Is Monette Farms like Bernie Madoff?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

At some point should there not be a discussion about clearing new land on that type of scale? I mean do we not understand as farmers that the market will be using that excuse to lower our prices? Second are we gone way past the point of worrying about smaller communities sustainability, lets face it larger farms have been a major cause of disappearing and struggling smaller communities? Or are we just in a free for all now with every aspect of our future?

I wouldn't worry about few thousand acres being added in Manitoba. It is a drop in the bucket.

Brazil plans to add 19 million acres in the next decade. That far exceeds the entirety of Manitoba's cropland at only 11.6 million acres.

[Oliver88]

I wouldn't worry about few thousand acres being added in Manitoba. It is a drop in the bucket.

Brazil plans to add 19 million acres in the next decade. That far exceeds the entirety of Manitoba's cropland at only 11.6 million acres.

Clearing 10-20,000 acres in Manitoba will only add to the economy and jobs to the local community with grain land or higher productive pasture.

Seems like a ridiculous topic to be having started by bellyachers on coffee row. (Crestliner's comments sum this up perfectly.)

[TASFarms]

I wouldn't worry about few thousand acres being added in Manitoba. It is a drop in the bucket.

Brazil plans to add 19 million acres in the next decade. That far exceeds the entirety of Manitoba's cropland at only 11.6 million acres.

The more land they clear in Brazil is going to result in more droughts. I would think that this has already started.

[Taiga]

They cleared 140,000+ ac up in LaCrete over the last 10 years and I don’t recall any whining about that.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Regarding land clearing, I know in my area there is a heck of a lot of bush being pushed. Go back before the 50's and there wasn't tree there historically.

That is often the case locally. People get upset about taking out trees, but they aren't the original factory installed trees, they are mostly recent additions.
Most trees around here have a fenceline in the middle of them, or a piece of farm machinery, or pothole etc. If you use the timelapse feature on google earth, you can see these trees expanding every year. A lot of non farmers who want their land to grow back to trees. Many farmers without livestock to control trees, and no mechanical means, so they just move further out every year and let the trees take another strip.

I met an older couple taking pictures around here one day. He had moved away from this area in 1971ish. He was shocked at how much more bush there is now. In those days you could see for miles, now every view is blocked by trees in every direction.

[BighatPete]

Absolutely impossible to get that big in 15 years...we all wonder how? It works till it doesn't.

That was my original reason for the post. I have no idea what is going on, but farms like Monette's are built in generations, not 15 years.

[BighatPete]

Clearing 10-20,000 acres in Manitoba will only add to the economy and jobs to the local community with grain land or higher productive pasture.

Seems like a ridiculous topic to be having started by bellyachers on coffee row. (Crestliner's comments sum this up perfectly.)

I agree - this isn't a story. Isn't it strange that WP did a whole story on Monette, but didn't mention the elephant in the room. It's lazy reporting. My guess is someone emailed them upset as a lead. To do real digging to explain how he is funded and what his strategy is (besides throwing darts) is too much work.

[fjlip]

Yes, somebody dig up details, this fast an increase is impossible.

[jamesb]

I will say this, I would agree that it would be nice to know how how common foreign or off farm investment is in farm land these days. Lots and lots of of hearsay and speculation. Regarding the WP article, its good that all the people who signed the petition are public so the farmers up there know who doesn't mind there own business. If this was crown land I could see people having an opinion but with private land, wow. We have being doing lots of bush clean up recently and if I had the neighbor's hand me a petition to stop pushing bush, it would be astounding. As far as I am concerned those who signed the petition are probably struggling farming today and near the end, and resent those that seem to be moving ahead. Others are anti modern farming. In my area its more an issue with drainage. If you look at those that are most against almost all drainage , most are in the last generation to operate their farm. I have seen a lot of farmers who have seen the light in the last 10 years and realized that it is imperative to improve their land if they want to survive.

[fcr]

They need to go to Brazil and see the land clearing going on there. I was there in February and every direction you looked there was smoke.They leave the forest along the highways but go a mile past that and its cleared or being cleared.This was in the south/central area.We visited almost every country in S.A. and Brazil was far and away the most advanced in all aspects.They built a road with Chinese money to a port in Peru and now can bypass the canal which will save time and money.BRICS is alive and well.