A love/hate relationship

Celia lives on a family farm near Clearwater. Celia is a not so 'silent partner' in the farm, and spends her physical energy in the garden or on horseback with her daughter Jessie...although she can still be coaxed onto the tractor occassionally. Her current passion (and paid work) is as the Project Coordinator for the Indonesia Project of Peace Brigades International. Celia has instructed organic agriculture for Assiniboine Community College as well as permaculture courses for CUSO.

Celia says:

My story is a tough one to write. I have procrastinated on it, cried about it, and been angry about it. Farming and the economy - I have a love / hate relationship with both. For nineteen years I have been a farmer and an organic food and farm activist, alongside my husband Robert. For nine of those years we lost substantial amounts of money, for six of those years we made very little money and for four of those years we made a decent amount of money. Those four years were interspersed amongst the rest, and decent enough that it kept us hopeful. Hopeful in that perennial farmers 'next year' illusion. Thinking that next year will be better, that next year we will have the right growing conditions, the high yield, and the high price to match. Thirteen of those years we have worked off the farm during the winters to make ends meet. And we did this out of love and a strong belief that what we were doing was important, valuable, and good decent work.

The economy makes slaves of us. Men in suits in faraway cities are buying and selling on the market - pork bellies, wheat, flax, beef. Their actions in the stock market or other places affect the price we get at the farm gate. There is no set price to sell what we grow at a profit. We have to take what the market offers us, and it rarely covers the cost of production on a small family farm. The destruction of the rural economy has meant that I have lost friends and neighbours who have given up. These have been both conventional and organic farmers. They have been women and men, and families who have farmed for several generations. Destruction of the rural economy has made this a lonelier place to live, as my neighbours get fewer and far between.

Corporate farming has been taking over the rural economy for years. Farmers become employees on their own farms - working for the large corporation who owns the product from start to finish. The hog industry has destroyed small pig farms across the province that cannot compete. Vertical integration they call it. The corporation only needs to make money on one level, because they control all the levels. Prior to vertical integration, the profit was spread around to many people: the hog farmer who raised the weanlings, the farmer who finished the animals, the local feed mill and the local butcher. Circulation of money in rural communities is what kept them vibrant and alive. This circulation of money has been taken outside of the small communities by the large corporations.

I have also worked with farmers in Indonesia. Farmers there face the same problems we do here, just on a different scale. It is predominantly the women who are the farmers and they are often much worse off than we are. The land they have traditionally farmed on - with only tribal rights, and no 'official' paper title - has often been taken away from them in the process of the corporate globalisation of food. Growing coffee, palm oil, or bananas for a 'northern' customer base - bringing foreign dollars into the country - is seen as much more important than women who are providing a subsistence living for their families. And oh, how I wish I was a good enough person to be happy with what they are happy with. Food, family and friends - that was all they had. They always had time to visit, and no one was ever in a rush. They teased me about what they knew about foreigners: "Time is money." A sad truth we live out here.

Farming and living here, without income, does provide an economic benefit. I get to eat great food from my garden, grind my own wheat and bake my own bread, and make ice cream from the milk of my goats. I have traded my lamb for beautiful beeswax candles from another farmer. The farm is a safe and beautiful place to nurture and raise our daughter. It is a wonderful place to entertain friends from the city who ooh and ahh at our lifestyle. But given a choice, they are usually not willing to give up their lifestyle to live below the Canadian poverty level that most farmers do.

I have admitted that I have run out of 'next year' mentality. So have many of my close friends. It has torn apart marriages and plunged many of us into levels of depression or stress that we do not know how to handle. My motto for years has been from Margaret Mead "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." On my worst days I can't even believe this anymore. I just simply do not want to pay to grow food for North Americans whose main concern is cheap food. That is work women provide - contributing to the economy, but they do not get economic value in return. We pay such a small percentage of our dollar for food here - around 10%. In Europe, where they went hungry during the war, and value the farmer as an important part of their economy, they pay about 25%. And we have no pension plan, because we are in business for ourselves, and it does not pay enough. Women and farmers everywhere need to be valued in the economy