I am not totally sure where to start so I will start with myself. I am 35 years old, married with two boys. I grew up on a mixed operation in south-central Manitoba and love working with cows.
I went away to Olds College for two years and studied more about cows. Since I was 15 I have taken jobs that centred around the beef business and tried to learn as much as I could so I would be able to run my own ranch some day.
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I am concerned there is no such thing as entrepreneurial farming any more. You either are born into it or marry into it.
I have gone to the banks and other agricultural lending institutions and if you don’t have somebody giving you collateral or money, they won’t even look at you, no matter how good you are with the pencil.
I understand this, but how does somebody get into a business that takes so much money to get started and then not be able to control his end prices?
Has anybody ever looked into what the start-up costs would be for somebody to get into the farming business? And not using new equipment either. I mean a 1086 IH tractor, 21-foot cultivator and 6601 combine – that type of start up, and the land cost to buy a little and rent a little and still be able to work for 20 years to feed the family.
I guess I don’t understand why farmers and ranchers have to have a job, and our wives too, and farm in order to produce food for the urban people, and then they complain about high food prices.
Another thing are these so-called programs that I read about and hear about for young and start-up farmers.
Yeah, they’re great if Dad is there supplying the machinery to do the work and some land for collateral. I can start farming too if I had that.
Those programs are a joke. Also nobody ever says the names of these programs or where to find them easily. They are always referred to as “the programs,” hidden somewhere in never-never land called Ottawa.
If they want to get real about this problem – and it is a real big problem – they have to let people in that don’t have these other advantages.
I don’t complain unless I have a suggestion and I know that my idea will have holes in it, but maybe it is a starting point to get something going in time for me or hopefully my kids.
Maybe it’s time to look back in our history to help us now: homesteading but a 2010 version.
Here is how I see it, and we’ll use me as an example. The government would have a one-time homesteading program of $250,000 with no interest. It will get enough in taxes.
You would apply for it and you would have to be 100 miles from the home farm – this is for those who have a family farm that would still like to help somehow. As well, applicants would not have farmed for more than five years. The money would be used to buy land.
For every year you farm, X amount would be taken off what is owing on the farm, so in 20 years you would be given the title from the government.
Yes, the government would own the land, but if something happened, the land would have to be sold by auction to the public so the government couldn’t permanently own land.
To get this deal, you could only use half the value of the land for buying livestock or machinery to produce a product. The longer you are farming, the more the land could be used for furthering your operation. Also, you would have to have a financial adviser so you could not get in over your head and you would have to give the government a status report yearly.
I know (it would be) more paperwork but there has to be some cost. Maybe you need to be enrolled in the government support programs as well.
Somebody is saying, ‘won’t this drive the land price up?’ I don’t think so because you would have to buy it at the going rate in your area at that time or you wouldn’t get the money. This could be verified by bankers and realtors. As someone starting out, I want to get as much land for my money as I can.
This is just a starting point and maybe somebody out there can make this better and maybe we can get more people on the farm.
I write this for selfish reasons. I would love this because then I could do what I really want to do with every part of by body: ranch.
