Season 2, Episode 14: Farming Dryland, Irrigated, and Ranchland
with Dwight Popowich, Julian Vandenberg, and John Smith
In this episode, Episode 14 of Season 2, Jenny is joined by Bob Morrison and three guests: Dwight Popowich, Julian Vandenberg, and John Smith, who represent different farming sectors—dryland, irrigated, and rangeland farming. The discussion highlights the challenges faced by farmers, including water shortages, drought conditions, and the impact of climate change on water resources. The guests share their experiences with water management, the economic pressures of farming, and the mental health challenges within the agricultural community. They emphasize the importance of community support, policy advocacy, and technological advancements in sustaining farming operations. The conversation underscores the interconnectedness of water, agriculture, and community well-being, advocating for greater awareness and support for rural farmers.
Introductions to Dwight Popowich, Julian Vandenberg, and John Smith
Jenny (00:04):
Welcome to The Gravity Well Podcast. I am your host, Jenny Ami. Here you break down heavy ideas with me to understand their complexities and connections. Our mission is to work through dilemmas together in conversation and process. I acknowledge that I live on the traditional territory of Treaty 7 and Metis districts 5 and 6. The treaties and self-governance agreements established by indigenous peoples were created to honour the laws of the land, maintain balance with nature by giving back and uphold reciprocal relationships. This knowledge and intention are what guide The Gravity Well conversation. I ask for genuine dialogue, real hearts, and openness to different perspectives. This is your invitation to find common ground with me.
This podcast is dedicated to the natural world, our children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and all future generations. The gravity well is on YouTube and streaming wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at thegravitywell.net. Welcome, I’m really excited to have Bob join me with three other guests today, which I’ll get into in a second. This is still in the first half of season two if you’re a subscriber. This is episode 14 of season two, and it’s also episode six of Bob Morrison and I’s Water and Southern Alberta Podcast miniseries. This episode is going to cover dryland, irrigated and rangeland farming. We have three guests today. Dwight Popowich is a dryland farmer in two hills in the Red Deer Basin and is the chair of the Polluter Pay Federation, of which I am a part. Dwight has been on the show before talking about liabilities last year. Julian is an irrigation farmer in the Enchant region in Bow Basin and is a city firefighter.
That’s how…my husband actually introduced Julian to me, a few or actually 2023. And he said, you need to learn about rural Alberta and you need to learn about farming. And I was saying to Julian, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, basically. Yeah, he was right. And then lastly, John is a rancher. John Smith, excuse me, is a rancher in the MD of Ranch Lands and Willow Creek. He straddles both and is the fellow defender of clean water. John and I have met at many protests against the coal mining proposals in Eastern slopes. I’m really pleased to have all of you guys here. Why are we doing this? Just quickly for your background, we want to first of all give the general population some knowledge. I’m very ignorant in farming and farming practices. I am very excited to learn here, help people that work in water.
There’s a lot of conversations that happen in silos. We’re trying to break those silos down. And then lastly, concerned citizens. Like myself, who’s concerned about it, we were talking earlier about water shortages that we saw last year, for example. We know there’s more drought happening in southern Alberta. The Milk River Irrigation District is shut down for the year, for example. There’s a lot of things happening in water that are impacting your work, and we’re excited to hear about it. That’s in the area of stewardship. We also had some conversations around irrigation history and then also the environment. A few conversations in there, and then in the fall we’re going to reconvene and talk about the future. Where are we headed in Alberta with water and how can we help people do more to get involved? Okay, I’m going to stop there and do some introductions again. Bob, please go ahead and introduce yourself to this group and then we’ll go around with everyone. Thanks.
Bob:
Okay. My name is Bob Morrison. I’m a retired planner. Most of my career was in water management and transportation, and since retirement I’ve been involved in municipal issues here in Calgary, and I’m really looking forward to this podcast because we’ve been talking about policies and law and how people manage water on a basin scale, but I’m far more interested in learning what does water really mean at a local level right in the field when somebody is trying to make a living farming. I’m very fascinated by the conversation we’re going to have and really interested in seeing what you have to see. Thanks.
Dwight:
Dwight Pop, which I live in the two hills area, which is just east central, I guess Alberta is what we call ourselves here, the gateway to Lakeland. I live on 75 acres of land just south of two hills here, and when we have 50 acres of alfalfa on it, we never bought this property to farm it, so to speak. We bought it for recreation purposes and it happened to have 50 cultivated acres, which I continued to use. Rented it out for a couple of years and then started farming it ourselves actually is what we did. And now we’ve turned it all into alfalfa because I’m retired and actually I’ve joined with my neighbours who’ve done the same thing because they’re all retired and we’ve made one huge field out of it, out of our three fields joint because they’re all touching together and we farm it altogether.
Now we have one of my neighbor’s sons who has stayed on the farm and actually wanted to farm, which these days is kind of unusual, losing a lot of our youth to the cities. It’s worked out great. The farming that I do these days is kind of lazy man’s farming, but I’d rather enjoy it and it does give us an income. Water is also in my background. I had worked for the town at two hills for 10 years and I held the licence for their water systems. I was the guy that was in charge of all of it. That’s water and wastewater. I do understand it very much, and it’s very, very important that we have drinking water. We only have 3% of the water in the world is potable. The rest of it can’t be used, it’s rather important that we have water done properly.
Jenny:
Thank you, Dwight. Yes. I forgot about all your knowledge in water infrastructure as well. Julian, you’re next, please.
