Farmers like to think farming is unique but from the business aspect at least that is a conceit unsupported by reality. Sure, farming is difficult to make money at and easy to lose money at but lots of small businesses and even not-so-small businesses go belly up all the time.
There are fewer farms in Canada each year. They fold up, close up, sell out. But the same is true of corner gas stations and cobblers. Compared to video rental outlets, farmers are thriving!
An article in Tree Service Canada, a sister publication of SFC aimed at commercial arborists, said that a startup tree service company should expect to operate for a decade before turning a true profit. A tree service company is a capital intensive, labour intensive operation deeply affected by weather. Sound familiar?
A related myth: farming is unique in that farmers only profit at the expense of other farmers. A humdinger of a crop on the Prairies drops the price of barley below the cost of production, which means cheap feed for livestock producers. Non-stop rain makes for lousy hay, but the regions that missed the downpour? Their high-priced hay is a moneymaker. One farmer has to lose for another farmer to win.
But, really, how unique is that? For every dollar per hour a company doesn’t pay its employees, it benefits. If the café kitty-corner to my restaurant has a food safety issue, guess who benefits from whose loss?
Think of business, or even capitalism, in this way and it’s hard to find a circumstance where enterprise thrives without stomping on someone, or something. Maybe it’s a physics law applied to business: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Let’s stretch this out to see where it goes. A copper mine opens: shareholders, employees and users of copper win; the environment, and maybe the trapper who worked the area, loses. A high-tech startup develops an exercise app that helps people get the best deals at fitness centers: sounds harmless enough. But the winners are going to be the company that developed the app and the businesses that market themselves on it, but at the expense of the outfits that aren’t featured.
Sheesh. I like the thought of getting ahead but I’m not so keen on doing so if it means leaving footprints on someone’s forehead.
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Repeated annual droughts and a consequent increase in irrigation have recently introduced to me the concept of momentum in crops, especially grass. Up to about three years ago rainfall patterns were consistent enough to develop an annual grazing plan. By lambing in December we had peak sheep at the same time we had peak grass; come June the grass started to dry but the lambs were going to market. Early September rains usually meant the fields were greening up in October, about the same time the now-pregnant ewes’ nutritional needs were increasing.
Inconsistent and reduced rainfall meant the old pattern didn’t work, so we upped the acres in irrigation. And here’s where the concept of momentum comes in. If we are really on the ball and get the irrigation on the fields as soon as the hay is off (in late May, into June in these parts) then the grass barely slows before getting another growth spurt. But if we tarry, the field dries and it takes far longer—meaning more water, more labour moving pipes or irrigation reels—to get the grass going again.
So, in my hesitating, lurchy, sunblasted way, this farmer learns: be it lambs, piglets or newly seeded fields—get them going and keep them going.
Keep them going!