We can start with a new approach to emergency cattle feed supplies.

For the past three years, a feed crisis has risen in the Prairies, affecting many farmers, their livelihoods and their ability to feed their livestock and maintain their herd sizes.

This shortage of feed led those who did have feed to demand high prices, which in turn puts many farmers in need at a distinct disadvantage. Some have had to reduce herd sizes and others are exiting the industry.

According to Statistics Canada, the Canadian beef herd has shrunk by 25 per cent since 2005, and the multi-year drought added to that decline.

The drought affects more than livestock farmers’ bottom line. Statistics Canada data shows that, for every dollar received by livestock farmers, only five cents is retained. The other 95 cents is spent in their local community. This means a struggling and declining livestock sector also affects the communities that farmers live and operate within.

We won’t see the statistical effects of 2023 until into 2024. By then, the horse will have left the barn and it will be a little late to close the door.

I know that, with the price of feed, I will be forced to reduce my herd numbers by half. A neighbour to the south of me is leaving the sector with no plans to re-enter. Another farmer I was chatting with cut his herd in half a month ago and he feels more will have to go.

The phrases often heard to justify feed price hikes is that they are market driven. Whatever the cause, they make staying in the livestock industry harder, if not impossible.

But maybe we can do something about it.

In Alberta, there are many thousands of kilometres of road ditches mowed every year and the mowing is often paid for by taxpayers. Those thousands of kilometres of mowing add up to thousands of acres of forage that is chopped and left in the ditches. It could be used to provide feed for Alberta livestock farmers desperately short on feed.

Some may argue it is low quality feed. I have no answer, as I have never had the material tested.

However, it is feed that could fill the bellies of livestock. Perhaps it would need to be supplemented with higher-value feeds to give the animals the needed energy to make it through winter and carry calves to birth.

There is an argument that round bales left in ditches before pick-up present a hazard to the driving public, who might strike them when they hit the ditch. This is possible, but I would say it is no more of a hazard than the public possibly striking mowing equipment while in operation. Silaging the grasses may be a practical way to alleviate that concern.

Infrastructure and planning would be needed to make this idea a reality, along with government will, particularly if silaging was chosen. There would need to be the equipment to process the grasses and storage areas for the feed until such a time as it could be picked up or delivered.

Taxpayers are already picking up the tab for mowing and, in some cases, they are also paying for support program funds that go to farmers without feed. A per-tonne cost-recovery fee could be put in place for those who use the feed, as farmers are looking for a hand up, not a handout.

Our highways feature roadside turnouts for travelers to stop and rest or to check their vehicles and dispose of garbage. We could develop similar turnouts on the highways to store the feed.

The benefits to the taxpayer would be a better bang for their buck by turning grass waste from mowing into feed, thus helping farmers maintain herds in times of drought and feed shortage.

It should also help to reduce the cost of food at the stores. Companies use the same excuse for increasing prices there: shortages or market-driven pricing.

As with any new system, potential problems could arise, but we are capable of solving those issues if we put our minds to it.

Our environment seems to be changing. We can put our head in the sand and ignore it, or we can admit something’s afoot and develop strategies to help lessen the effects.

The role of government is to govern for the common good. I propose that the government should look at processing the ditch forage into silage or bale the feed and make it available to farmers.

Forty years ago in Alberta, we had a “can do” attitude in both the general population and political leadership. Today, we have a “can’t do it” attitude.

We must change the way we think and behave and get our old attitude back — and join that with a “we must do it” perspective.

I believe thinking outside the box and looking at things like harvesting ditches for livestock feed is something that can be done and should be done, so let’s do it.

– Neil Peacock is a 20-year member of the National Farmers Union, a third-generation rancher in Alberta’s Peace River region and small business owner.

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The federal Standing Committee on Agriculture needs to choose a representative from each federal party and take the age-verification consultations “on the road” – visiting each province and many smaller communities in those provinces, not just the large cities.

Before farmers are forced to comply with new and costly regulations such as mandatory age verification or birth registry of calves, farmers’ income crisis must be solved.

Since the outbreak of BSE in 2003, prices to farmers have been on a sharp downward curve. Agencies such as the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA), which are to provide traceability for livestock to farm of origin and magically improve the farmers’ bottom line, have done nothing for incomes other than further depress that income with additional expenses. Tags cost 75 cents to $3.50 per tag, plus the labour to tag the animals and maintain the records.

The first priority should not be mandatory age verification, but instead measures to fix the sharp decline in prices paid to Canadian cattlemen for their livestock. Instead, the problem is getting worse, as packers get bigger. Post-BSE acquisitions have included Better Beef, Carvel foods, and Lakeside Packers, among others, and also included plant closers, such as XL in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

Now, before we go off and start the hysterical, and often frenzied call for a free market, let’s actually see if one exists. Is there a free market when two packers control over 85 per cent of federal fed cattle slaughter? It is quite simply a captive market.

Since age verification has been mandatory in Alberta, calf prices have plummeted and unverified calves are now used as an excuse by buyers to further depress prices in an already depressed market. Ageverified beef has enjoyed a premium paid for by the consumer, yet when age verification was voluntary in Alberta, no premiums were paid to farmers with age-verified calves (versus non-verified calves). The consumers have seen continued price increases at the retailer level with no guarantee the product they are paying for is even of Canadian farm origin.

It is interesting to note that the federal government has come to the aid of the large corporate automakers with many billions of dollars in bailouts where there are an estimated 10 million buyers of their product. But the government has provided no equivalent aid to farmers who are in the worst crisis since the Great Depression, and who have only two buyers of their product.

Let’s put age verification on hold. Instead, let’s work on issues of importance to Canada’s farmers: getting a fair return for labour and investment and a fair, sovereign, sustainable local food system for Canadian consumers. And let’s quit telling Canadians their food is cheap because it is not; there are hidden costs and subsidies: farmers working off their farms, Canadian taxpayer dollars paid out through subsidies, farm suicides, declining rural towns, declining soil fertility. It is time to rethink the Canadian agriculture model for Canada’s farmers and consumers alike. Neil Peacock is an Alberta cattle

rancher and director of the National Farmers Union.

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