Julian:
I’m Julian Vandenberg. We farm in the Enchant region, which is in the MD of Tabor. For anyone who doesn’t really know where that specifically is, it’s right center between Lethbridge and Brooks. We’re an irrigated farm. We farm depending on the year, but about 3000 acres are irrigated. Our primary crop is potatoes as far as water, we’re fed off the Bull River. We are heavily reliant on it. The Bull River for us has been the most solid irrigation system, I think, in southern Alberta. Even with the water restrictions last year that was south of us in the old man and St. Mary’s, we didn’t see any restrictions on our part other than water farms temporarily for the year moved into our region to grow their high water input crops because of the water shortages south of us. That’s kind of my story. Kind of back over to you.
Jenny:
Yeah, thanks Julian. I’m sorry if you said it. And what generation are you on your land? Is that…
Julian:
Sorry. Yeah, I should have mentioned that my dad started the farm and I farmed together with him, he would’ve started it in 1989.
Jenny:
Okay, cool. Right on. Okay, John, you’re next please.
John:
Yeah, my name’s John Smith. We own and operate Plateau Cattle co with my wife Laura Lang. I’m the third generation. My maternal grandfather started it in I think 1959 is when he got started. We’re mostly a cow calf operation. We have, I don’t know, there are four or 500 acres of cultivation. It’s not necessarily our main focus. I usually have that hired out. I have custom work for that. A lot of our experience is kind of on the Highway 22 corridor and over the first range of mountains in the Livingston kind of area, Mount Livingston area. I guess in a previous life I was a weed sprayer for the md, a ranch lands and forestry and stuff. I spent a lot of time back west and have seen some pretty significant changes regarding the water and our management of the landscape back there. I think I started back there 25 years ago probably. I guess I got a quarter of a century of experience and seeing how it’s changed and how we’re treating the landscape. Yeah, excited to be here and thanks for the opportunity.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you John. I’m excited to hear more. Bob, do you want to leave this off?
What issues are you seeing related to water in your area?
Bob (08:42):
Beyond what you’ve already talked about, start with you, maybe John, what are the issues that you see in your area related to water, whether it’s a water supply issue, whether how does the land affect the water? Is it a water quality issue? What kinds of things are you seeing in your area?
John:
Well, specifically at our home place right now, we’re able to control the quality pretty well. We do have our creeks and dug oats fenced off and we’re investing money and continuing to invest money in offsite waters. That’s been really good. I mean, there’s a lot of programs there to help farmers out and most of the people I know are taking advantage of those programs. It would be the quantity that is our issue. There’s a little creek that runs through our place. It doesn’t even have a name and maybe if it had run more often, I’d name it. But the point of it is when I was a kid, we talked about the one time the creek didn’t run and now we talk about when it does run. We just received five inches of water whenever that was like four days ago and the creek came up pretty good, it wasn’t running.
It came up pretty good and now you can go and almost check it twice a day and you can see that the flow is starting to slow down and I expect in a week it’s probably going to quit again. Our aquifers, our groundwater flow or supplied by springs and that’s killing us, is our springs are just not flowing the way they used to be, and that’s how low our groundwater is. And that five inches of rain, I mean it’s soaked in, there was no water laying in the fields, anything. We were so dry and it could give us another five inches again right away and that would be fine.
Bob:
Yeah, that creek sounded like a spring Fed Creek the way you were describing it, and that’s certainly one of the issues we’re trying to get a handle on is this relationship between groundwater and surface water in the basin, particularly for those smaller streams. Now you talked about fencing off the creek. Have you been involved with things like cows and fish, those kinds of programs?
John:
Not specifically on cows and fish. On this one, we just did this. We wanted to, but our offsite watering things, we participated in the Western grant and had a couple winter things subsidised. I guess actually the next one we’re doing, we’re doing through cap, Canadian agricultural Partnerships has a program where they’ll cover 50% of an offsite watering system up to 10 grand. That’s good. We’re going to do that next. I know there’s other ones like off cap RR, I’m probably forgetting some, but there’s lots of funding streams out there if you go looking.
Bob:
You’ve been using dugouts, if I can use that term. Is that what you’re looking at in terms of wall stream?
John:
Yeah, our little creek flows through and then my grandfather, he dug three dugouts kind of spread out through the place. The place is kind of a couple miles long, he kind of spaced these dugouts where he thought best and the creek had run into him and then ran out and carried on into the neighbours. We’ve fenced it all off, fenced the dugout off, and then wherever appropriate and where it works for our management, we’ll spot a tank and do a solar powered pump. And I can see the cattle far better. They’re going to do better when they have clean fresh water.
Bob:
Julie, in your area, what are the water issues, whether they’re water quality, water supply, management of the land and how it affects the water?
Julian:
For us, I believe that we are in a very fortunate part of the irrigation districts being in the bow. We haven’t had any water restrictions in my lifetime, south of us in the St. Mary’s and the LNID. There has been, but for us it’s been really good, honestly. But I would say the number one issue probably would be the quantity of water, not necessarily for us, but the irrigation district south of us. As far as positives in the irrigation industry, I guess in our area, a big thing in the last 15 or 20 years has been the progression of water pipelines. As a kid we always got our water through irrigation ditches, which had lots of problems in and of themselves, lots of leakage, stuff like that. And now with everything through pipelines, I feel it’s become very efficient that way and very convenient for us. I mean, it’s like opening the tap and we have water. Sorry, John, it sounds like it’s not the case for you, but that is how it is here.
Bob:
Yeah, pipelines have been a big improvement.
Julian:
They sure have. Yep.
Bob:
Now has that been something you’ve had to pay for or is it something the district has to pay for? How have those things been financed?
Julian:
I believe it’s through the district and public funding. As far as I know, we have not paid directly for the pipelines. I do believe our water rights costs have gone up, but I believe it’s mostly publicly funded, I guess indirectly through tax dollars. But other than that, no.
Bob:
Kind of a partnership between say the provincial government and the district then.
Julian:
Correct. Yeah. I do believe it is one of the best uses of public funds that we’ve seen in our area.
