The Rural Voice, 2002-09, Page 46Four Wheel Drive
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42 THE RURAL VOICE
part because of their diversity.
While Canadian farms have been
moving increasingly toward
specialization, the successful farmers
he knows in New Zealand run from
three to five enterprises: say sheep
and wool and beef and maybe apples
and timber. "They have enough
enterprises going on that one or two
can be down and they survive by
having one or two up."
That is partly the model of D.
McQ. Shaver Beef Breeding Farms
Ltd. itself. The farm sells breeding
bulls, semen and embryos as well as
crops and even has a woodlot
managed to provide regular harvests
of timber.
Shaver worries about retaining
small farms and he sees his
franchise system as a way of
helping some farmers develop
additional income sources. A co-
operator who sells 10 bulls a year at
$2,500 each will have an additional
half -million dollars in 20 years, he
says. He'd be delighted "if 1 could
have•20 guys in Canada all making a
h\ ing from selling Shaver BeefBlend
bulls and having less stress in their
lives."
The western Canadian drought is a
really humbling experience right
now, Shaver says, because the really
big operators which can accumulate
huge profits in good times, can also
be swamped with debt in bad times
like these (look at companies like
Bell Canada and Enron to see
evidence outside of agriculture, he
says). "How long in unfavourable
weather conditions can these really
huge operations survive. I don't think
very long."
The problem is that both
government and the big banks see
bigger as better for farms, he says.
They're sold on the idea of farmers
contracting with large companies so
it's hard to sell an alternative model
of farming. But if government and
the banks won't buy in, perhaps
consumers need to be given the
chance to show they want greater
food security.
He acknowledges it would be
tough to mobilize public opinion, but
he notes that public opinion in
Europe changed the way farming is
carried out. In Switzerland it's
against the law to raise a chicken in a
cage now.