The program provides support to organizations that strengthen rural communities. Three organizations were selected from nominations across Canada as Alberta finalists for a public vote.

WHY IT MATTERS: Small rural communities often rely on volunteerism to keep its facilities running and contests like Growing Home with BASF helps stretch those dollars to keep things open.

Battle River Ag Society

The Battle River Ag Society has been operating since 1930 and hosts the oldest and largest annual amateur rodeo in Alberta, drawing more than 1,000 people each summer. The rodeo weekend gives local community groups the chance to fundraise through food and services.

Beyond the rodeo, the society owns and operates the largest community hall in the area, hosting farmers markets, 4-H events, weddings, dances, meetings and more — all run by volunteers and supported by local businesses.

Athabasca District Ag Society

ADAS has been a cornerstone of its community for generations. Last year it hosted events on 57 different days, all planned and operated by volunteers. Programming included cornhole leagues, harvest dinners, gymkhana and equine events, cake nights, First Aid and PAL courses, beach volleyball and other community activities.

The gymkhana program averages 30 to 40 riders per event. During the teachers’ strike, the society supported local families by offering 12 days of affordable programming, serving 87 children. In 2026, ADAS is launching a community garden project focused on food security and education, with produce shared within the community.

Trochu Seniors Housing Society

The Trochu Seniors Housing Society is a volunteer organization raising funds for equipment and furnishings for a new seniors housing complex currently under construction. The facility will house supportive living, lodge and independent living, expanding on the aging St. Mary’s site.

The complex will serve residents from Trochu, Three Hills, Torrington, Rumsey, Elnora and surrounding rural counties including Kneehill, Starland and Red Deer counties, allowing seniors to age in place in the communities they helped build.

How to vote

All Growing Home with BASF finalists will receive a share of the $160,000 prize fund across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. The three finalists in each province will be awarded first place ($25,000), second place ($10,000) and third place ($5,000). Organizations were selected by a panel of judges, with winners ultimately determined by public votes.

Voting is open from March 31 to April 17. Winners will be announced April 28.

The post Three Alberta organizations vie for $40,000 in BASF Growing Home contest appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The rise of rural crime has been a sticking point on farm group agendas for years, spurred by first-hand tales of property crime from members, RCMP and media reports, complaints of long police response times and a perceived lack of resources for rural police.

WHY IT MATTERS: Farmers continue to raise alarm about gaps in rural policing, while RCMP say they’re doing what they can for crime reduction with specialized teams.

Last year, a report from Statistics Canada found 34 per cent more reported criminal incidents by population rate, with the Prairie provinces having the largest gaps between demographic areas, and the trend had been building for the last decade.

That’s not all agricultural. The same report had combined statistics for both rural northern regions and the more agricultural south in their numbers (northern rural crime being three times higher than in southern regions), but farmers have still gathered plenty of stories of how criminal damage, trespassing or theft has interrupted their business.

“I think what is hitting home today, is safety on the farm. I think, you know, living in rural Manitoba or rural Canada, there’s a certain amount of vulnerability that you have,” said Jill Verwey, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.

KAP is among the organizations to hear repeated reports of incidents and member concerns over action, advocacy and availability of resources for rural communities. Rural policing is an active file for the farm group’s lobby efforts.

Perceptions versus reality

Social media may be playing a role in amplifying those feeling of vulnerability. The digital spread of news creates greater awareness when something happens, such as well publicized thefts in central Manitoba in April of this year — coverage that included alarming video of armed and masked thieves — or the far-spread story of a fraudulent bison hunt near Binscarth the previous fall.

Hard numbers suggest that Saskatchewan has, in fact seen continued crime increases. Manitoba, though, has steadied, and Alberta RCMP reported significant drops. Alberta RCMP Corporal Troy Savinkoff noted that their stats show 26 per cent fewer break and enters this year than the same time last year, while vehicle theft has dropped 21 per cent.