Bob:
Well, and the thing that we found in our first podcast is that irrigation may not be economic on its own, but it certainly provides a lot of economic development opportunities in terms of maintaining a secure water supply for people.
Julian:
Correct. As well as parts and recreation. It’s also a huge driver for parts and recreation in an area.
Bob:
Well, certainly on the reservoirs it’s very, very popular, isn’t it?
Julian:
Yeah.
Bob:
Okay. Dwight, you’ve touched a little bit on this, but what are your concerns in your area in terms of water land management as it affects water?
Dwight:
Well, what we’re seeing of course, is drought, light conditions that have been going on for a number of years, dugout slews are the lowest I’ve ever seen them in decades. They just don’t seem that we depend so much on runoff and we don’t get the snow, whether we even get in the wintertime to get that spring runoff to fill these things. And we’ve been very dependent. Then on the rains, which used to be quite regular, we’d get that sunshine in the daytime and then get the evening showers coming through. But we’ve seen that kind of been disrupted for some reason or other. It hasn’t always been the best. Last year I only got one third of the alfalfa. I normally get off of my field because we just didn’t get the rains in a timely fashion. But yet this year they did come here. They were a little late coming, but it was still, we got a significant amount, a couple inches.
Dwight:
That’s going to add to it alfalfa’s deeper roots. It goes down quite a ways, but what we’re seeing is the water table is lower and the area that we’re in, we sit on one of the largest salt beds in the world right under us, and if you get down any lower than say 200 feet into the ground for a well, you’ve hit the salt beds. We can’t go lower. When the water table starts going down, you start to see the upward issues of the quality of the water. The sodium is just too high. Matter of fact, the town at two Hills used to run well water. They had five wells that they ran to supply the town. They had to shut it down because of salt. Yeah, the good supply. But the salt was off the table. Doctors would recommend anybody with high blood pressure not to drink the water locally.
We treated it, but just couldn’t take enough salt out of it. Now they get City of Edmonton water, which brings up another issue in my mind is we have the city EPCOR supplying all these towns going out for hundreds of miles now. We saw what happens in Calgary when part of the main water suppliers go down. It’s always an issue out here too. We worry that farming wise, like you say, we’re very dependent on the rains. If we need spray or water, we will be going to the towns and we use that clean water there. And I think frackers are starting to use some of our water too, is what I’m starting to see, because there’s no dugouts, there’s nothing to really suck it out of no slue, they have to get it somewhere. Yeah, it’s going to become a challenge as the demand gets higher and if we don’t start getting some of these drought conditions change, which I just can’t see changing with what we’re seeing going on, it’s going to be a struggle as we go forward.
And here we don’t have any other options. We don’t have pipelines bringing water in, I don’t know what they’re going to do there. You said the only irrigation I’ve ever, ever seen in my life in this area was we had a guy who was a sod farmer and for his sod, he would irrigate some of that, but that was it. That’s the only irrigation, and now he sold that out and there’s nothing there anymore anyway, guys just don’t do it here. I think it’s the cost of course, and getting rights these days, it becomes an issue getting water rights. Yeah, that’s where we’re at here now.
Bob:
You’ve got to have a body of water that you can tap into that, as you said about the groundwater, that’s going to be reliable and not come with some extra benefits like salt.
Dwight:
Wow. Exactly. And if you’re running cattle up in this area, you need, well, you got to have wells or dugouts, the wells have to supplement those dugouts. You’re not getting fueled up from rain or runoff from the springs. It becomes a concern when you start seeing the drop in the water table itself. We know it’s much lower than it usually is.
Bob:
Are you on a well or on town water?
Dwight:
I’m on a well.
Bob:
On a well.
Dwight:
Yeah.
Jenny:
Okay. But your town is on city water?
Dwight:
It’s now on city water and matter of fact, when I think of just about every community within our county is now on city water.
Jenny:
Yeah. You and I were talking about this in a prior conversation and one of the conversations was around WBE and Lake, for example, when that contamination happened from the train derailment. Now those communities are also piped into Edmonton. To your point about pipelines, I’ve been in Edmonton and Calgary my whole life, aside from our cottage, I am used to piping, not even thinking about water coming to me. And I think this is the blindness we have with water, which has come up in some of our other conversations. If we really don’t understand if something fails, where are we getting our second source from? Is what you’re describing Dwight, right?
Dwight:
Well, exactly. And the other thing is when they put the pipeline in, yes, you’re supplying the towns and that, but you’re not supplying the agricultural community, which is a big user. There’s no way that EPCOR would be able to do both. There’s just absolutely no way. The plant’s not big enough. They couldn’t produce that much. Yeah, we got a pipeline coming to these communities, but is it going to help agriculture because if we start lining up with our trucks to fill ’em up for our agricultural needs, it’s going to put a big, big demand.
Bob:
There’s a big difference in the size of pipes for irrigation versus supplying a municipality.
How is water used for your farming operations?
Jenny:
Well, and I think if we could start talking about what water use looks like for you, just what does it look like for each of you, Dwight? I’m imagining as somebody who lives in the city and doesn’t really do this work that you have to look at the weather forecast and predict when you’re planting and all sorts of things around this
Dwight:
A little bit. I mean, you plant in the spring, you hope that you get the rains when you get the rains. I mean that’s basically, that’s the plan and it’s always been the plan for years and years and years when you don’t have irrigation, nothing to back it up, mother nature is what you have to depend on and you hope that you get the reins in a timely fashion. Like I said, last year, my neighbours were getting it. They did. Well, actually, but I didn’t because I didn’t get the reins, and that’s just the luck of the draw for that one year. But normally we get enough rain to make it work and it’s okay, but like I’m saying, we’re seeing when you need the backup. We see these stretches where we’re getting these heat waves now that go on for a few weeks. That’s the time when we don’t get the rain and the time when you may need to back up for water and cattle and all that sort of stuff. Now that starts putting a big, big draw on a system that’s already under stress and we know we’re not getting, we see it in the winter, we don’t get the snow out here, what we used to get, and we’re imagining you’re not getting it in the mountains either because they’re not getting it. We’re not getting it. That’s the way it works. The weather patterns move from west to east, and we’re dependent on what’s happening in those mountain ranges very much.
