What can we do about it?????????

[carebear300]

As I look through my mail tonight I have spent over an hour paging through what seems like an endless number of auction sales. The really sad thing is that this is the third or fourth year of this performance. You tend to wonder who is left to farm all the land. You look at the listings and see the lifetimes of work, hopes and dreams that will be all over the day of the sale. Yes some of them will have retired with a tidy little nest egg but that will be the minority. The vast majority just had to throw in the towel, they just couldn't go on borrowing more and more money just to exist. I actually heard in town today, to my chagrin, that an old friend is being foreclosed on by the bank. He is 58 years old and has farmed all his life and his wife has worked off the farm all those years to keep the farm going. He did all the things right, he liked cattle so seeded his farm all down to grass and raised beef cows. He didn't drink or smoke and worked seven days a week year in and year out. He paid all his bills to the local people up until now. What the heck is wrong with this business we are in? How much will that hurt all the local businesses that he patronized all these years? Where will it all end? There is something wrong somewhere when a man with 2oo cows can't make an honest living. Do you have to run a thousand cows to make a living? If so then its about time that the number crunchers and economists that seem to run this country started doing the work and taking the risk, because the rest of us are getting older and tireder by the minute!!!!!!!!

[SASKFARMER3]

Here is your answer in a NUT shell.
Have every farmer out their take their tax returns and go back till 2000 and check on them what their total dollar was from other sources IE FED or Prov.
Then ask them selves are they a feed lot or cow calf operator. Then on the grain side if their from northern Sask East Sask or Manitoba and add up their total after 5 years of unbelievable weather scares.
Then trace it back to the APF that Lyle Vanclief and his Liberal NDP cronies etc designed.
Money went to Packers and Accountants but amount to Cow calf and Grain farmers Virtually non existent.
Now go to the fed gov access of information and take total spent on Ag in that period and wham big amount of money.
So if their is none in produces pockets But their is huge amounts spent who got the Money?
You cant neglect one part for so many years and not get to the point were in Oh yea the liberals did that with Newfoundland fisherman, it was OK to let foreigners fish and take all our stock but to help your own no way.
Simply were at this point today for one reason and one reason at all its political stupidity clinging to power by corrupt politicians SASK AND OTTAWA>
On auctions we have three this spring in our area and two guys who shouldn't be retiring are renting out their land.
All three auctions are all forced sales!

[skhadenuf]

Carebear, obviously you are as concerned and troubled about this issue as most of us on the farm are and you are exactly right on the mark. I think we as rural people have been programmed by all the politicians to believe that we really don't have a say in the election outcomes. In actuality that is not true. If you look at the last election it was the rural areas that gave the conservatives their base. Just look at what the reward for that vote has been since they have been in power. They were going to scrap the CAIS, not done. They were going to develop a disaster program, no not done. They were going to develop this wonderful all encompasing agricultural program, not a word still. And insult to injury the recent billion which is copy out of the Liberal play book where our votes are being ransomed for a measly 400 million across Canada now and the rest in savings some time in the future in some kind of unkown program. I can't recall which MP it was from Sask that stated we just proved how committed we are to agriculture, (you sure did, not committed at all) and Mr. Harper can't spend much time here in the west because we know now we have your vote. Well EXCUSE ME MORON!!!!!! that Liberal tactic was garbage in the last election and if your creative thinking limits you to copying the guys who got the boot last time then maybe you ought to stay sitting on your seat till the end of the next election because that 400 million which much will go to Quebec is not gonna save your but from feeling the point of our boots. How we can change things is by shocking the country next election and voting in independant candidates in every rural riding Man. Sask. and Alberta, and with the election going to be as close as it is we would hold the power!!!!!

[farmers_son]

Carebear: I thought about your post for quite a while. I recently had an opportunity to speak with the head credit writer for Alberta Treasury Branches. I made some comment to the effect that farmers did not have much money and he replied that some have a large amount of money. Some people are really struggling and some are doing very well. For me the auction sales presented a real opportunity as I picked up quite a bit of machinery last year at very reasonable prices. One sale was, for me, quite a sad sale as it resulted from a breakup of a family, a dispute between father and son. Perhaps if there had been more money in agriculture they might have been able to solve their problems.

We are all subject to the same pressures and challenges. Sometimes it is just circumstances. Perhaps if BSE had hit your friend 10 years sooner he might have been able to pull through.