According to Manitoba RCMP numbers, quoted in a Grainews article last year, farm-related thefts had 116 incidents in 2022 and were down to 96 in 2023, although an RCMP analyst noted the difficulty in isolating “farm” thefts, making it difficult to definitively speak on the trends.

“In Alberta, we’ve been really pushing, and every year we become much more dedicated to, what we call crime reduction,” said Savinkoff.

“And what crime reduction is, is it’s a changing philosophy in policing. … It’s statistical. We always say 95 per cent of our crime is committed by 5 per cent of the population. So, what that means is, you’re focusing all your proactive policing efforts directly on that five per cent.”

Crime reduction across the Prairies

Alberta’s crime reduction focus uses analysts to comb crime trends, particularly if there’s been a string of crime in an area, and then turns to proactive and collective patrols by Crime Reduction or Community Response Teams (CRTs). The teams are meant to evaluate the situation and identify the root causes of recent crimes, which Savinkoff says is much more effective than predicting location of the next crime.

These teams are based at varying provincial detachments. Those are typically the larger detachments, but Alberta RCMP argue they’re divided so that each district in the province has a team in the region.

Teams use statistics and knowledge of previous offenders to target their efforts, and CRTs may do surveillance or a check in on the individuals if release conditions enable it. Teams have been very successful at identifying offenders, often discovering stolen vehicles and other property when investigating, enabling quicker action, the RCMP says.

Manitoba runs similar teams, called CREST (Crime Reduction Enforcement Support Teams). These, like in Alberta, are established in each of the province’s three districts.

“CREST will kind of take over if it’s like a home invasion, something violent, but it has happened in four different areas, that group will look after it,” said Sgt. Paul Manaigre with Manitoba RCMP.

“It’s kind of the bigger things, while the smaller stuff we’ll leave to the detachments.”

The province will soon also have MILET (Manitoba Integrated Law Enforcement Team), similar to CREST, but with a slightly wider scope. That initiative will handle all types of larger crime, including interprovincial or provincewide enforcement, but excluding homicides. This team will cover the situation if the CREST team is working on another incident.

Saskatchewan, meanwhile, has the Critical Incident Response Program. This provides emergency response, canine services, along with support services like analysts and the warrant enforcement and suppression team.

“We’re able to draw on these resources right from across the province at any given time,” said Saskatchewan RCMP district superintendent Kirk Badger. “So for every police officer that you see in the streets, it’s safe to say that there’s a half a dozen support members that are working behind him or her to keep everyone safe.”

Say a high-risk offender is identified in an area and it’s determined they’re on warrant status, Badger said. The warrant enforcement and suppression team is called to that community to support the detachment in taking them into custody.

Calls for action

KAP believes there needs to be increased law enforcement numbers and availability to respond in Manitoba, but also says it must be paired with legislative reform to provide appropriate actions of discipline to perpetrators, accountability and means to reduce recidivism.

“The frustrating things that we hear from our community is — that I hear almost daily right now, particularly in the city of Portage (la Prairie) — is that it’s just a revolving door,” Verwey said. “There doesn’t seem to be any accountability for the crime. These repeat offenders, you know, they know that the punishment is not there.”

According to Statistics Canada, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have the highest break-and-enter rates in the country, which is often connected to theft. Badger shared that in 2024, Saskatchwan RCMP received nearly 32,000 calls for property crime offenses.

KAP has hosted information sessions and meetings where main discussion points were on rural crime. RCMP and legal representation have been brought in to answer questions regarding property owner rights, criminal activity, and loss or destruction of personal assets.

The Manitoba farm group and Saskatchewan Rural Crime Watch Association (SRCWA) both say they fear more people may take extreme steps to protect themselves.

Tim Boldt, SRWCA president, has heard many people say, “what am I supposed to do?”

“A farmer leaves his truck out the field or a piece of equipment, and all of a sudden they (offenders) get all the fuel out of it,” said Boldt. “Or they (farmers) have a pickup truck sitting there for tools or something and it’s stolen.”