Jenny:
Yeah. Can you speak a little bit about your planning, John? I understand you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature, but are there any changes or anything you’re seeing in terms of planning, timing or otherwise that matters with respect to water?
John:
I’d say here on the farming side of things, you see guys trying to seed way earlier now than what would’ve been the normal. We got guys we’re on the foothills and guys just on the outside of the foothills are trying to seed the end of March, the first day April, which would’ve been, nobody would’ve ever done that before because you’d worry about getting frosted out. These guys are trying to seed earlier that they can use a bit of moisture when it’s there and they’re rolling the dice to see if that crop will get past the frost, the frost hazards. But for us, if we water a lot of cattle off of wells, for instance this spring and we have really good water, the wells have never gone dry, and we had a well bugger up and it’s always the pressure switch. And after I changed the pressure switch and that didn’t fix it, I started thinking that the well was dry, and that was the first thought that came to my head.
It turns out that wasn’t it. It was another issue. And then that makes me think about the irrigation, the Vandenberg’s, there’s a Vandenberg hay farm. I’m not sure if they’re related or not, but us cow calf guys, I can see when it’s dry like this and we’re not getting production, I put the cows in on my own hay fields. They’re only rated at a thousand pounds an acre, and it’s not worth cutting. We grazed it, and that’s where irrigation’s going to provide a good service for the cow calf guy. We need somebody to grow a bit of forage for us and some hay, we might as well let the guys with the best technology do it, I think.
Bob:
Well, it’s my understanding that irrigation in particular has become quite integrated with the cow calves operations that you’ve got, particularly when you’ve got a drought.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. I know one strategy we’ve employed with our own cows in the winter feeding. We graze on the Waldron grazing co-op till about January 15th, 20th, something like that. And then now what we’ve been doing the last three, four years is bringing our cows home and giving ’em somebody that’s growing silage. Some do it with irrigation, some don’t mostly nod around here. But yeah, it’s actually really changing the ranching paradigm a little bit is how to winter these cows because that’s the most expensive expense that you have as a cow guy is your winter feed costs. Typically it would’ve been a rancher who would’ve spent all winter rolling out hay bales and we’re just not seeing as much of that anymore and definitely not in our place. Got to think outside the box and do some different things to try and stay in the business.
Dwight:
That’s some of the reason why I went into alfalfa was exactly what John is talking about. When we see lower, say rain isn’t coming and we’re not getting the yields, we usually see the price of that alfalfa that feed go up. It kind of balances itself out. Not for guys like John who’ve suddenly now got a higher cost, but guys like me who are growing alfalfa. That’s kind of the balance why and why I went into alfalfa being retired, very little lot less work to it. And there’s that kind of balance that sometimes happens with it. Not all the time, but sometimes.
Jenny:
Yeah. Julian, can you offer us a different perspective? What does it look like for you? Is it mostly just making sure everything’s consistent throughout the year or what does it look like?
Julian:
Yeah, for us, well, like I said earlier, we turn on the tap and we can get water. Now, the caveat to that is our water doesn’t get turned on generally until April 25th, and this year was actually a little bit later. I think we were a couple days into May before our water got turned on. But for us, our planting, I mean, we grow crops that take pretty much the full growing season, we can’t necessarily wait for rains or the water to get turned on to plant those crops because we run on our growing days. For us, our potatoes rule of thumb is April 20th, the planter started rolling into the fields, and that’s kind of the way it’s been for many years. We are, like I said, we are heavily reliant on irrigation, and so far we’ve had a pretty bulletproof system, at least in our district.
Bob:
Julian, I think you’re being a little modest. You said you just turn on the tap. I gather there’s a little bit more work involved than just turning a tap on. Can you give us an idea of what it’s like to irrigate?
Julian:
We irrigate primarily with pivot irrigation, and for those you’re not familiar with the pivot, essentially, it’s funny, I work with people in the city that say, “oh, look at all the crop circles where you are.” Well, that’s a pivot. Mostly you’ll see a pivot in a circle. That part of it is generally automated. There is a lot of maintenance involved in pivot irrigation. We have, I believe, 24 pivots that we operate. And some of them are ours, some of them aren’t, and we have a guy that’s busy full-time keeping those things running. There’s that side of it. As far as turning on the water, I mean, we still need pumps and things like that to get the right pressures. We are pressurized by a pipeline, but generally the pressure isn’t high enough to actually supply our irrigation systems. In the past three years, or not this year, but the last three years we’ve been doing sweet potatoes, which were under drip irrigation, and that was another whole plethora of things that we had to set up for it. Drip irrigation is nice once you get it set up, but setting it up takes a lot of labour. And then there’s actually one of our biggest problems was we had gophers and they would eat the drip tape and you would’ve holes everywhere. That was a concern with that, but we’re no longer doing sweet potatoes. That wasn’t, we thought it would be a high value crop and it was, but just on the input side, not on what we were getting out of it. Yeah, I hope that answered…
Jenny:
Well, it taps into something that was mentioned in our conversation about irrigation with Shannon Stunden Bower when she was talking about, as Dwight was saying, some farmers in Saskatchewan have opted out of irrigation because of all of the inputs to get you to those cash crops can potentially outweigh the benefit of not trying in some cases, again, depending on the area, but when you’ve had something readily available, it’s probably a very different conversation.
