[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Weathering the Storm stories of the Climate Crisis from Alberta and around the world. This series is part of the Community Podcast initiative in partnership with the Climate Disaster Project.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I'm your host, Kelsea Arnett and Ethan Seaborn.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: and in today's episode, we will be looking at how drought has impacted farmers and ranchers in southern Alberta. Over the course of the past three years, drought has seen a significant increase in this region of Canada.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Drought isn't the first thing that comes to mind when considering climate change. The most glaring examples of severe weather are disaster level events like fires, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. Each of these events shouldn't be ignored, but it's also important to consider overlooked impacts with the potential to bleed into future generations. Drought is one such example and has much more than just a few dry spells here and there. I traveled to Nanton, Alberta to learn more about the current and future effects of drought from someone with firsthand experience, cattle rancher Rachel Herbert. Rachel and her husband Tyler started Trails N Beef Ranch in its current form in the early two thousand s and focused their efforts on producing grass fed, grass finished cattle while preserving the integrity of the land. Since 2019, they've faced the impacts of drought and are continuing to look for new ways to adapt to it. And on that note, here's my conversation with Alberta rancher Rachel Herbert.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: Thank you so much for speaking with me today.
[00:01:41] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm glad to have you here at the ranch.
[00:01:43] Speaker C: I'm happy to be here. So I'll start just by asking you where did you grow up?
[00:01:47] Speaker D: I grew up in Calgary, Alberta, but I have roots on the family ranch here by Nanton and that's where we are today is on our cattle ranch. And it felt like a return to home even though I didn't grow up here. But my family has been ranching in the area known as Alberta since 1882 and my kids are now fifth generation to grow up here.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: What was it like growing up sort of in Calgary, but then also out here?
[00:02:18] Speaker D: It was really the best of both worlds and that's how I still feel today. I grew up really connected with all the wild places that my mom could take us to explore and the ranch was always our favorite. So we spent summer holidays down on the ranch that we now have under our care. We got to really see the romantic side of it. We never had to do any of the hard work. We would just drop in, spend summers riding our horses in the hills, playing on the creeks and streams, finding all of the perfect picnic spots. So my mom really made the ranch a magical place to grow up.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: As a kid you mentioned that your children are fifth generation ranchers, which would make you a fourth generation rancher. And as well, I know that Trails End has a storied history in Alberta. Tell me a little bit about that history.
[00:03:05] Speaker D: Well, the ranch began when my great grandfather, Fred Ings, came west from Prince Edward Island from a shipbuilding family. Essentially, he came out here to play cowboy. It was the last spot to have an adventure in that generation and ended up settling. He and his brother started the oh Ranch west of Longview, and then in 1903, he sold his shares to his brother and he came to the Nanton area. And that's the ranch that's still in our family today.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: Tell me about who you were growing up.
[00:03:37] Speaker D: I grew up in a really interesting position to live in the city, but really have my heart in the country, so my mom would bring us out to the ranch. That was a really regular part of growing up, was to be on the farm and the ranch for holidays as much as possible. And then when I was in the city, I was always riding horses, so I got to have riding lessons about seven minute bike ride from my house on the army barracks where the Gray Eagle Casino is now. So it was really great to be able to just go and explore all of the park space and the wild space in the city. And I got to have an upbringing at the Calgary Waldorf School, which is a really Holistic based school that tries to develop the person as a whole. So it's art and earth based as well as academic. And I think that was a really important part of how I transitioned into agriculture after university, was really thinking about agriculture as a lifestyle and not just an occupation.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Describe to me what it means to raise grass fed, grass finished beef.
[00:04:45] Speaker D: Well, growing up, I was vegetarian. I was vegetarian for about 18 years. My mom was vegetarian for almost 30 years, even though having really deep roots in the ranching industry. So when it came time for my mom to take over her piece of the family ranch and I met and married a cowboy at the same time, tyler, who's very integral to the operation. My mum and I were both vegetarian, so suddenly we were in a position to be looking after cattle and the land, and we wanted to do it in a way that fit our sense of ethics and animal welfare. And raising grass finished beef was really the perfect fit. So what that means to us grass fed and grass finished beef, is that the cattle live out their full life cycle here on the ranch. We calve out our own calves so they're born in the spring, and then we retain all of the cattle and finish them out on beautiful pasture when they're over two years old. And then we direct market that beef to families to fill their freezers. So we sell the beef as a quarter or a side or a whole beef, and it means we get to ensure that our cattle have a really high quality of life from birth through to butcher. And we also get to look after the land in a holistic way, integrated with the cattle.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Kind of tying back to what you said when you went to school. That whole holistic idea of growing up, you've applied that to your ranch?