There’s a lack of faith in RCMP response times and action, he noted, and cases of armed theft mixed in with the property crimes of trespassing and breaking and entering threaten to raise the ante of those situations dangerously.

It’s a dynamic that KAP is also watching warily.

“(Perpetrators), they’re being very deliberate,” Verwey said. “Like, when you hear of robberies on a farm, they’re not just coming in to steal, they’re coming armed. … Why are they armed to begin with? You know, what is the draw?”

Both groups says better connection and communication is necessary between local RCMP and local producers. A better relationship is key, they noted, and rural residents must be able to trust that their calls will be taken seriously.

RCMP response times

Savinkoff says all calls are taken seriously, categorized with priority and responded to accordingly. There are four priority levels, with the first two warranting quick response. Priority 1 means an immediate response is needed due to high risk of public harm. Priority 2 means a situation is likely to quickly escalate, and an urgent response is needed.

“(In Alberta) our average response time to a Priority 1 call is 18.8 minutes, and Priority 2 is 21.8 minutes,” he said, adding that included the time needed for the call to filter down through the operational communications centre.

According to Savinkoff, approximately 95 per cent of response times are under 45 minutes.

That’s a long time in a crisis, he admitted. The geographic realities of rural areas, however, make that transit time a hard challenge to overcome, particularly in very remote areas.

A lot of things go into response times, Savinkoff said, such as effective use of resources based on call volume and caseload per officer. It’s not necessarily about population, he noted. Some largely populated areas could have very low call rates.

“So, we start talking some pretty large numbers, and a lot of communities just don’t have the call volume or … the population to pay for those kinds of resources,” Savinkoff said.

“So, you end up pumping some of those resources closer to major centers. And unfortunately, there are some far, far reaches.”

Manitoba RCMP does not share call response time statistics, due to the largely rural policing in the province. Response times are tracked and filed, but Manaigre says the statistics don’t tell the whole picture.

It depends on officer availability, patrol location and the time of the call. In terms of detachment distance, it takes approximately half an hour to get from a detachment to one of the communities patrolled by it.

“I hate to kind of look at it like a number, because at the same time, we have computers in our cars,” he said. “A lot of times, you work from your car on a shift, it could be your is detachment in ‘this’ town, but you’re never there because you’re always on the highway, or you’re in areas where you think might be a bigger concern.”

Saskatchewan RCMP also doesn’t share response times, as accuracy and estimated time is difficult to evaluate due to variables like geography, weather, road conditions and call priority. But no matter how trivial a citizen may view their call, Badger urges them to make the report, as it can help in identifying trends and areas of concern.

The emergency response teams and programs are meant to address these gaps and the far reaches, the RCMP says.

The post Farmers left waiting on rural crime appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Wilkie grew up in Calgary, where he lives today.

“Like many young men in Canada, I had a dream of becoming an NHL hockey player, and that’s where I focussed all my efforts and energy. I was fortunate to have some success at an early age, and get really close to living my dream,” he said.

At 17 years old, Wilkie moved to the Prairies for hockey. He lived in rural Saskatchewan and played for the Western Hockey League’s Swift Current Broncos. As a young man growing up on the Prairies in the 1970s and 1980s, he was never taught to express his feelings.

For the last 20 years, Wilkie worked with I Got Mind, which helps people understand what happens to them after trauma, or when they are dealing with mental stressors.

On Dec. 30, 1986, the Swift Current Broncos were on their bus on the way to Regina. About five minutes out of Swift Current, the bus hit a patch of black ice and went off the road. The bus flipped over. Four Swift Current Broncos perished that night.

“For those of you who were around at the time, and those of us who’ve read about it since, we know a traumatic event like that can have real impact,” said Massie. “I think your story resonates even more strongly again nowadays, because we have a slightly more recent (Humboldt) Broncos tragedy,” she said.

Wilkie said none of the surviving players knew what to do after losing their teammates.

“We didn’t know how to talk about it. It was a very difficult time. It’s very dark. Nightmares, reliving the trauma, having to get back on the bus 10 days later. All those things were extremely difficult for all of us, not just the players, but the coaches, the fans and the billets,” he said. “It impacted everybody.”

