bushel crops, but in this area, the added expense doesn’t justify it.”
To illustrate the economics, he roughly calculated that his planting costs were about $80 per acre. At a $1.30 per bu. for oats, his revenue would be $104, giving him a gross margin of $24 per acre. Out of that, he must cover interest, land payments, repairs and pay himself.
“We cannot survive on it. There’s no other way to explain it.”
His operating loan is maxed out, he can’t increase his line of credit and still hasn’t paid last year’s expenses, but he still has enough crop in the bin to do so.
At Jackson’s yard, almost everything is a testiment to defrayed expenses and declining equity.
“The Quonset needs repair. I can’t afford to fix it,” he said, pointing around the yard.
The tractor needs a new head gasket to be ready for spring planting. His combine is 23 years old and it needs repairs.
A team of horses is used for chores, mostly to cut costs but also because Jackson enjoys working with them.
The house is heated with wood. He does all his own meat processing. He has tried sunflowers, clover seed and raised bison for nine years.
“As far as diversifying, I think I’ve done everything I can. When I raised buffalo, it was going to cost me $15,000 or $20,000 to put up a proper fence for them. I didn’t want to go into debt, so I packed it in.”
Jackson has been looking for a good off-farm job in the area for the past 18 months, but he hasn’t found one.
There have been bad times before in agriculture. Some say it’s not how you farm, but when you farm.
“We had good years before that,” Jackson said, referring to a period before the 1988 drought.
“We’ve had a five-year stretch of just dismal returns. There’s no reserve left.”
Help was supposed to come from the Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program. By his calculation, Jackson thought he’d get $7,000. What did he get? “Zippo.”
Despite everything, Jackson thought he could keep the farm going for another year, but if it’s more of the same, he may be forced off.
“I’m not walking out of here without a scrap. I’ve been in this industry not just 25 years, but the best 25 years of my life. I can’t afford to walk out of here and have it count for nothing,” he said.
“We don’t have pension plans, we don’t get a severance package when they kick us out.”
He tensed, then heaved a little.
“I had choices,” he said, referring to his university education. “I chose farming because I thought it was important and would provide a good life.”
Referring to his declining financial situation, he declared, “I refuse to believe it’s because I haven’t done a good job.”
