(man)
Soil is just an amazing medium.
You think of this thin veneer
of the top 6 or 12 inches
of the planet Earth
and how much life on Earth
depends on that top 6 or 12
inches-- it's just amazing.
[drums, guitar, & melodica
play in bright rhythm]
[woman voices
the following credits]
And the members of...
(male narrator)
The land and the environment
presented severe obstacles
to the Selkirk settlers
when they arrived in Manitoba
in the early 1800s.
With the simplest of equipment
and a great amount
of determination and grit,
they eventually managed to
plant and harvest a crop.
They would be hard-pressed to
recognize the complex machinery
and even some of the crops
that appear in farming today.
They would recognize the
determination of today's farmers
and of course, the one constant,
the rich, black, soil.
One of the things to think about
is 10,000 years ago,
we would have been at the bottom
of old Lake Agassiz,
and that's really sort of
the base on which our soils
in Red River Valley have formed.
We're living and working
and farming
on old lake bottom sediments,
sediments that are
really rich in clay.
And these have lots and lots
of nutrients,
they can hold lots
and lots of water, but man,
they can be difficult sometimes
because water doesn't flow
through them very easily,
they're very sticky
when they're wet,
but very productive,
fertile soils.
I'm Jim Janzen, and we're in St.
Francois Xavier, Manitoba,
we operate Windy Creek Farms,
it's a family farm operation.
We're growing canola,
red spring wheat, and soybeans.
Here in Manitoba, we have
a very short window,
our 110- to 120-day
growing season.
You gotta return a lotta of the
money back into the farm.
Be careful on how much you take
out personally.
You have to be satisfied at
some times with not very much,
and after you've lost money
per acre,
it takes a while
to get that back.
The crop that we have this year
is quite timely.
After 2 tough years, a 3rd one
would not have worked
very well for us.
There's nobody that has control
over the markets.
There are factors
throughout the world
that effect everything
that we grow,
is effected by worldwide
circumstances.
So I mean, I find it interesting
and challenging.
Am I the world's greatest
marketer?
No.
Is it a game? You might think
it is.
[acoustic guitar
plays in bright rhythm]
People say
if you're not growing,
you're not moving forward.
We've come to a point
in our operation,
we've stayed
around the 6400 acres
for the last 12-plus years.
We're comfortable at that level,
and instead of expanding,
I would like to do
a better job on those acres.
Definitely farming
is a business.
There's just too much money
involved here.
There is a lifestyle,
nobody tells me
when to get up in the morning
or when to punch in or when
to quit, that's up to me,
and if you can't deal with that,
if you need some supervision,
[chuckles]
it's probably not gonna work.
It's not for everybody,
but the field is open.
You can always
buy a farm somewhere.
Farmers by nature,
by their existence, they risk.
I've yet to meet a farmer
that fails to understand
what risk is all about.
Anybody that invests
a lot of money
and throws all of the products
that they buy
onto the soil
with the great hope
of reaping something
from that is a risk-taker.
Farmers minimize their risk
through knowledge
and through active testing,
on their own.
There's an old saying
in risk management,
if you don't manage your risks,
they can very well end up
managing you.
It's a leap of faith to go
into business on your own,
and farming is absolutely that.
There are a lot of moving parts
in developing
an appropriate crop
in an appropriate way
without having an impact
on the environment or your land
base; every year is an unknown.
I'm Cam Henry, you're
in Oak River, Manitoba,
which is on the western side
of the province
and a little bit
north of TransCanada.
I'm a farmer, and in the farming
context,
we're in the seed business,
so we grow, process, and retail
seed.
We're what you call
in Manitoba a Century Farm,
so we go back
to the early 1880s,
so my grandfather
was here first,
my dad, myself, and now
my daughter and son-in-law
are farming with us.
When I was young,
I started in terrible times.
I started in late '60s,
it was terrible times,
you weren't making any money
at all,
and yet I saw nothing but
opportunity in it.
And now, we're
in very good times,
and when I'm looking around, I'm
looking for the pitfalls. Eh?
Just as you get older you get
a little more conservative
and you don't have
as much time to catch up
if you make a major mistake.
In agriculture,
as the more acres
you apply to grain farming,
the cost per acre to seed them
of input cost is the same.
So much fertilizer per acre,
so much spray, so much seed--
those things are the same
whether you've got 100 acres
or 1,000, 10,000.
So you do put a lot of money
out there at risk
if the world turns against you.
And the one thing
that farming does have is,
you have to be willing
to take risk.
The biggest factor that affects
how well my farm produces
is the weather,
and I can't control it.