“I think that’s what I’ve learned about trauma, is that it may have happened to me, but it still can affect you, and until we understand that it’s hard to create those connections with people. What we went through in Swift Current, it taught us a lot about the darkness and where it could take us, but most importantly, how can we feel better in these moments?”

Wilkie found it difficult to continue after the accident.

“The darkness, being alone at the night was really tumultuous,” he said. “In one minute, I could feel so excited about the path and the direction and what I was learning, and then in the next, fear and worry if I could pull it off.”

Love helped Wilkie along his path of healing. He met his wife and had a daughter.

“When I knew I was going to be a father, that’s when I knew I had to work hard to get my life together, because if I was going to be a role model and responsible for raising this young life, I needed to do better.”

He began to find ways to rebuild, through conversations, books, seminars and training.

By starting to help people, he learned many people do not have a healthy perspective of what they have.

He practiced the attitude of gratitude and would write down three things he was grateful for every day when he woke up.

“Was it easy?” he said. “It was just different. I try and tell people not to look at it as difficult because it’s not. It’s just different. When we can adopt that, it’s easier to take those steps forward in the moments they are presented to you.”

Wilkie said reflecting in the morning helped him see the good things in his life, including relationships, opportunities, how he felt, and the places he got to go and see.

It changed his mindset and helped him when days were challenging.

Culture change

Massie asked Wilkie what it was like to cultivate a culture of wellbeing.

“It takes a commitment of everybody you know trying to be the best version of themselves. If we’re truly going to change the culture, then we need to understand and we each need to do our part. The only way healthy communities are built is people working hard at being healthy themselves,” he said.

Some people want to help others but are not in a good space to help.

“If we’re going to build a healthy culture, then we have to do the work ourselves, and when we do that, it’s amazing the impact that it starts to have on other people,” he said.

Wilkie played hockey for 14 years and was 30 when he retired. He had no other training.

“I tried a couple of things, and it was really when I was coaching young hockey kids that I started to see where my trauma started, and the disappointment and the struggle. I started working with these kids and having different conversations about their attitudes and their mindsets and how they communicated. I started to see a significant change,” he said.

Wilkie trained as a life coach and travelled across North America, speaking to a variety of audiences about mental wellness.

Wilkie eventually assembled a team of 15 which includes of psychologists, mental health clinicians, and training facilitators to join I Got Mind.

“These are experienced people, whether they are retired hockey coaches, or teachers or business leaders. We have young athletes coming back in to work with the even younger athletes,” he said.

“It’s been a real evolution in being able to support people who need different things,” he said.

Wilkie said his sessions with groups start with being vulnerable and sharing stories and experiences. This attitude is practiced with anyone from youth sport teams to community leaders.

“It’s the vulnerability that starts different conversations, giving people permission to talk about what they struggle with and how it affects them,” he said. I Got Mind was actively visiting teams after the Humboldt Broncos crash, touring communities and talking about mental health. The pandemic put an end to that.

I Got Mind worked with Trilight Entertainment to make a documentary accident. The documentary, which is based on a book of the same name is “Sideways; a story of trauma, resilience and healing.”

“It helps us even more in the community and starts conversations that need to happen,” said Wilkie

He hopes people are inspired by the story, which shows what the players went through, but also how they were able to be resilient and become Memorial Cup Champions two years later.

“Trauma happens to all of us. We live in a chaotic world,” he said. “When we see people do amazing things and overcome great things, we want to listen to them, because we’d like to do that ourselves,” he said.

“I think that people need to understand that you don’t ever fully recover from things that happen to you,” he said.

I Got Mind has shown the documentary in various communities and have gotten great reactions. They’ve done a showing with the Drumheller Dragons hockey team and other organizations that want to bring them in.

“When communities find out, and they think they could benefit, they just reach out to us at igotmind.ca and then we work together to get people out to watch the story,” he said. People can check the website to find out how they can watch the documentary online, available November 4.