Julian:
For us, we grow potatoes as our main crop, and then we seed canola, a little bit of parsnips and some grain to fill the rotation. But the reason I list the crops is generally, except for the grain, those are generally pretty high value crops, which you’d need high value crops on irrigated farms, especially these days. I mean, I don’t know if you guys track what land values are doing our way, but they have gone up extremely high in the last few years to the point that no one starting a farm could buy land. That is why we grow higher value crops. Of course, our inputs are a lot higher too, and our storage concerns as well for the potatoes. We have to of course store all the crops that we get off and we’re actually shipping out today we’re shipping to one of our processing plants, but that’s another thing that comes with high value crops is high value storage. Right.
Jenny:
Yeah. You were describing this to me when I met with you that time, how you have to store and be prepared to move your product through in a way that you get the right prices, but you’re also, the quality stays high, all of those components as well. Right.
Julian:
And we wash and pack, as well. All the potatoes you see in the store in bags are washed, we wash a good chunk of those that you would see. But yeah, that also requires water, which we feed off of. We have a pond on site that we fill, and then we treat the water as it comes out. We have many, many pretty stringent food safety regulations that we have to follow for doing that.
Jenny:
Right. Yeah, I can only imagine the inputs to that. Okay. Can we talk a little bit about the changes you tapped into something both Dwight and Julian about potentially the number of farmers like Julian, you were just describing land prices going up. What we learned in our first episode was that there is, at least in the special areas, that crops like crop sizes have increased by 30 fold since the 1980s, meaning what I understood as 30 times less farmers on the landscape, if you will, in that area. They’ve actually seen a drop in people living in that district. I’m curious, can you guys talk a little bit about those changes? Dwight, you touched on it first already, maybe if you wouldn’t mind starting us off there.
Community Population and Activity Changes
Dwight (30:40):
Yeah, we’re seeing something similar out here, Jenny. We’re seeing less people farming. The younger generation seems to be heading to the city for the big jobs, the big money type of thing, and many of them don’t want to take over the farming. We’re also seeing that as the cost of inputs are going up, you’re needing to do more and more acres in order to make a go of it. We used to have small mom and pop farms where you’d have one quarter of land and you can raise a family. You can’t do that. It’s almost impossible. The small guy really doesn’t exist anymore, and they’re getting bought up by the few guys that want to actually farm and realize that they need many, many more acres. That’s what we’re seeing is guys are becoming quite large for farming, for me to have 75 acres is highly unusual.
I’m very highly unusual, but like I say, I didn’t buy it for farming. I bought it to live on and recreation, and I worked in the grain industry for years. I was the head of the Grain Services Union, that’s why I live out here. I’m very familiar with farming. I grew up on a farm, that sort of thing. I’m connected to it. I love it. I love it out here, but I cannot see how it’s sustainable for these young people to ever start up farming. Unless you have a parent who is retiring and turning some stuff over to you, you’re not going to make a go of it. You can’t afford it. Our prices of land, it’s going up too. Of course, it depends on the soil itself, what grade it’s at, but we’re seeing $1,500 for an acre for some of the farmland, which is crazy. I bought my place 25 years ago. We paid 104,000 for the 75 acres with a house and all these buildings on it and whatnot, and now it’s half a million bucks is what it’s worth just from the property. Gotcha.
Jenny:
Thank you. Dwight. Yeah. John, can you offer some thoughts with respect to that? I know in the songs we heard in Fort McLeod there were some comments around succession planning in the music. I’m just curious, can you offer some comments around what you’re seeing.
John:
To go off Dwight’s point, it is the same thing here. It would be extremely difficult for a young person or a couple to begin ranching. Our land prices, I’m actually jealous of Dwight’s land prices. Ours are quite probably double that or a little bit more, probably closer to 4,000 an acre. And there’s just, even if they wanted to, I don’t know how they would ever get a loan from the bank. You would have to have a down payment so big that they just, why would you do it? You’d have to be a masochist. Really. It’s the same thing out here, the little guys. Some of it’s our young people aren’t coming back because for a long time in farming and ranching, there wasn’t a lot of money in it. Farming has enjoyed a little bit of a boom previous to the one that ranching’s having right now.
That helped maybe bring some young people back there. We’ll let Julian speak to that. But the ranches, you got to be born into it really, or maybe have a relationship with an old guy that’s retiring. I forget the median age of farmers in Alberta, but I think it’s over 65. It’s the same with ranching. There’s a ton of the older generation kind of hanging on, and it’s one of those that’s kind odd because you’ll be sitting there sitting on probably millions of dollars worth of wealth, but because you’ve struggled your whole life, you didn’t have the opportunity to save all the money that you wanted to save to retire.
My mom and dad enjoyed a reasonable retirement, but there were no lavish villas in Spain or anything like that. They just barely made it and they sacrificed to make sure that Laura and I could have a shot at it, and then still a little bit younger, but we’re going to have the same decision to make as try and figure out how we can get enough money squirrelled away to retire and hopefully roll this thing one more time. And then that goes to government policy. If you get the government screwing around with taxes and estate planning, that’s a really big deal for us in agriculture, like huge.
Jenny:
Right. Yeah, I’ve heard that conversation come up before. Yeah. Okay. Julian? Yes, a younger perspective for us, please.
Julian:
Yeah, if I were today to go on my own and buy a farm, it would be 100% impossible Land prices here, and keep in mind this is irrigated, but I think I just did a rough estimate on a quarter that I heard sold the other day and we’re, I think $22,000 an acre. It’s impossible to buy one quarter of land and you can’t even make a go of it on one quarter of land. You could if you had very high value crops, but with that comes very high value equipment that you need to purchase as well and storages and the whole thing. I’m fortunate that my father is involved with it. It’s not getting handed to me by any means, but it is giving me an opportunity that I would be able to start up on my own. I would say for young farmers or for young people in general, I’m in a very fortunate category that I have a dad that has a successful farming operation or that we have a successful farming operation and that we have worked out a plan that can get me involved in it.
