Good morning.
By way of a bit of background on me, I operate a small farm in Carleton County. I do grass-finished beef for direct market to local consumers. I guess in a lot of ways, I'm a little different. I operate a small herd. We focus on quality and not so much on quantity. We're able to capture a fair price in the marketplace that way. That's worked out quite well for us.
I do operate an advisory service to the agricultural industry here in the Maritimes as well. I'm otherwise known as a “consultant”, but I'm trying to use “adviser” because it tends to go over better with a lot of people.
I have the opportunity to work with innovative farmers. I focus a lot on energy efficiency and renewable energy. In terms of a lot of the comments that have already been made, I have the benefit of working with farmers to study those things. So I do have some insight on that. I have some renewable energy working on my own little operation, so it's also a testing ground that allows me to better serve my clients. That's what I do on the weekends.
I act as a part-time general manager for the New Brunswick Young Farmers Forum. I've been doing that for about a year. NBYF came to be a couple of years ago around this time, at a table a lot like this. There were a lot of young folks around. They recognized the need to pull together, do a little networking, and act as a voice for the young farmer community.
As time went on, we managed it ad hoc and on a volunteer basis. It just got to the point where we had too many activities on the go that we had to enlist a little bit of professional management support. I was fortunate enough to get the nod to do that.
Things we're focusing on from NBYF include professional development for our young farmers. It's not so much on policy direction, although we do appreciate the opportunity to sit around a table such as this and share some ideas. You've already heard a lot of them here this morning, and there's more to come.
There is one thing that I hope we can start to see when we get together as young farmers. Quite often when you walk into a room of farmers, all of a sudden you're talking about corn hybrid varieties, how much you've got in the ground, when you're going to take the forage off, and how much milk the cows are producing. Personally, I'd like to hear more discussion on your debt-to-equity ratio, your return on equity last year, how your financials turned out. I think it's a piece that's really missing in agriculture as a whole.
As Becky mentioned, the CYFF put on the best management practice sessions. I was fortunate enough to get the nod to facilitate those sessions. I was very encouraged; as soon as we broke for our break or for lunch, agronomy took over the conversation, there's no doubt about it. You know, we've got a new air seeder coming; here's the picture; the tractor arrived yesterday. I still have buddies who are sending me BlackBerry pictures of the new tractor.
That was great, yes, but when it came time to sit back down at the table, and we were able to focus again on human resources and business development, I was really encouraged to see how that small group interaction worked. The guys really started to open up.
We did the New Brunswick or the regional maritimes group, and then we did the Saskatchewan group. The guys from Saskatchewan said, a number of times over, that if their neighbours were sitting there, they probably wouldn't be sharing as they were. They saw the people around the table not as competition but as partners in the industry.
So as we pull young farmers together, they realize there's strength in numbers and they have to start sharing the information so they can start to judge themselves through economic benchmarking.
Becky mentioned this with their dairy management club here in Sussex. You're going to hear from Richard VanOord here in a little bit. He and his cousin Joseph are both involved in the dairy management group in the central region around Fredericton. And I know they've taken a lot away from that. Just the chance to sit down and really dig down into the books and be able to compare your dairy farm with the guy's down the road--where is his money going and where is mine going--helps out in terms of economic efficiency, which we haven't focused on enough.
Another thing we're focused on through the BMP sessions, and we're trying to facilitate through NBYF, is human resources.
Obviously a lot of our farms are family management units. That brings in some serious management challenges that are often overlooked. So we're trying to equip our young farmers with the ability to go back and talk to mom or dad or grandfather or grandmother about the challenges that exist in succession, and in day-to-day management.
I come from a family with a construction business, and my sister and brother are both involved in the business. My father is still the CEO. My sister is a little better at it; she kind of wrenches out management control from my father as necessary. My brother has a more difficult time with that. I think we see that a lot in agriculture. Dad is still calling the shots when we've got maybe two university-educated sons or daughters on the farm who are ready to take control and go, and there is still a tight grip at the top. So equipping them with the communication skills is a big one--just the ability and the confidence to speak to dad--that we're focusing on.
Another big one we have on the go right now is board governance. This is a very important one to me. I personally sit on a few boards, and recently had some real challenges in playing an effective role. Agricultural boards are generally dominated by mature farmers who have been in the industry for a long time, have made decisions for a long time. Agriculture is almost....
Well, the day-to-day operations in the way our commodity groups run I think are in danger of not being able to move and go in a new direction quickly because of the mature members.
What we're trying to do is train our young farmers as much as possible in board governance and how to play an effective role on a board so that when we go to the board and the challenge comes from the chair, or a comment is dismissed, our members will know that it is their right to make that comment. It has to be addressed by the board. It will not be passed over because the elderly statesman who is the chair doesn't think it's important.
So I see that more and more. Again, we want to do that professional development and give our young farmers confidence, going forward.
Regarding regional interaction, we're trying to work together more closely with Nova Scotia and P.E.I. We feel this is a model that needs to broaden throughout the region. We're all pretty small provinces, and we need to work together. So we're trying to spearhead that a little bit.
Of course, there are the social activities and the networking sessions, as Becky had mentioned.
We did poll our membership to see what thoughts they had that we could bring forward to this group. There were two that stuck out quite prominently.
The first is energy systems, and you've already heard that from one of our members, Mr. Von Waldow, who talked about biogas. They're a dairy facility, and obviously anaerobic digestion is a hot topic for guys who are running liquid manure. You've got smell and greenhouse gases that can all be dealt with.
A lot of our members have talked of the Ontario model with solar panels on the roof, and we have some small-scale wind turbines. But the reason it's working in Ontario and the reason it's worked in Spain, Germany, and in so many states throughout the U.S. now is policy. If we're going to engage actively in the green energy marketplace, we need to have energy policy.
There was a federal program in place that was topping up at 1¢ per kilowatt if you were going to do renewable energy, but it was only for...if you were a one-megawatt or larger. Well, that takes a lot of our small-scale on-farm systems out of play. So if we're really going to support this green movement, then we need to have energy policies that'll bring it.
Greenhouse gas emissions or reductions was another one. Obviously, if we're going to engage in the green energy marketplace, we're going to get those greenhouse gas reductions.
I have one comment here. In Canada we've put a lot of focus on tar sands development. Fair enough; it's a big economic resource. But the greenhouse gas implications are there. We all know what they are. I just want to make the point that the more we focus on the exploitation of our non-renewable resources, the higher the Canadian dollar goes, and the more challenge we have as an export-oriented industry of playing a role in the world marketplace.
I think we need to balance how we exploit our resources. And I don't mean “exploit” in the negative, but how we utilize those resources, because they do have long-term effects and far-reaching effects for the agriculture industry.
The last comment is on extension services. Again, none of the members came back and said they needed money or income support. That wasn't the main message, although all those things are important. What they're looking for is good, solid extension resources. So you want to do economic planning on your farm, you want to do a better job of drilling down to your economic numbers and find that debt-to-equity ratio so you can share with your friends, developing business strategies and environmental support planning and innovation support.
It's being able to pick up that phone and to have, at the other end of the line, either someone who knows how you need to go about doing what you're looking to do, or someone who has access to a program and says, “Look, if you've got a consultant in mind, and you want to bring them on, then here's some paperwork to fill out. We'll come to the table with 50% support of whatever it is to engage people from off the farm to come in and take a second look.”
Those are my comments from New Brunswick Young Farmers Forum. Thanks very much.