“When we are connected, we can communicate and when we can communicate, we can solve problems, and those are three of the most important things we need to do,” he said.

I Got Mind has created four special scholarships to remember the boys who perished in the Swift Current Broncos accident. One of them is an agricultural scholarship, to honour player Brent Ruff, who grew up in Wetaskiwin and whose family was heavily involved in agriculture. More information on the scholarships can be found online.

I Got Mind has also created an online community on their website, and can be followed on social media at Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Organizations who wish to book a visit from Wilkie can book him through the organization’s web site.

The post Men’s mental health advocate says sharing personal stories and communicating crucial to mental health appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“AgTalk is an online space. I describe it as farmer coffee row, within the larger, powerful online space called Togetherall,” said Merle Massie, executive director of the Do More Agriculture Foundation.

AgTalk was launched in 2023 as a two-year pilot and has been renewed until 2027.

In the past two years, there have been more than 10,000 interactions from within AgTalk.

Aside from Togetherall, AgTalk has several funding partners: RBC, BASF and the McCain Foundation.

AgTalk is completely anonymous and is accessed through an online portal.

“It’s an important space. Let’s imagine you’re at home on your farm and you’ve had a tough day and you don’t feel like you can talk about what’s going on with you, or how you’re feeling with the people around you, because you work with them all day, and maybe they’re your family members,” said Massie, who farms between Biggar and Rosetown.

“Maybe they won’t understand, or you don’t want to lay that extra burden on them, but you’d still like to let it out because you’ll feel better if you do. AgTalk becomes a space where you can do that, because it’s peer to peer,” she said.

The top issues discussed on AgTalk are stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness and relationships.

The space is populated by farmers and people who understand agriculture.

“You say what’s on your mind and share what’s been happening with you, and then other people can read and respond, and it’s just like any other kind of online social media sharing site,” she said.

“It’s a centralized space where you can share what’s happening with you and read about what’s happening to other people. Maybe you can provide some advice, maybe you can hear some advice, just like you would on coffee row,” she said.

Massie said AgTalk gives people a safe space to talk about mental health.

“We know that it’s true that there are lots of communities or farm families where a conversation about mental health is not welcome,” she said.

People can chat in AgTalk by typing, as there is no oral component.

“We call it community at your fingertips,” she said.

Massie said AgTalk offers an option to farmers who may not be in crisis but may need some peers to talk to.

“We all have regular stresses and conversations. There’s stuff that happens to all of us. We’re not all in that binary of either we’re well or we need to call a crisis line. We’re regular people with regular lives and sometimes we just want to share what’s happening. That’s where AgTalk really shines,” said Massie.

In case someone needs more help, there is 24/7 clinical backup on AgTalk. Users can reach out to the clinicians if they want.

The clinicians will not interfere unless they are needed, but they are present on the site.

They can offer a one-on-one conversation with people who need to talk things out and help them access higher levels of support.

“Maybe they just want to have a little bit more understanding of an issue. The Togetherall platform does have the ability to escalate that and connect them with a call line so they can speak to someone one-on-one or even access 9-1-1 and send someone to them,” she said.

All the partners have been promoting the site, and there has been a rise in people signing up.

“We think we’re reaching the point where it’s going to tip and become a huge gathering place,” she said.

Togetherall and AgTalk have created a super peer training.

“These are people who really enjoy the platform, and who really want to reach out to one another. Again, it’s all anonymous, so it’s very simple to do. You’re not revealing anything about yourself. But some people want to take additional training so they can feel confident in their ability to interact with one another. If that’s something that people are interested in, they can feel free to reach out to me (merle@domore.ag) because I will be putting another cohort of super peers through their special training this fall,” she said.

The easiest way to find the AgTalk website is to go to the Do More Agriculture website and click on the AgTalk link. On the Togetherall platform, people can also join other chat groups, read articles and do some additional courses and learning.

Massie said most farms are businesses that don’t have employee assistance programs. AgTalk can help provide that support.

