Better Farming – September 2016

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38 Farm News First > Better Farming September 2016
UPCLOSE Brenda Lammens UP CLOSE Amos Briel a n
by MARY BAXTER
Amos Brielmann has spent
most of his farming career
wrestling and exploring limits
of one form or another.
There are the physical boundaries
– the provincial and national borders
near his Pinewood, Rainy River
District farm operation. You’d think
being situated close to the Manitoba
and U.S. borders would provide the
advantage of greater marketing
opportunities for his crops and
livestock. Well, it does – now.
“It used to be just a big, big
challenge,” says Brielmann. When the
Canada Wheat Board controlled the
marketing (it marketed wheat
produced in northwestern Ontario),
he couldn’t sell his crop to elevators a
stone’s throw away on the other side
of the border. The cost to transport
grain was exorbitant. So, in 1997,
Brielmann and his partners at the
time, Jurgen and Rachel Schmutz,
shifted the operation over completely
to beef cows. “We moved on,” he says.
In the same way he decided to move
on after jumping over the lines of
conventional production and spend-
ing nearly eight years in organic beef
production. “Organic production was
a big struggle, lots of work,” he
explains. So he dropped the beef
certification in 2011 and has since
dropped the certification on grain, too.
He’s glad to have tried. “You can be
philosophically organic, saying this is
a lifestyle, right, and this is my belief.”
But farmers have to be practical, he
says. “If you want to carve out a living
out of the farm, you have to under-
stand the economics.”
Wrestling the limits of place
When you farm in Ontario’s northern areas, the hurdles are many.
To succeed you’ve got to be practical, as this Rainy River farmer has found out.
Photo: HEATHER LATTER