Prairie farmers hit hard by low prices
"It’s not a lifestyle like it used to be."
By Kevin Heinrichs
ChristianWeek staff
 Slipping through their fingers: Farmers are seeing profits slip through their fingers as prices for wheat and hogs sink to historic lows. |
Rural pastor
Arnie Armstrong measures the farming crisis by
how many people are missing from his
congregation. Several families from his church, 30 minutes south of the Trans Canada highway in south-central Saskatchewan, have left farming completely in the past few years and moved away. Others have stayed, but low commodity prices for grain and hogs have forced five of the farmers from his congregation to work at jobs outside the community to supplement their income. Some even drive out of province to work during the week. A year ago, there were seven or eight family-run hog operations; now there’s one. "It’s not a lifestyle like it used to be," he says. "I would say the joy of ‘when you farm, you don’t have a boss’–That’s dead. You just can’t make enough income on the farm now." |
Saskatchewan has been hit hardest by the recent drop in hog and wheat prices. Even with a government aid package, many farms could go bankrupt by spring.
Armstrong says family breakups and strained relationships add to the cost of economic failure. But as a pastor, it’s the changing dynamic of the church that Armstrong notices the most.
"It’s a major issue for the church. The stress level is right through the roof," he says. While farmers will rarely talk specifically about their financial situations, the church’s care groups have become a place for people to receive support.
"The prospect of losing family land is not just a business failure, it is a dishonor to many farmers. To lose something that has been in the family for three or four generations is extremely depressing."
Diversification
Grain farmer Arnold Wiebe says the low prices for wheat have influenced many area farmers to diversify into more profitable crops. "Everybody jokes that crop rotation means rotating from wheat to canola," he says. While prices are better for canola, the potential for disease increases if it is grown too often.
On a whim, Wiebe even planted 28 acres of hemp this summer on his farm near LaRiviere, Manitoba. The non-potent cousin to the marijuana plant grows 10 feet high and is used for a variety of environmentally-friendly products like fabric.
"I netted more off 28 acres of hemp than off of 500 acres of wheat," he says. He plans to plant around 100 acres next year.
Still, Wiebe says the profit margin on farming in general is thinner than ever. While a farmer’s net worth may be in excess of $1 million, his net income could be in the negative. That leads some farmers to consider selling everything, investing the money, and getting a side job.
Global trends
Cory Ollikka, president of the National Farmers Union, however, is hesitant to say the current crisis is the end of the family farm. "It’s an ulcer that’s flared up," he says. A cattle and grain farmer in Waskatenau, Alberta, north of Edmonton, Ollikka says that net farm income has been dropping steadily since the 1940s.
While he calls the proposed government aid package a useful first step, he criticizes it as a Band-Aid solution. "It’s insulting...$900 million over two years." Provinces are also expected to chip in $600 million.
The removal two years ago of the Crow benefit, an annual subsidy that helped pay for the rail transport of grain to export markets, was a huge blow, he says. "The Crow Benefit would have put $1.3 billion into western Canada in the next two years," he says. Ollikka says without regular benefits, farmers cannot compete with the heavily subsidized U.S. and European markets.
Despite the crisis, pastor Armstrong says giving to the church continues to be generous. It’s the blow to a farmer’s self-worth that is greatest, he says.
"In our culture, what you’re paid is what you’re worth. So some city folks might ask, ‘Is the farmer paid nothing because he is worth nothing?’ The challenge for the Christian is that they must get value from their relationship with Christ, not by how much they get paid for what they do. It must be in perspective."