What can be done about it? Well there is a post or two in the Agri-ville farm management section regarding some business training available for farmers. No one replied. No interest. I think the successful farmers, if they are not already, will become number crunchers. The farm management forum should be the busiest, not the deadest.

Every year about 200-240 farms go bankrupt in Canada. Really that is a small percentage, and most would have a farm sale before it got to that point.

See:
http://www.agr.gov.sk.ca/docs/statistics/bankrupt06.pdf

Farm debt is a huge problem in Canada, a problem that has been largely ignored. Professor George Brinkman has done a huge amount of work on Canada farm debt versus U.S. farm debt.

See:
http://www.cfa-fca.ca/upload/nat_sym_g_brinkman.pdf

Professor Brinkman outlines a number of factors of concern. Changes in exchange rates from $0.63 to $0.83, vulnerability to rising interest rates, overcapitalized relative to income.

I agree with Brinkman’s statement that interest rates can only go up. There is something we can do about it and that is to lock in a fixed interest rate when the getting is good. There is long term money available in Alberta at 6% , no one in Alberta should be caught holding variable rate loans. FCC is lending at 7.25% which will not look bad a couple of years from now.

The other thing we can do is to know our costs, contribution, fixed overhead.

Your friend would have been a good manager or he would not still have been in business all these years.

[Horse]

You think some are doing quite well, who the oil man playing farmer or any one that plays farmer , not to single one out but lets take cowman that we all know him and his son run a very respectable size operation , but when the crunch hits they have a very lucrative oil buiz to fall back on, and that is hapening all over not just him so are some doing well I think not if you just use people making thier total income from farming,or ranching.Then there is those that have large resource revenue Myself included [not large but 9500] that is actualty a lot of clear profit I still generate 6 figures a yr gross and it dont much more than match the lease revenue and I have to work dam hard to do that.
Anyway my point is what is a farmer and who should qualify for gov assistance the packers again because they own the cattle or the cowcalf man that produced the calf or the feedlot [ again the packer most often] that fed the calf or the grain comp or the actual producer.
I guess we cant limit who spends thier money on farming but I feel its thoes that dont realy farm in the trenches that are a lot of the problem.

[hayburner]

I often wondered why cowman was so supportive to the oil and gas companies they not only brought surface lease cheques but off farm income thru a lucrative oil business.

[farmers_son]

I agree that those that do not farm in the trenches are part of the problem. Especially closer to the cities.

But what do we do about it? I saw an article recently about leaving money on the table.
We have all heard that we need to produce cheaper but it could be that we are not realizing all the income we could.

Most of us do not hedge our crops or cattle but we could. If we calculated how much money we have let slip through our hands through falling prices that we could have hedged it would be truly staggering. I left hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table by not hedging oil and Canadian dollar even though I knew my operation was sensitive to changes in both.

There are people who do not crop or hail insure. No one, I mean no one at all, can afford to self insure. We simply do not make enough to loose an entire crop.

I have already mentioned interest rates. People still talk today about how the rising interest rates of the 1980s nearly did them in. Those high rates did not last much more than one year but the impact was critical. Why use variable rates when interest is at an all time low. Interest has no where to go but up. We can do something about that.

[ivbinconned]

Horse I am shocked!! You accept oil revenue off lease land??

[Horse]

IVBC sorry to spoil your fun but that is lease money from deaded land that took 30yr to pay for.
Farmers-son I dont know how much one we can cut costs, take for instance the consultants are now running around telling us to feed out in the fields on high land dont pay for corall cleaning swath graze bale graze now I have been doing most of those things for 20yr now so how do I save anymore I think they are behind the times . A cow can only produce 1 calf per yr and I dont think we can push them for much more weight, we can wate and catch a neibour in bad shape and get his machinery or cattle or his land below cost but I realy hate being a vulcher.I have only bought 1 new tractor and all the rest have been used but someone has to take the depreation.
I sure would like to see someone cowe up with a workable solution as 1 of my daughters would like to try farming but I just cant come up with an enterprise that will make expences plus a living without off farm income and why in hell should she work to suply food for someone else and then go to work besides.

[Horse]

F-S I have to disagree with the hedging that is what put at the mercy of the packers. If hedging guarinteed a profit those accipting the hedge would sure lower the price in a hurry, all it does is let some try to capture the market or squeze the smaller players out.
As for hail or general crop insurance ther is no sense in taking it unless your risk is very high then the ones with low risk pay for you.