Behind the Lines - May 2008

Saturday, May 10, 2008

It doesn't take too much flipping through back issues of this publication to realize that farming, in one way or another, goes from crisis to crisis.

The BSE crisis struck in 2003 and still plagues the beef industry. In 2004, American pork producers launched countervail against Canadian exports. Only two springs ago, grain and oilseed farmers were rallying tractors in Queen's Park and Ottawa and taking countervail action against corn imports from the United States. Now high feed prices and a weak U.S. currency threaten to bring livestock farmers to their knees.

Throughout all these difficulties, an overwhelming question remains: who will farm in the future? How does a young person get started? As one farming veteran remarked to a Better Farming editor, "no one starts out of their back pocket any more."

How does one highly capitalized generation pass on an operation to sons and daughters and their spouses? To answer that question, Better Farming writers Kate Procter and Mary Baxter sought the experiences of six farm families.

Their story starts on page 14.

Writers also consulted with a number of experts on the succession planning.

In tough times, should people continue to look at succession? All of the planners said "yes," according to Baxter. "They understood that tough times are tough times, but it is always important to get these plans in place even if you can't act on all of them. If something else happens, you know how to proceed."

Succession planner Richard Cressman makes some interesting points about what makes farm operators tick. Most often, it's not about the money, he says.

Money makes the farming business go round, Cressman says, but achieving a high return on investment is usually number four on a list of priorities that farmers cite when they are asked. Higher up the list are having a good place to raise their kids, working in the outdoors and being their own boss.

This month, American farm writer and Stateside columnist Alan Guebert describes how U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz explained bread prices to audiences in the high grain price years of the early 1970s. Editors noticed that some of what Guebert wrote about Butz's explanation didn't quite add up. Guebert replies: "You're right, it doesn't jibe. But then again, farmers - so in love with 'Early' - would roar....Earl's math could get lost sometimes. Remember, a federal judge sentenced him to 10 months in the pen for not reporting about $800,000 of speech income one year in the late 1980s." BF

Robert Irwin & Don Stoneman