There was a bit of a fuss last week when it appeared there would be no farm women on the government-farm organization trek to Ottawa to seek income assistance for prairie grain farmers.
Leading the fray was Noreen Johns of the Saskatchewan Women’s Agricultural Network, a SWAN founding member and advocate for farm women and families.
She spent many hours on the phone lobbying with anyone she felt could help, and her efforts paid off.
On Saturday night, when she got home from yet another conference, there was a message on her answering machine that SWAN had an invitation to be part of the delegation.
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Farm women will add another dimension to the delegation, a valuable one. Farm women can talk not just about the income crisis as it affects their farms but also as it affects every member of the farm family and the surrounding community.
Anyone who doubts the eloquence and power of farm women should be in Saskatoon in November for the national conference of the Canadian Farm Women’s Network.
I certainly plan to be there. I was at the first national farm women’s conference in Ottawa about 20 years ago and I’ve attended subsequent ones in Charlottetown, London, Ont., and Saskatoon.
At every conference I’ve been impressed with the quality of the delegates and their eloquence when speaking about their industry.
I always maintain that they work from a position of strength, finding first what they have in common, building on it, then working through difficulties.
I have been to many agricultural gatherings where I have felt that people were negotiating from weakness, putting differences first then trying to find common ground.
That approach doesn’t work. For proof, look at the loss of the Crow Rate, Estey, Kroeger and the lack of a long-term disaster relief plan for agriculture.
Farm women pride themselves on no longer being the “invisible pitchforks” they once were.
Unfortunately, too many of the best and the brightest are not receiving the recognition they deserve on the wider stage.
Perhaps they haven’t tried hard enough to integrate into the traditional farm groups, but it is imperative that these farm women, with their knowledge and their eloquence, get into the wider arena.
If agriculture and the rural way of life as we know it are to be preserved, it is going to take the united effort of men and women from prairie farms, and the rural businesses dependent on those farms, working together.
