Hello. Thank you for having us here.
It rings true; a lot of what these guys were just saying all comes through to the cattlemen as well.
My name is Doug Fossen. I am 32 years old. I'm married. I have three girls who are nine, seven, and five. I'm a rancher from Rock Creek, B.C., which is about an hour and a half straight south of here on the U.S. border.
I graduated from high school in 1995. I travelled across Canada, and in the fall of 1995 I got my private pilot's licence. I then went to Olds College and graduated with a diploma in agricultural business with a major in finance.
During college I worked calving out cows, and then spent the summer in Anahim Lake, B.C., cowboying. The only thing I've ever wanted to be is a rancher. I train my own horses and dogs, and use our airplane to find stray cows. I would call myself a professional rancher, and I am very good at what I do.
My wife, Erika, was raised on a mixed grain and cattle farm in northern Alberta, near Grande Prairie. She took the same college program as I did and is 100% into agriculture. She works on the ranch beside me and raises our girls.
My dad bought our ranch in 1976. We run 250 cows and do custom vegetation management. I farm with my older brother, who is 45, and my dad, who is trying to retire at the age of 67.
Since my wife and I were married in 1999, our family income has steadily declined. Last year our net family income was $14,284.98. I worked roughly 60 hours per week. The only reason my family can continue to do this is with family support from both sets of parents and that we live on our ranch. Every dime we've ever made goes right back into our farm. Our child tax benefit and programs like the family farm options program also help keep us in groceries. Our share in our ranch and our equity is worth approximately $500,000, and we do not owe a lot of money personally. We are a classic example of being land rich and cash poor.
This spring my wife and I looked at buying 100 cow-calf pairs from a retiring rancher to try to bring more cashflow into our business. Even with a 30% cash down payment from my wife's parents, Farm Credit Canada declined our application. Our company, Fossen Air Ltd., was started by my dad in 1968 as a commercial crop-dusting business. The company is owned by my mom and dad and brother and me. Last year our company grossed $250,000, with a net loss from operations of $78,000. With this loss, we have to service a $500,000 mortgage.
In the current situation there is no money. The only way for us not to go broke or quit agriculture is for us to start selling land. Our family has had off-farm jobs. We have run a bed and breakfast and sold produce off the farm. Our contract work makes up half our gross income. We have adapted new technologies to make us more efficient, and have cut costs and increased our cow numbers to make our ranch work. It seems like every time I turn around I have to defend agriculture. A lot of our stress comes from defending ourselves against people who seem to want cattle ranches to leave B.C.
In the news, they make a big deal about when a doctor gives up his practice because of being overworked. If I finally have to give up my ranch because financially I cannot do it any more, is anyone going to care? I love ranching, and it is the only way I want to raise my children. If prices do not double or more in the next year or two, I will be getting out. And I am the youngest person involved in the Cattlemen's in B.C.
I'll go over some points that make ranching even more difficult. We use a lot of crown land for our grazing in the summer, government land. Tree encroachment on crown land with a lack of logging now because the forest industry is so depressed and too much fire suppression make grasslands the most endangered ecosystem in B.C.
Farm help cannot get their driver's licence until they are 18 years old. Last year I had a young man working for me. I had to drive him home eight kilometres every day because he couldn't get his driver's licence. He can run heavy equipment, yet he can't drive home.
There's a lack of financing available just because of a lack of income. I know that there are programs like Farm Credit. There are government-backed loans, but we have a lack of income, and they don't really apply to us.
There's no money to retire my parents.
There is the threat of a park being created in southern B.C. If a park were created, we would lose more infrastructure because of our lack of cattle. It would shut down a few key ranches, and that could be the end of our stockyards in OK Falls and things like that.
There are health risks from working long hours with no pay and high stress.
Most government programs seem to spend a lot of the agriculture money on administration. A few of the government programs that helped our family ranch get through this BSE program were CAIS, AgriStability, and the family farm options program, which really helped us out. The environmental farm plan program helped us build some fencing and was a good program, and so was the heifer set-aside program. Those all have been key in keeping us around for the last few years. But as these guys mentioned, a lot of them are based on us eventually having a good year to bring profits up. When we keep going down, it's tough.
That's it. Thank you.