About 66 per cent of AgTalk users say they have no formal support outside of AgTalk.

About 33 per cent of users have no formal supports at all, which means they don’t have anybody that they feel comfortable talking about their mental health with.

Massie said the site is reaching across the generations, with users between the ages of 16 to 85 years. The site also attracts a diverse group including Indigenous people and people of colour.

“Agriculture across Canada has lots and lots of people who come from different countries and different backgrounds, and it’s a growing number,” she said.

The post AgTalk, an online “coffee row” for farmers, has been renewed for two more years appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Farmers are focused on the needs of our operations and our families, but society is looking to those on the farm to help them heal. The frank realization of our importance in the social fabric came into focus during a conversation with my neighbour.

He’s a ‘down to earth’ kind of guy who thinks a lot and finds it quite fascinating that I am from the farm. This brings to light what Dr. Temple Grandin has been trying to tell us for decades – that our ordinary is someone else’s extraordinary.

We were discussing the state of the nation and the world, from food to conflict and from drugs to disease. You get the picture — a rather somber conversation about the realities for many, especially those who live in conflict. And as we deepened the dialogue to solutions, he very softly said, “If you (farmers) could heal the soil, you could heal us all.”

Think about this from the perspective of not only a societal cry but also an honourable call to duty.

We are the sum of what we put into our bodies, what we believe and feel. As persons of the earth, farmers are closer to the roots of humanity than any other profession. So profound is our knowing that those in agriculture are often at a loss for the words to explain their ties to the soil and their love for the space in which they live.

I cannot express in simple words my own ties to food production because it is so intimate in nature. Yet, like my neighbour, my thought process is global and also appreciative that solutions are local and that the world changes one small act at a time.

What do we need to appreciate in this statement made by my non-farming friend? I believe that by healing the soil, my friend was not referring to carbon sequestration or some sort of sustainable practice.

He was thinking of it being healed to the point where it was self regenerating with systems in place to make that happen; that the soil’s memory once again nurtured beautiful food that was nutrient dense and of benefit to our bodies and our minds.

That is quite a challenge for a food production system that has created soil co-dependencies to achieve the required volume to feed our global populations. In reality, global farmers produce enough food for every person on earth to enjoy the required calories each and every day.

We do not have a food issue. We have distribution, corruption, conflict and competition issues that keep food out of the hands of those that need it. And in shorting those persons, they turn to what they can obtain, regardless of the impact of that choice to the very soil on which it was grown.

In countries of conflict, 50 per cent or more of food production land is negatively affected. It may be taken out of production from land mines, bombing, contamination or the regional droughts created by unloading a massive amount of chemicals in the air. That land may be dead because the birds and insects have been destroyed, the water is poisoned, the port is closed to inputs or because the cows that once fertilized it are gone.

As you read this, there are 110 nations in conflict and it does not take long to destroy the ground that feeds us. In a few short months, over 46 per cent of cropland in Gaza has already been destroyed. That leaves a huge gap in food security for the people today and in the future.

So often farmers in Canada and around the world are accused by those of a self-proclaimed higher authority as the problem in climate challenges. This is to divert our thinking from the realities of those same stakeholders’ participation in conflict, corruption and anti-competition.

War is profitable. Providing the food post-war is profitable. At some point, though, the countries supplying that food will tire their land beyond regeneration.

There is no hope of democracy or peace without food. Agriculture is the solution. While other countries try to rebuild and gingerly walk through mined fields, Canadian farmers are privileged to have the ultimate natural medicine at their feet.

Our lives are extraordinary and though we do produce nutritious plant and animal crops for ourselves and the world around us, we must pause to consider the potential harm if we continue to push the soil too hard or do not stop our own destruction of watersheds, wells, forests and fields.

Once gone, there is no turning back. Who will feed us then? If soil can heal us – and I believe this to be true – we must be mindful of every practice and policy that impacts its ability to heal, for it is the primary physician through food and the conductor of our wellness on the path ahead.

The post The healing power of the farm appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.