For the average young person, that is not possible. It’s just the amount of money to buy a quarter of land. I mean that’s three and a half million dollars per quarter of land where you’re going to get the down payment even by one quarter, never mind a couple to make it worth it, and then all the equipment costs on top of that plus your operating costs. It’s just, yeah, it’s a lot of money. I’m in a fortunate position, but I can see the industry. Actually, I’ve thought about this for a while. I think the industry is going to go, you see it in a lot of Midwestern United States where there’s a lot of now corporate farming. I think that’s going to happen here as well. We see it. Everyone here has mentioned how farms have gone bigger and bigger. Part of that reason is we’ve got a lot of foreign investment into farming in our area and we’re seeing more and more corporate farming. We farm on 3000 acres and we’re considered to be a pretty small to medium farm. Yeah, I guess that’s my perspective on it.
Jenny:
Yeah. Julian, I’m just curious because you grew up out there, can you speak to your neighbours, are your friends what’s described? And I’ve certainly seen them go into the city to work for industries or other things rather than try to pick up where their parents have left off?
Julian:
Yeah, I guess it depends on the friends. Some of them weren’t motivated to work on a farm, a lot of ’em, and I think that had to do, and I think maybe Dwight or John had mentioned it earlier, farming had a real bad rap, especially in the nineties. It was really tough to make a go of it. A lot of people were born, probably a couple of years older than me, but we’re coached not to farm and to go to the city and get jobs there. Now, farming, I would say in the last 20 years, has turned around and especially irrigated farming has done quite well. I guess farming requires a lot of effort and a lot of work and a lot of people like the Monday to Friday, eight to five jobs, which I guess I can see the appeal to, but it’s not for everyone anymore.
And there’s just a lot of options out there. But as far as my friends go, I would say they are not necessarily farming on their parents’ operation, but a lot of them have started businesses related to farming. In our area, agriculture is a primary economic driver and with that comes, I’ve got a couple buddies that have machine shops and welding shops and mechanic shops and stuff like that. Everything to do with irrigation is high inputs, which means lots of equipment, which means lots of work for those guys. There’s lots of business opportunities around farming. Being directly involved in a farm is a different story, I would say.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you. That’s fantastic. Okay, Bob, I’ve hogged the conversation
Making Farming Work for Its Communities
Bob (38:49):
In terms of making this work from a community point of view where you, it’d be nice to have the corporate guys come in and be part of the community, but Dwight, you’ve been involved in banking in your previous life. What kind of solutions do we have out there that would potentially make this better from a community point of view in terms of keeping people on the land as opposed to going to these major corporations?
Dwight:
That’s a darn good question. What I’m seeing out here is this is something that we really haven’t talked about the stress of farming, it’s a big issue. We’re losing farmers who are taking their own lives because of the stress in my area. I’ve lost two friends in the last couple years and it’s just, I see it and I look at these guys because they’re having to go to this more and more acres to make ends meet, snow is flying and they’re still combining for crying out loud. We never used to have to do that kind of stuff. I’d rented it for a couple years, we thought we’d just try renting it out. We rented to one of the bigger guys in the area. He went under, he never finished off because he couldn’t get his crops off to one, he had too many acres.
The stresses are everywhere, and that is something that we haven’t really talked about, and I think that’s one of the biggest problems of why people are not going into farming a ranching, financially speaking, you’re gambling and then you get all the stress on top of that with weather, with input costs, with whether you’re going to get your crops off, whether you’re going to get proper pricing for it, you don’t know what, there’s too many things being thrown at you, too many things, too many stresses that need to be managed. It’s not everybody’s cut out to be a farmer. It’s special people that will be in this, and that’s why I see it kind of going to corporations because of all the stress and all the management that is needed to farm all these huge acres to make ends meet. I don’t think you’re ever going to see the single family farm type of thing ever coming back, ever. Not at these costs.
Bob:
John and Julian, have you seen the same kind of issues in your area?
John:
I would say yeah, the mental health thing is actually, that’s a big one that doesn’t get talked about and most people in the industry don’t really want to talk about that either, but it is something that should be addressed and yeah, stress is huge, right? And lots of times it’s about things that you can’t do anything about. You can participate in whatever business risk management, your crop insurance, there’s moisture deficiency insurance. There’s all these different things, and I mean they do help, but at the end of the day when it hasn’t rained in a month or two or very little and you’re running out of options, and in my case, you’re looking at a cow herd that has generations of working to it, and it’s like now you got to decide what cows to get to go to town. And we had to do that three years ago and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like doing that. Yeah, it’s hard, right? It’s hard, but you just, I don’t know. Mind you that being said, if I ever go to Vegas and I play blackjack, that feels easy. It’s the same thing as my regular life.
Dwight:
That’s easy. The guy who won the lottery went farming till it was all gone. Yeah.
Bob:
I asked an economic question, Julian and I got a mental health answer. How are things in your area? The question I had was, how can you make bankers make the system work better for the local community? But I got an answer that was related to stress and mental health issues. What do you…
John:
Sorry, Bob, I lost focus.
Dwight:
That was my fault. Sorry.
Bob:
Well, no, I’ve been known to ask the wrong question, but get the right answer surprisingly sometimes. But in terms of your area, Julian, you’ve got all the cost inputs in particular to make a go of it. In terms of irrigation, are there better financial models or are there better mental health models for farming?