[00:06:10] Speaker D: Yeah. If you always kind of aim for the best case scenario, for us, that's really what it was. It fit with our sense of animal welfare and the environment and having those happy cows and having it all in a full circle cycle with our family really fits.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Why did you shift from conventional cattle farming to a more sustainable method?
[00:06:34] Speaker D: I was never personally in what you would call or consider conventional ANC. I grew up, of course, in the city. I've got an English degree and a master's in history, kind of. It was happenstance almost that I ended up back at the family ranch. My mom inherited her piece of the ranch at the same time that I had met Tyler. And we knew that we wanted to make a life on the land together, but we needed to do it in a way that fit. So my mom had conventional cattle for one year. And by conventional that means that as a cow calf producer, the calves are born in the spring, they're weaned in the fall and sold off of the ranch. So she did one year like that. It wasn't going to be a fit. And starting the ranch on the small scale, we knew that we wanted to do something niche and grass finishing and doing all of our own marketing really fit.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: When did drought conditions really start to affect you?
[00:07:27] Speaker D: 2018. 2019 are when I would consider that the dry years really started. Tyler and I have been ranching together since about 2004, 2005. And we saw beautiful growing years and conditions for the grass. Our springs and our streams were all really flowing beautifully. And then 2018, 2019, the springs started to slow down in the hills and growing conditions have changed. We're not seeing a lot of rain in the spring and the summer months.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: So how did you come to be in Nanton during the drought?
[00:08:03] Speaker D: This is where we live, where we work, where we play is in the Nanton area. So we live south of the town of Natan. Then we have grazing land in the hills, which is our most important part of our operation is just west of Natan in the porcupine hills. And all of that land is spring fed. So our pasture and our cattle movements all depend on the flow of water that comes right out of the hills. We're just east of the Livingston Range. The headwaters are to the west of us. And we've seen a reduction in groundwater, we've seen a reduction in rainfall, reduction in snowfall, and that's all contributing to springs and streams starting to dry up. And in 2021 we weren't able to put up any hay. We can typically produce around 450 bales from the hayland that we have access to. And in 2021 my husband started with the hay equipment and he made eight bales and shut everything down because it just wasn't going to be worth the expense and the time and diesel fuel and running equipment. So we ended up grazing all of the hayland. And then we had to buy in hay from family north of Calgary, where luckily they had a little more rainfall than us.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: How did you become aware of drought conditions?
[00:09:26] Speaker D: When our water sources started drying up. So this year in particular at home where we are on the prairie south of Nanton, our well water started to dry up. It wasn't able to keep up to the cows and the house. Our pump was shutting down about a dozen times day we had choked everything back. So when we turned on the tap, there'd just be barely a trickle and a drip. It affected us here in terms of just really trying not to go into panic mode about what we would do for watering cattle and supplying the house. Typically we grow a vegetable garden as well for the family and we didn't do that this year because we just didn't have any water to start the seeds off with. No rain came. We use rain barrels off of our barns and our outbuildings to water gardens and trees and that sort of thing and we didn't have any water in those tanks. Luckily we got some rain at the end of June and that's what really saved us this year. So it's why I'm recalling what a drought looks like from a relatively positive perspective, because it didn't get as bad as it could because of that timely rain at the end of June. And in the hills, we became aware of drought conditions when the springs and streams started to dry up. So we've got a summer cabin that we use as a headquarters of our grazing operation in the hills and it's spring Fed. So the spring typically just gravity feeds the house. It fills up a couple of developed tire troughs with water, it feeds into a stream that runs down the valley and turns into the creeks near Nanton. And all of those were totally dry. So we've progressively watched it go down from just a huge flow to a drip to nonexistent. So that has really affected how we use that land. In 2021, we were hauling water up to the hills, so using a flatbed truck and huge water tanks filling up from our well at home, hauling up there to water, because having access to water is the number one part of the puzzle for how you're grazing. So even if you have all of the grass in the world, if your cattle don't have access to water, it can't be utilized.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Tell me about your initial feelings towards the drought.