That's a tough game to be in,
if the biggest influencing
factor you can't control.
We look at what does it cost to
outfit an average Manitoba farm,
you're gonna look at well over
a million dollars
in new equipment, easy.
Farmers are adopters,
farmers are innovators,
they are continuously adopting
and adjusting all the time,
and products, solutions,
service, technology
provides a true value
to a farm operation,
it will be adopted very quickly.
Precision agriculture,
it's a bit of a mind-set.
It's the ability to measure,
monitor,
every single task on a farm,
and how do I attain
the highest efficiencies
out of every task, every
operation on my farm?
I know my cost of production.
And how do I get
the maximum yield,
the maximum efficiencies,
and eventually,
how do I control all
of the variables on my farm?
If I can't control it,
how do I adjust it
to make it work best for me
and minimize my risk.
You can't discount experience;
it's still critical.
Understanding
the land capabilities
and what it can do and can't do,
based on history and time
still plays a critical role.
I think what is changing is
the amount of evidence, data,
that can now be collected
and that ability to do a more
in-depth analysis and to look at
what has changed on my farm
over the last 10 years,
and what am I seeing?
Has my soil changed,
has the weather changed,
what has been the impact of
the crop rotations that I have?
That is all captured now
through documentation
through the equipment.
Two crops that have seen
dramatic increases in acres
would be corn and soybeans
in Manitoba, and that sort of
reflects the nature of farming
is that you continue to evolve
and whether it's
weather patterns changing
or the market's
changing growers,
farmers will continue to adopt,
adjust, and look for
where can I get the maximum
efficiency out of my land
but also the profitability.
20, 30 years ago,
the focal point of that tractor
was the operator.
Now on that tractor, the focal
point of that piece of equipment
is that monitor, that computer.
That computer is running
that piece of equipment now,
and so the operator now is
sitting and monitoring
the activity of that tractor
instead of driving it.
The tractor
will drive itself now.
I'm Brett Sheffield
from Pilot Mound, Manitoba,
In our area we mostly grow
wheat and canola.
We also grow barley and we're
starting to grow some soybeans,
but basically, we're
planting and harvesting
a grain to sell as a commodity.
I've grown up on the farm
and always enjoyed
being in the country, but really
until I had moved away
and realized kind of
the opportunities
and how much I enjoyed living in
Pilot Mound and in the country,
I hadn't realized that that's
what I'd pursue for a career.
I was lucky that my parents had
a small farm when I came back,
so I was able to run
their equipment.
It wasn't anything fancy, but
it was able to get the crop in.
Good prices and some good
weather turned out well for me,
and I've been able to expand
constantly each year
to now I'm at the point
that I can buy my own equipment.
I was excited a few years ago,
we got our first tractor
with air conditioning,
so that was kind of nice,
and now we've moved on to where
we're running about 3 computer
screens right in our cab.
I came in when it was really
a year before kind of
this commodity price boom,
but I was able to buy my land
at a more affordable price.
Since then, in our area alone,
it's jumped about 300 to 350%,
so that's helped my net worth,
but as far as buying land goes,
right now I can't afford it, so
I'm leaning more towards renting
and going that way to try to get
cash flow early on in my
farming career.
I guess we're all risk-takers,
'cause it's such a high input,
high risk, weather-variable
industry that we're in,
but I guess I've just constantly
tried to expand,
constantly tried new things and
taken things that I've learned
at university and just tried to
make those happen on the farm,
and it's really helped me grow.
I've been able to grow
over 1,000%
since I've started farming,
so it's worked out
really well so far.
Well, I think the whole aspect
of the business of farming now
has completely changed.
We've moved into auto-steer,
we've moved into beautiful
tractors
instead of open-cab tractors,
or even before that
a horse and buggy,
so it's making farming
a really attractive business
to get involved in,
it's something
that's real exciting,
it's something that's fun to do,
and really, we're moving away
from the lifestyle thing
to more of a business.
I think that one of the main
trends that we're seeing
is the increase in land prices,
is pushing us to do things
to really increase
our productivity
on our current land base.
Where before we were looking
to expand, expand, expand,
and increase our overall
productivity that way,
now we're looking at what we can
do to increase productivity
on a per-acre basis, and that's
going to be able to maintain
our growth of bushels to help
feed the growing population.
I'm extremely passionate
about farming.
It's something that I wake up
every day thinking about,
it's something that on my off
time I spend time researching.
It's just such an incredible
industry to be involved in,
where we're involved in every
single part of our business.
We're there
for planting the seed,
we're watching to make sure
that it's growing,
we're there to harvest it.
