Celebrating agriculture
Early indications are that Canada’s Agriculture Day observance Feb 11, 2020, was a great success. It featured agricultural activities in communities across Canada and discussions on social media intended to connect those who produce food with those who consume it.
My good friend and mentor, Orion Samuelson, together with Max Armstrong, are two of the guys that influenced me probably the most when it came to farm broadcasting. Orion once told me, “If you eat, you are involved in agriculture. Don’t forget that.” Yes, we have all the clichés about how milk comes from the grocery store, but at the same time, agriculture is so important. I’m not going to spew a whole bunch of statistics and those kinds of things. You can get them elsewhere, but one statistic at least and maybe more: 1.5 percent of Canadians and Americans, perhaps a little bit more in the US, produce our food and 1.5 percent of the population provides food in the world.
Yes, there are countries where that number goes higher because many of them exist off the land. You take China, many people, and that’s why they had such a massive problem with the African Swine Fever because they had so many homes, even cities and towns where they raised pigs, and those pigs would go in and out of the house. And I’m not here to disparage or talk bad about that, that’s just the way it is. So agriculture number one is produced by only a handful compared to the rest of us people. Number two, I am, for 49 years and counting an advocate of farmers around the world. I’ve had the privilege of visiting and interviewing farmers in England, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, to name a few. Also, across this great country, but not east of Ontario. Hopefully, one day. Across the United States, I’ve interviewed many farmers. In Mexico, even in Hawaii. Yes, and then of course, 2015 in South America, more specifically, in the Chaco.
And my good friend Elmer Kehler and his wife, Nettie, who hosted us for a weekend so graciously, picked us up to from Asuncion, farms significantly in the Chaco, in the Menno Colony. Yes, farming is so important. Let’s never, never forget it. When we look at what happened in 2019, I remember the comments by Gilbert Sabourin of St. Jean, at St. Jean Farm days in January told me two springs 2018, 2019 planted into the dust. Then along comes the rain of August, September. Then we have the snow, Thanksgiving weekend.
Yet we have so many attacks on agriculture in general. We’ve seen so much, and we have people attacking farmers and coming on their farm and protesting, and making things difficult for those who produce the food. We need to also take our hats off to farmers because they are the best environmentalists this world has ever known. Why? Because they live off the land. Yes, we have our Prime Minister wanting to tax the daylights out of agriculture, and he probably will. He wants to carbon tax us and yet he knows nothing about the environment and what it means to live off the land compared to what our farmers know. So we have the attacks on agriculture, and it is right to point that out whenever we can.
And then, of course, we have the attacks on animal agriculture, and directly, yes, some are promoting the protein plant-based, non-meat burgers. And hats off to those who properly do that, in selling more products that farmers grow, making it more available to other people. But telling us that you’re making burgers, the meatless burger is a misnomer. So that’s an attack I feel on animal agriculture. Some would love to stop every hog farm, every cattle farm, and every dairy in this country. Even in Hollywood, in the latest show of awards, the Oscars, talking about how sad it is when a cow gives birth to a calf so that we can have our milk.
I’ll never forget how someone once told me about the sacrifice between the chicken and the pig and the cow too. You know the cow says, “Yes, I’m giving all this milk so people can drink it and be healthy.”
The chicken says, “Yes, I’m laying the eggs so that everybody can have eggs for breakfast who wants it.”
And then along comes Mr. Pig. He says, “Oh, you guys, I give the ultimate sacrifice when they put the bacon on the plate.” Yes, agriculture is so vital. It’s so important. The attacks, whether it’s the carbon tax, whether it’s protesting on a turkey farm in Alberta, whether it’s complaining about this and complaining about that. So many of the complaints, probably most of them, at least in North America, come from people with full mouths and full stomachs. Why? Because of the 1.5 percent of the farmers that put that food on their table. So, on the one hand, they would like to kill the right side with the left hand because the right-hand feed them, but they don’t like the way some of those farmers do it. Well. I just wanted to tell you how important farmers are. •