[00:11:54] Speaker D: It's our time to manage a challenging piece of agriculture, family lore, and talking to people at the feed stores and at brandings. The 80s were known as real drought years in southern Alberta. Here, that's what everyone refers back to. And we know now that soil moisture levels are actually drier than they were in the who lived through the agriculture and the drought of the 80s have said that the springs and their wells are actually lower now than they were in the. We're seeing a real just decline in the amount of groundwater that we've got, and it's going to take something, a significant amount of rainfall and snowpack to recharge.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: Do you think maybe because the levels are so different than they were in the 80s, could that be attributed to climate change?
[00:12:45] Speaker D: Perhaps it could. I'm not a hydrologist or a scientist, so I can't say that definitively, but I think that we know that globally the trends are towards more extreme weather patterns and drier shifts in a lot of areas. It's always been up and down in southern Alberta. We're hoping that we'll just ride out this drier trend and we'll get more moisture, but I guess some of the science is telling us that might not be happening.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: How did the drought impact other people?
[00:13:20] Speaker D: You know, a lot of producers that we know would be in similar situations. We source some of our grass finished beef from other area ranches. And one of the ranches we work with had to sell a lot of their cow herd so that's the mother cows that are the base part of the livelihood for ranchers is those mother cows. So they had to reduce their herd size just because there wasn't enough feed to go around.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Describe to me the atmosphere of the drought, sort of. What do you remember seeing? What kind of stuck out for you?
[00:13:53] Speaker D: Just the tone of conversations.
Everyone was in a little bit of denial and distress because really, to ride out a drought with cows, it takes some big decision making in terms of if you're going to decrease your cow herd size.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: What are some of the things you remember most from, I guess, the beginning of the drought period?
[00:14:19] Speaker D: A lot of the things that I guess I would remember from the drought are quite cliche.
Hot, windy days. We're seeing a lot more wind. We're always a windy area here, but we've just had incessant winds and high winds. And that, coupled with just extreme temperatures just cooks everything we graze with, doing a lot of rotational grazing. So we use electric fence to move cattle from one piece of grass to the other. And we set up a line of tape and we've got a photo of it. It was just green. The grass was taller than the tape. And a week later it was in early July, late June, early July. Everything was just cooked golden brown, just that stark before and after contrast along that line of electric fence sticks out in my mind, I remember a day moving cattle, a typical move that we make every year from one field to the other, and we move our cattle with horses and dogs. You've met Bo here today, and we had to haul them to the hills on trucks and then do a move. So we started really early, about 430 in the morning, trying to beat the heat, and about three quarters of the way through the move, we have to cross a stream, and that's typically where they would water, and there was no water, so it's the only time Boas ever quit on us. But the dog was overheated and the cows were hot and thirsty, and we had to push them up a hill, and they kept turning back. We'd get them partway up the hill, and then they turn back to come down to the dry stream bed, because they know that that's where their water should be. So that was definitely a day where we noticed the direct impact of the drought. It's a little bit wearing when you don't know if the water is going to come back. If you imagine that water didn't come back, that's when you start to you just can't even really go there in your mind at the feed store in town. And it was in May or early June when the rains hadn't come yet, and we were saying, I think we should be really worried. But you almost can't even bring yourself to think about how bad it could get. And he said, I was actually up all night thinking I better start being worried. And he's someone that went through the drought of the 80s. Even in the drought of the 80s, there were still some slews and low spots that were holding water that he said has now been dry for two years. It's time for us to all to really consider what we would do if we don't get that water table back.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: When did you start to see maybe things start to get a little bit better?
[00:17:03] Speaker D: In late June of this year, 2022, and we got about four inches of rain in a matter of a week, and that just brought things back to life. That's what got us through this year.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: How did that make you feel when things started to sort of turn up a little bit?
[00:17:19] Speaker D: I mean, it was the best feeling. Like I say, we were just going from that denial stage into the, okay, what kind of hard decisions are we going to have to make? And we didn't have to. Despite the challenges of having to work around water sources that weren't flowing, how.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Did the atmosphere change when things started to improve?
