"By the side" (editorial comment) Winter 2010

How's your ark?

Well, well, well, how about all this rain? Time to break out plans for the Ark. While wet weather may disappoint those who wanted to go hiking or hunting or otherwise enjoy the outdoors, it is a crippler to farmers having to bring in the last of their crops. It demonstrates so clearly the fact that farming is like no other enterprise for its dependence on the right weather at the right time.
Do legislators in Halifax, Fredericton, Charlottetown, and Ottawa realize this? I think not sufficiently. The reality of what it takes to farm and bring food to the urban majority is beyond their grasp. Increasingly it is even beyond their concern so long as supermarket shelves are laden with groceries from anywhere.
In Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia has to be the least behind traditional agriculture and fishing. Just this week the Nova Scotia government, apparently too broke to ante up $25,000 to help operate the Maritime Beef Test Station (nearly a year the ask has been on the table) coughs up three-quarters of a million dollars to help the aquaculture industry improve its image as it slathers lobster grounds with fish feces. I'm talking about finfish here, not mussel farming, which has no similar impact on the environment.
Nova Scotia's beef industry is going the way of the hog while the Department of Agriculture refuses to re-instate programs that were once in place aimed at improving breeding and performance.

On the ground a much talked about program to introduce rotational grazing on the Cape John community pasture is little more than that, according to one farmer who was told fencing might begin in November. "Not a time of the year best suited to building a fence," he remarked.
Nova Scotia has two George Smiths well known in beef circles. One is George "Hammer" Smith, a cattleman from Pictou County who got his nickname some years back I think because he was always misplacing his hammer. The other is a director with the Department of Agriculture whose job it is to hear out anyone with a proposal to improve the beef industry. He's coming to be known as George "No money" Smith, for too obvious a reason to explain.
That's not altogether fair, for Nova Scotia has earmarked $300,000 over three years in initial support for a new management office supporting beef, sheep, and hog producer groups. (See story page 11.) Other commodities and agriculture groups may sign on, including the Maritime Beef Test Society, which has relied for years on the good works of Bernadette Hoeg. I do have reservations about that, for Bernadette has been carrying a full and varied load. It is hard to believe that one individual looking after the needs of several groups and answering to yet another board will he able to fill her shoes.

It was good seeing Ed Charmley the other day at an Agrologist Workshop in Truro. The former lead scientist at Nappan was a keynote speaker and that being the case probably a lot of people expected to see him in person. But no. Aptly enough, Charmley, who would talk about technological innovations being applied to cattle farming in the Australian outback, came to us via live satellite hookup. He did a great job, especially considering it was past midnight his time.
On a sad note, it was a shock to many to learn that Patton MacDonald who served as manager for the Nova Scotia Cattle Producers through 2009 (last time the organization's website was refreshed) died in New Brunswick, where he made his home, October 10. He was 62. Only days before his death he sent an email around to friends bearing the unfortunate news that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
"Some of the powers that be (or that were) in NSCP and the Dept. of Agriculture liked to lay blame and criticise this guy," wrote former NSCP board member Kurt Sherman following news MacDonald had died. "But the truth is he was a true genius and if he'd been supported more maybe the beef industry would have turned a new direction. . . . I'm really going to miss this guy."

As Atlantic Beef heads off to the printer, a meeting of Maritime beef industry representatives (government, NGO, and farmers) is taking place at the Memramcook Institute. Over two days they will be comparing notes on programs existing and proposed, and maybe out of it will rise a Maritime Beef Council that becomes a formal reality.
Maybe Nova Scotia government reps will see how badly their province is falling behind. Larry Ward, newly re-elected to chair the Maritime Beef Test Society, did some calculations and came up with the fact that the great majority of Herefords sold at the Atlantic Bonus Sale, Oct. 16, went to New Brunswick where there's a bonus paid. All but three bred heifers similarly went to that province. "For the first time ever New Brunswick's herd is larger than Nova Scotia's," Ward points out. Good for New Brunswick. Somebody's got to care. DvL