Julian:
That’s a tough question. I don’t really have the answer to that to be quite honest. I don’t know what the solution is to get family farming back. I don’t think it’s actually possible. I don’t really have an answer to that. As far as mental health, that’s a big one for sure. I mean, like John said, you’re playing blackjack with millions of dollars at a time. I mean, a lot of times when I talk to people, they’re shocked by the amount of money that we move. Well, the amounts of money come in, but they also leave in the same amounts. It’s just bigger dollar values that you’re gambling with and there is a lot of risk with it. We can’t say for sure. We spent a lot of money getting the crops in the ground where one hill storm away from it not being there. Crop insurance has helped with that. But as far as your question goes, sorry, I don’t really have a solution for that.
Bob:
That leads me to my next question, which is in terms of getting people to work the land for you or help you in terms of labour supply, particularly if people are going to these big corporate farms, how well are we set in terms of being able to have people that would provide that labour supply along with all the other things we need? For us,
Julian:
It works. We have a big population of Mennonite in our area, and they’re really great workers. They’re very handy people. And generally our lower, I should say, yeah, lower paid labour. For example, today we have five people that are grading out the bad potatoes off our line, that’d be our lower paying jobs. We do sometimes have an issue getting enough people for that in the future. I do see that being replaced by technology for us. There’s already, I do my own programming on the farm and our own electrical and design. The more we can automate and get rid of some of those positions, the easier it is as far as, I would say skilled labour as far as operating the plant retractors or trucking and stuff like that. We haven’t had a problem getting people as of yet, but we also, we’re in southern Alberta Mennonite community, we only work six days a week, and that’s because of our faith as well. But if we push ’em to work seven days a week, you’re not going to be able to get that. And I do believe we were talking about mental health earlier. Like I said, we only operate six days a week and I see our neighbours running seven days a week for four or five weeks straight. That’s not healthy either. There has to be a break in between there.
Bob (45:44):
Okay. John, what have you seen in terms of labour supply?
John (45:48):
In our instance, we’re a smaller cow calf thing, we’ll sometimes get some seasonal help. That’s never been an issue getting that, but I do think Julian’s right on technology is really going to change things going forward. We’re already talking about swarms of sprayer drones. I can see where most of the planning equipment will probably go autonomous. And the same with the cow calf thing we’re working on, or the technologies just becoming available now for these virtual fence callers and remote monitoring of your cattle. I don’t think labour’s going to be a problem going forward. You’re going to need maybe 20% of the labour that you did need, and it’s going to need to be skilled to be able to run the systems to run four combines at a time or analyze the health of 500 head of cows. That’s the way I see that going.
I just want to go back to your economic question. I did get sidetracked there quick too, and I think if there was a little bit of a directive, at least this was my experience with banks, there was two or three different branches in our hometown, and it would seem like one bank would be a little bit agriculture, you’d see most of your farmers and ranchers there, and maybe another one kind of wasn’t, and they’d kind of roll around and take turns. And there were times that you could work with a bank and not work with it. And now I don’t know what it’s like for you guys, but honestly the bank in town’s useless as we know. You go in, you give your paperwork, whatever, and it’s always got to go to Toronto or wherever. I think if there was a little bit more on the lending side, some help and direction with the banking industry, it would help slow down the bleeding anyways would be my thought.
Julian:
Yeah, John, on that, we experienced a similar thing about 15 years ago or so, and we have turned away from charter banks because of that. Long story short, they called in our loans and gave us 60 days and we were really close to going under because of that. We no longer deal with charter banks because of exactly that reason. Everything has to get approved through Toronto, whereas we’re with a credit union now and a TD that way is really good as well, but it’s a lot more local. When you need something, you go to the bank and you talk to someone who’s actually in charge of it.
Dwight:
Yeah, I was just going to mention that ATB, and that’s why it exists, is to be helping farmers in Alberta and unfortunately what they’ve done is they’ve kind of slid towards the oil and gas sector more than they do the agricultural sector. To me, that saddens me because that is why ATB exists to help us guys out in rural Alberta because the big banks, if they weren’t ignoring our communities in the first place, they were ignoring agriculture even if they were out here. It’s a little disappointing to see the mandate for a TB to kind of go more to oil and gas. I know that they still have programs for agriculture. I work quite closely with my local banker because I’m an ex banker and worked for a TB. She’s always wanting to chat with me about stuff. And also because of my position in the Polluter Pay Federation, she’s always talking about what’s going on with banks and mortgages for land. And this is something we’re seeing where mortgages are being affected now because their reclamation certificates aren’t being trusted. The banks aren’t trusting the AER. It’s those kinds of issues. The banks are well aware of what’s going on, but they need to work with us a little closer instead of costing us money. And then we need the government to step in here and start taking us seriously. Agriculture is a big part of Alberta, a huge part of our economy, and yet,
Key Takeaways
Jenny (49:48):
Well, not just for Alberta, but for Canada. This is a massive role that’s played for the country here that we talk about very casually. Thank you so much. I think it’s been fascinating to hear the similarities. I went to a watershed council meeting just outside of Red Deer and they had somebody speak to mental health issues at that event. And the recommendation I was listening for, what are the recommendations, right? Because they were talking about precisely what you guys described, more suicides and stress for performers, and the comment was, call this health number. To me. One of the things when I think about the future, and maybe I’ll pass this off as closing comments, is there still a community of farmers that are able to drive policy in a meaningful way? I would mean how would, because to me, it’s all about the communities and the local people benefiting long-term rather than you’re describing corporations.
I don’t see how that’s going to help communities come together. Anyway, those are my closing thoughts, and I’m just curious from your perspective how we might, again, thinking about community growth and about how you guys can build that security and safety and what you’re doing in your farms, I guess I’m thinking trying to figure out how to stitch that back together or if that is already there and I’m ignorant to it. Those are lots of words. The question in there was what sort of community building are you doing together with other farmers to make sure that you’re helping drive decision-making? I’ll leave it there.