[00:17:42] Speaker D: I don't think that there's a dramatic atmosphere of change when we had our rain. Anyone that's involved in agriculture knows that there's something to worry about every day. You got to be a little bit of a gambler to be in this game and make a lifestyle of it. So every day we're just balancing the needs of our family, the needs of our land, and our animals. So it's just a constant decision making to work with the conditions that we've got on any given day.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: How does drought continue to affect you?
[00:18:18] Speaker D: Drought will continue to affect us if we don't get some rain. So we'll really see. We just need the water tables to recharge the things that also have the potential to make a big impact on the land and agriculture along the eastern slopes here in southern Alberta is the fact that there's the threat of open pit coal mines going in on the mountain range that's just to the west of us. So I think that has the potential, combined with drought, increasing climate pressures in the drying trends that we're noticing, if we don't look after our headwaters, then we'll be in trouble here. We're hoping we can keep the protections on the eastern slopes and just keep looking after our land and our water sources.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Speaking of open pit coal mining, I know that that was something you mentioned when we spoke on the phone. How does the mining contribute to the.
[00:19:14] Speaker D: Drought conditions, specifically coal mining, especially mountaintop removal mining is the type of mines that have been proposed, is highly water intensive. It also has been proven worldwide to have detrimental effects on the quality of water. Any type of industrial activity out in those eastern slopes would just be devastating for the people that live and are in agriculture downstream. And that's essentially all of southern Alberta.
[00:19:47] Speaker C: Basically, yes.
What are some of the solutions you see in preventing those effects?
[00:19:53] Speaker D: Really, it's political aptitude is what is going to save our mountains. The UCP removed a 40 year old policy that had protected and prevented new mines from going in in the eastern slopes. Right now, we're in a really fragile position where there's been a pause on any further exploration or startups of mines, but with a stroke of a pen in a ministerial order, could go the other direction and the Australian coal companies could have the green light to go ahead with the mountaintop removal mines. So really what we need is people to consider in our next election cycle here, what their feelings are about the future of our mountains, the future of our headwaters, and what Alberta is going to look like if we know that we're increasingly low on water. What is going to happen if we let those mines go in?
[00:20:53] Speaker C: How does drought impact the wider community, ranchers and non ranchers?
[00:20:58] Speaker D: I think it's really easy to see the impact of drought when you go to the grocery store. Any type of increasing stress pressures, financial pressures in agriculture, will be reflected at the grocery store in terms of pricing and also availability of food.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: How did experiencing drought make you feel about climate change?
[00:21:20] Speaker D: I think living now with kind of the impacts of drought, it makes climate change seem more real. We know that there have always been cycles of wet years and dry years, but we are seeing for sure a trend towards increasingly dry. We know that that is likely a trend on a global scale. And so if we can feel the pressure of that just here on our little operation, I can only imagine the devastating effects if drought becomes much more widespread.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: I know that climate change can often be a very sort of distressing topic for a lot of people and there's a lot of negativity that surrounds it. But what brings you hope for the future?
[00:22:06] Speaker D: That we will be able to continue to live in these incredible spaces that I get to raise my family in now. And I really feel like agriculture has a role in making that happen. And I'm optimistic that we're flexible enough and that the system that we've got designed of raising cows on grass is going to be able to just carry on for future generations. We'll be able to feed people and make a life on these grasslands and these rolling hills of Alberta.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Those are all my questions today. Thanks again just for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it.
[00:22:48] Speaker D: You're welcome. Anytime I can talk about happy cows in this land, I'm happy to do it.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: That's Rachel Herbert, owner and operator of Trails and Beef Ranch in Nanton, Alberta. But cattle ranchers aren't the only ones affected. Ethan spoke with another individual in the agricultural sector who was also dealing with drought.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Growing up in southern Alberta and having a father that worked in the grain and agricultural sector put me in direct contact with ranchers and farmers. As we continued to see extreme weather patterns change due to global warming, I became curious to know how these farmers and ranchers in this region have been impacted by these events. I decided to drive down to Lethbridge County to have a conversation with Tori Campbell, a dry land farmer who has been in the business for roughly 25 years and who has been experiencing severe levels of drought since 2019. This is his story.
