af contributor |lethbridge
Research, new technologies, and improved farm management are helping Alberta farmers and ranchers get past tough times, says Premier Ed Stelmach.
Government has played its role by providing financial support, especially when disaster has struck, but producers have been helping themselves by changing the way they manage operations, keeping up with technologies, and adopting new chemicals and equipment, Stelmach said in a recent telephone interview.
Alberta’s premier is particularly high on the province’s canola industry.
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“The canola industry has a tremendous future in Alberta,” he said. “We are seeing increased uses for canola oil and protein.”
He said lentils and peas are also becoming more popular, especially with a huge market developing in Asia and Eastern India where those crops are a staple in diets.
Even the struggling cattle industry, the province’s top livestock sector, is showing signs of recovery following BSE and restrictive U. S. trade policies.
“Alberta has lost a lot of cows in the last few years, and it shows because you don’t see as many cattle on pastures across the province,” he said.
On the positive side, the Alberta industry has worked hard to open some markets closed to Canadian beef because of BSE, and has managed to launch new markets in other countries. He credits some management changes for greater foreign acceptance of Alberta and Canadian beef, including more work on traceability of individual animals from herd of origin to the packing plant.
“Alberta cattlemen are still known for supplying good, quality, healthy and clean beef,” said Stelmach. “And now we are seeing more research into high-protein silage feed, an indication of an industry that has gone through a lot of change in the last 25 years.”
Hogs face a lot of tribulation, he said. Governments have paid many producers to depopulate entire hog barns for at least three years to quickly reduce the surplus breeding herd and get supply more in line with market demand.
Family history
But gone are the days when a farmer could run with 100 breeding sows and live off the sale of their offspring, said Stelmach.
But all producers have to be ready to quickly adapt to change, he said.
That’s a major contrast to earlier times, said Stelmach, citing his own family’s history.
His grandfather emigrated from Ukraine in 1898. Like his fellow countrymen, he didn’t want to get off the train on the flat Prairies and ended up in land with lots of rocks and trees. As in their homeland, they built foundations with the rocks and homes with the timber. Having legal ownership of their land for the first time, Ukrainian farmers tended to never sell land.
Stelmach said his father, born in 1903, was cautious in adopting change. He bought his first combine with a straight-cut header, a Massey Harris 90 Special, in the early ‘50s, but would swath his crops so they would mature more quickly.
Stelmach said he remembers weed spraying with a 250-gallon tank and 30-foot boom. Now, 100-foot booms with the ability to shut off certain sprayer nozzles to prevent spray overlay are common.
“If dad was alive today, he would never think technology could move that fast,” said Stelmach.
The premier said his children – three sons and a daughter – are unlikely to leave their careers for farming, but the family intends to keep the land.