So in every single part
of the business,
we're able to sit there
and be involved in it and watch
something that we've done
in the beginning of the year
and see how it turns out
in the output in the end.
If you think of any big food
company,
one of the ways they can get
a competitive edge
is to come out with new
and novel products,
so some variation
on what they've done
or something completely new.
It's estimated that the success
rate of new products
in the food area,
is about 20%, 25%.
There's a lot of failures
out there.
A general area that product
development is going in
is to try to address the desire
for people to eat healthy,
using the kitchen cabinet,
rather than
the medicine cabinet.
There's a couple of things
that drive food technology
and food science and new
products, safety is one,
but the other one is convenience
and availability and variety.
And as a result, you're going
to get these convenient foods
that people seem to crave.
We're market-driven, you've got
consumers out there that say,
I've got 15 minutes, I've got
to prepare a meal for 4
and get the kids off to whatever
sport they're in and so yeah,
the preprepared packaged food is
a convenient item
that is in demand
by the consumer.
Yes, the nutrients will be less
than what we'd have
if they prepared the whole food
on the edge of the supermarket.
But it's a balancing act
and hopefully,
they're not doing that
every single day.
I think what you have to keep
in mind is
that agriculture
doesn't exist on its own,
food science doesn't exist
on its own,
nutrition doesn't exist
on its own.
There's got to be collaboration,
you've got to understand
what markets you're targeting,
even when you're planting
your crop.
I mean, if we have
a sudden demand for pasta,
then we're going to be switching
from a hard red spring wheat
to a durum wheat,
because that's the type of wheat
that gets used in pasta.
And then as a processor,
we have to know
how to handle that material,
so there has to be
good communication with the
secondary processors,
with the primary producers,
and a good knowledge
of the markets as well.
I'm Doug Chorney and I live and
farm in East Selkirk, Manitoba,
just north of Winnipeg.
My grandfather came to Canada
and started farming in 1903
and my parents established
the yard site
where I'm farming
after that in 1939.
Well, many people think
of Western Canada
as being all prairie
and people just turned over
the sod and started farming.
Our family broke bush.
We were in the dark,
black soil zone,
which is quite stony
and full of trees,
and our parents and grandparents
did a lot of breaking land.
But my grandfather worked
quite hard at that.
By 1928 they were farming
nearly 3,000 acres
and had 75 horses on the farm
to provide power.
Today on our farm we still grow
wheat and we grow oats
and soybeans and canola
and grow some vegetables
on a small basis for
the fresh market, but we have
a retail store right on our farm
and sell produce to the public,
as well as being
a commercial grain farm.
But something my mother started,
in the '60s
and we've let it evolve
over the years
and I became really enthused
with it when I was in university
and made it my summer job
to operate that business
in partnership with my parents.
And now my daughter's in
university and 19 years old
and she's become a partner
in the business and is really
active in the management
and running of the store,
so it is a nice way for the
family to transition
into making business decisions
and also interacting
with the public,
which is a valuable life skill
you can use
in whatever career you pursue.
While I've come to this line
of work out of desire
and love of the practice
of producing food,
I'm actually a professional
engineer by training,
worked off the farm after
university for several years
and decided when my daughter
was born actually
that I wanted to be home more
and have a life
that accommodated time
with my family.
And I quit my job in 1993
to farm full time
and I've made sacrifices perhaps
in my professional career,
but I feel it's been
well worth it.
It's been very fulfilling
to be a farmer
and it's a challenge at times
from an economic point of view
to get through and maintain
a standard of living
that you become accustomed to
when you're in a salaried
position.
And thankfully my wife has kept
her job, and she's a nurse,
but you'll find that quite often
with young farmers now
that there are multiple incomes
coming to the household
to keep everything going
and make it stable.
Well, because we have this
retail store on my farm,
I have the chance to talk
to consumers all the time
that come to visit us,
and I'm always amazed
at their curiosity as to what is
going on on the farm,
'cause there isn't
really a chance to experience
that inside the city.
In Winnipeg, when you go
to the grocery store,
everything you need
you can generally find
and it's only when you want
something unique
like fresh produce
that they come out to a farm.
And when they see all the other
things going on,
I'm really encouraged by
the fact that they want to know
more about how food is produced
and hear the stories
about what's going on
on the farm.
So there is an appetite
not just for food,
but for a knowledge about
how their food's reproduced.
More so in recent times
with food safety issues,
people are becoming a lot more
aware of the fact
that it's a good thing to have
farmers in Manitoba
producing food close to home.
