Quote:
Originally Posted by dustyanddaflames
There are some pretty wealthy farmers in general, I would agree with you - and we have a tendency that things are never perfect enough  . I would say the majority of us however are surviving at best in the cattle industry.
As a producer, there hasn't been a lot of financial gain, and when you add in the last 5-10 years worth of drought in SE Alberta - things are rather bleak. The government program last year helped, absolutely, but for us in SE Alberta, this hasn't been a one year thing - and the only relief we've gotten until last year, is income deferral if we had to sell cows. Doesn't replace income, doesn't pay expenses as the hope is eventually you can use that money to replace the cows you were forced to sell.
Last year we paid close to 80K in replacement feed costs due to drought (38% of our farm income)... |
Just curious. Have you noticed any change in political leanings or beliefs?
I can't talk to members of my extended family who are farmers and ranchers about political issues anymore (and often times they are super religious). My grandfather would have disowned anyone not blindly voting right. When we did have discussions around climate change ("global warming" at the time), those who would concede that it existed and maybe humans were part of the issue, would argue that global warming may even be beneficial for them as it would reduce the duration of winter.* They didn't seem to care about research that shows that extreme weather, like the "100-year" droughts and floods would become much more frequent.
Seemed like the previous generation was very much about global warming being a hoax or part of nature ("the ice-age happened without human involvement! What about the 1930s?") to the next generation being "well sure climate change exists but nothing we can do about it." But now they're the Canadians being hit by it the hardest. It's like the slowest form of "leopards ate my face" but there's not going to be schadenfreude when I'm eating my $250 box of Froot Loops my wife got me for a special anniversary gift.
I know they are some of the most resourceful people and the mindset of "we have survived, we will survive" is probably truer than most, but how do we bridge that gap when anyone campaigning on some form of climate change policy gets dropped to the bottom of their list?
*Even if
current research indicates that areas of land in Canada that were not considered quality agricultural areas are now believed to become suitable, that wasn't what they meant.