Dwight:
Well, Jenny, you know what I’ve been going through for the last eight years with the Polluter Pay Federation and trying to get landowners to come on board a little bit more with oil and gas and hosting it. And we are notoriously independent landowners. That’s what we are. We really love our independence. That is why we’re out here. This gives us this sense of freedom. It’s pretty hard. It’s like herding chickens when it comes to landowners trying to get ’em together to do the same voice sometimes, but you are absolutely right. Hopefully I’m still going to be starting some town hall meetings.
Jenny:
That’s wonderful.
Dwight:
It’s going to be around the mature asset strategy. We’re going to start there, but I think we need to be hearing more and more of that on some of the other things that are going on in agriculture and start getting everybody together to be that one voice.
Because we’re starting to see in the Polluter Pay Federation, that one voice is actually starting to have some effect on the government. They’re actually starting to listen and maybe, I don’t know if it’s really willing to change policy yet, but they are listening to us. They are hearing us. We are making enough noise for them to at least start listening before it. They’re always ignoring us. So I think we need to do the same thing here with some of the other issues we have in agriculture, water, one of them, the stress end of it, financing all of that. These are all important because agriculture, if you don’t have agriculture, what have you got folks? What have you got? Nothing.
Jenny:
No kidding. Thanks, Dwight. That was awesome.
John:
Yeah, I was just thinking about our experiences where one of the families that’s been involved with taking the government to task over the coal mining and the Eastern Slopes, I do feel like Dwight’s, right? It’s hard to get a bunch of farmers and ranchers organized to push in one direction because it is just everybody’s busy. Look at today, I was looking forward to doing this podcast, and then my morning got away from me and thank gosh, Jenny phoned me to tell me I needed to do something. That’s a real thing. And that happens every day, a lot of us out here. But I do think that when we’re reunited and we’re somewhat organized, that we can have an effect. And we saw that we were able to turn the government around whenever that was, 21, we had Sonya Savage on tv, recognized that they made a mistake and reversed a decision. Now why we’re revisiting it again is unclear to me. But anyways, we’re organized again, and I think as we had the town hall in Fort McLeod, and I understand there’s another one on the second in Okotoks.
Jenny:
Be there.
John:
Yeah. I unfortunately got to take our cows to the mountains that day. I had the trucks booked even before I organised that, and I got to get these freaking cows out of my hair. Anyways, but yeah, and I really hope that that will be well attended because that’s the only thing the government fears is bad press and not getting elected. That’s honestly all they care about. And for us, we’ve always said, it’s nonpartisan. It’s not left right, it’s right, wrong. This is the beast that you got to work with. I’m really hoping that we get a great turnout and I really hope that all the people in the agricultural areas that have supported us continue to support us and actually continue to educate their neighbours. We’re still amazed that we find that people don’t actually understand what the crux of the issue is.
Education is still important, and that’s something every farmer can do. I am sure Julian and Dwight, they have that happen. When I run into somebody that is from the city and finds out that we ranch, there’s nobody jumping down my throat saying, what are your cows doing near the water? Are they belching methane? They’re enamoured and excited to learn what we do and how we do it, I think because they feel like we’re connected to the land maybe more than what they are. And I think that chance for education’s there and people just want to know and feel good about what’s going on, right? I think that’s something we should all provide.
Jenny:
Beautiful. Okay, Julian?
Julian:
Yeah, I think I’ll piggyback off John A. Little bit there. I think as far as getting together as farmers, it’s going to be pretty tough until you have an issue that everyone can unite behind. I think Dwight mentioned earlier as well, but a lot of times we’re in our own little world here. We got neighbours all around us on every side, and I can’t think of one that I actually talked to other than pulling up on the road and both of us rolling down our windows and having a chat. I would say the onus for mental health on farmers is to reach out to each other and talk to each other. I think all of us have been around long enough in the farming community to know that you look at your neighbour’s farm and you see things going on, and you can know either if they’re doing well or not doing so well. I think that’s pretty obvious on the road. I think it’s more just us reaching out to them as far as having town halls, like I said, I think there is an opportunity for that. I know we have been involved in politics on this farm quite a bit. I think the government does listen if you have enough people with a good understanding of how things should operate approaching them. Yeah, that’s my take on it.
Jenny:
Yeah, I think that’s very true. Brilliant. I think you guys have a very strong voice, which is another reason why I am appreciative of working with rural Alberta because you guys do have a strong voice. I don’t think as much as I do in the city, for example. Yes, thank you for exercising your political will. If you’ll, Bob, do you want to offer some closing thoughts or comments?
Bob:
Okay. But first you have to recognise that Julian is part of a community. It’s by necessity because he’s part of the Bow River Irrigation District, which is really one of those, what would you call it, little democracies. They get to decide in one way or another how the district is going to operate. There is a community. It just isn’t necessarily your neighbour down the road. It’s a much larger community than that. But in terms of closing comments, this has been a great conversation. Very helpful. We’ve slid away from water, but for good reason because water is connected to a whole bunch of other issues. The finances, as we’ve talked about, the mental health, the whole thing about community. Water isn’t just about water, it’s about a lot of other things. Thank you very much. I’ve really appreciated the privilege to be able to talk to the three of you today.
Jenny:
Thank you. Well said. Anything we missed, guys, before we wrap, any other comments or thoughts?
Dwight:
I just want to remind urban folks that oil and gas and your food comes from rural Alberta. Just remind them of that because it seems sometimes that they forget that.
Jenny:
I believe you completely. Yes. The water blind world, and as Bob said, water’s connected to all of us. It all feeds into how we ignore, where everything just comes to us so easily through pipes as Julian described. Okay. Thank you very much guys. This has been amazing. Like we said, we’re doing some more conversations in the fall, we may call upon you again, or if you have anything that occurs to you that you would like to suggest, we’re all ears. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day. Take care for now.
Dwight:
Thank you.
John:
Thank you for the opportunity.