(woman)
So I get to go all over
the Province of Manitoba
speaking to students
like you about agriculture.
So Agriculture in the Classroom
is a very dynamic organization
here in the province, and
what we do essentially is
connect students at all ages,
so kindergarten to grade 12,
to agriculture,
to understand what agriculture
means to them
in their everyday life.
So we want them
to understand, of course,
that the food on the plate
comes from agriculture,
but we take it even
further than that and
so that they understand that
agriculture is all around them.
It's the floor we walk on,
it's the paint on the walls,
it's things they might not even
think about,
it's the toothpaste
they use in the morning.
So we want them to understand
that agriculture
is around them every day
in everything they do
and help them make
that connection.
We have
a very successful program
called the Made in Manitoba
Breakfast Program.
We come into the school, and we
feed the whole student body
a hot breakfast, coupled
with an educational component
that they learn about
everything they're about to eat
and how that should matter
to them.
And then the students get to eat
a hot breakfast.
And everything on the plate is
a made in Manitoba product.
And then
the finishing touch on that
is when we serve up the food,
the people representing
and serving up
each of the food items
are farmers
who produced that food
right in the communities
where we are.
I measure success when we walk
out of a school after a program
and you've got kids thanking
farmers for what they did
to make that food appear
on the plate.
Most people that are engaged in
actual primary production,
raising animals,
the vast 99.9% of them do think
that they are respectful
and that they are stewards
and that they are doing
something very important
and that they do care
about the animals.
We do teach about welfare
and what the animals need
because our understanding
of that has changed over time.
But fundamentally, I think,
the underlying principle
upon which really livestock
production, farming, is based
is that aspect of stewardship.
It's of actually caring
for these animals.
As people would say,
why else would I do it?
It's not a 9-to-5'er,
it is something
that requires
a lot of work and effort,
a lot of focus
in that responsibility.
And yes, there are some
bad actors out there,
but that is not the majority.
So for us in our teaching,
not only do we try
to teach about welfare
and our knowledge and our
understanding currently,
but what animals need
and what's important to them
and also all the production
aspects,
but we also encourage
an understanding
and the questioning
of oneself. Right?
Okay, is what you're doing, are
you in fact paying attention
to the individual animal
and what they need?
But also an understanding
of what the consumer
is concerned about
and how do you deal
with that concern?
You can't ignore it, that's
your market basically as well,
you can't ignore it--
how do you deal with it?
My name is Marg Rempel,
and I live southeast
of a little community
called Ste. Anne, Manitoba.
We're a mixed farm, we're
growing a lot of feed grains
for our hog enterprise and we're
also growing some cash crops.
I'm closer to retirement
than I am
to the beginning
of my farming career
and I get really enthused
and very energized and excited
seeing the next crop,
the next generation of farmers
coming onto the scene.
And I think back 35 years ago,
we also had that much energy
and drive and enthusiasm to
experiment and do new things.
It's really great to see
that continue, where we have
a tendency to think,
oh the really good ideas
and good visions and good dreams
are going to die with us
and it's really good to be
reminded
that that's not the case,
that there's a significant
next generation
that's very enthused
about food production.
My husband passed away 9 years
ago, so I operate as a widow.
My oldest son
has returned to the farm
after a bit of time away
and is certainly interested in
making his future on the farm.
[rooster crows]
There are a number of ways
to transfer farms.
It comes down
to each generations are having
to buy the farm again, which is
a significant challenge.
From when you begin your farming
career in your early 20s,
you're already doing
estate planning
because the retiring generation
has to have enough from the farm
to sustain them
through their senior years.
So it's a huge challenge,
and it is for every generation.
But we can't always count
on the financial rewards
to carry us through so
sometimes we need the passion,
we just need the plain grit,
to get us through
some of the more
difficult times.
You ask us as farmers,
is your farm a business?
And we say yes, it is, but it
also a lot more than that too.
Right? It is also where we live,
it binds up our family
and has so many threads
woven together
that it is a business,
but it's not necessarily
a cut-and-dried,
easy to separate business.
The spiritual dimension almost
of living on the land,
from the land, certainly by
the time we get to older age,
that's just really part of us.
So in terms of leaving it,
I think I can leave it
externally,
but internally, no,
it's probably always there.
Once a farmer always a farmer--
yeah, probably.
(narrator)
"To everything
there is a season,
and a time to every purpose
under the heaven.
A time to be born
and a time to die
A time to plant and a time to
pluck up that which is planted."
[drums & melodica
play in bright rhythm]
[woman voices
the following credits]
And the members of...
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