[00:23:58] Speaker E: Could you tell me more about who you are?
[00:24:01] Speaker F: Sure. My name is Tori Campbell. I am dry land farmer. I'm 38 years old, married, have two kids, grew up on a family farm north of Coldale. Always wanted to be a farmer, wasn't really sure if it was in the cards for us. But in 2008, we had an opportunity come to rent some land and we rented some land. We bought ourselves a yard, an acreage, a home, and we've been farming ever since.
[00:24:25] Speaker E: And could you tell me about the work you were most often doing before the drought happened?
[00:24:31] Speaker F: Yeah, so like I said, we've been farming well, myself, I've been farming for probably close to almost 25 years now. And we've seen all sorts of different cycles, different weather patterns, what's changing with the climate. And so we've seen some really good years with excessive moisture. If we go back to 20 12, 20 11, 20 10 in there, we had some really wet years where we had unseeded acres and were unable to even finish seeding to get into the field, followed by some wet falls where harvest was really a challenge. And then more recently, I guess we've kind of seen a more of a dry bias. So 2001 and 20 were some of the driest years I've ever seen, hottest driest years that we've ever seen. And as a result of that, it was some of the most challenging years we've seen on the farm.
[00:25:24] Speaker E: And could you tell me about the people you most often took care of at that time?
[00:25:28] Speaker F: Obviously our family is the number one priority and then wife and the kids, and outside of that, we're very fortunate to be active in the community as well. Carly does a lot of work in the community through the work she does in the school system and also being a volunteer in the community and myself, I been on county council for Lethbridge County for the last five years now, so a lot of interesting interactions precipitate from that.
[00:25:57] Speaker E: And how old were you at the time the drought happened?
[00:26:00] Speaker F: I would have been 36, I guess. 36, 37 in there.
[00:26:07] Speaker E: So what happens to a person during a disaster can be affected by where they were staying. And that's why we'd like to ask you these questions. Could you tell me about how you came to be within the Lethbridge County or your land during the time of disaster?
[00:26:21] Speaker F: Yeah, so I grew up just north, about 12 miles north of where we live now. I grew up on a family farm there, spent my whole life there, grew up, went to university in Lethbridge, and as I was getting close to finishing my university degree, this opportunity presented itself to end up where we are now and through some family friends that own the land, they were looking to make a change. There had been a death in the family, they were looking to make a change on who they were renting their land to and just very casually suggested that we would be interested in it, not knowing that it would come to fruition. And so we got the opportunity to rent the land and we didn't really have much for resources per se. I didn't have a line of machinery, and I was 22, turning 23 at the time. I guess that was our opportunity and have kind of very much gone about being farmers in a nontraditional sense, in that we didn't inherit a farm or buy a farm that was established. We kind of actually made something out of our own, which has presented its own unique challenges and then that obviously is exacerbated. When we have these severe weather events.
[00:27:32] Speaker E: Each person has a different memory of disaster. And that's why we would like to ask you these questions. Could you describe how you became aware of the drought?
[00:27:41] Speaker F: Well, I think what I've seen in my time, farming, is that we see these trends, I guess, overall, longer term trends, which I think we saw that wetter bias for a number of years and then kind of got into a phase where it was kind of, I would say, normal, where we were getting some timely rains in the spring. We were able to get in plant, we'd get some more rain and then a hot summer, bring the crop along, harvest August, September, have the crop off, and then get some snow in the winter. I would call that a normal year for us as dry land producers. And then what we've seen over the last, I guess into probably 1819 forward moving into 2021, was that those rains were just becoming further and further apart. We were seeing more and more wind. And on top of that, we are also seeing some extreme heat in the summer, where we were seeing multiple 30 deg days starting in May, June, and then just following through into July, August, where we were seeing weeks at a time where daytime highs were over 35 degrees, which just compounded really everything that was happening.
[00:28:55] Speaker E: Could you describe any sights, sounds and smells that you remember from the drought?
[00:29:00] Speaker F: Yeah, definitely. I think from a site perspective, I think it's demoralizing. When you look out and you get a crop in the ground, it gets going, it comes out, and you're just thinking about the potential. What you have is what could be there. And then as it gets hotter and drier and the rains don't come, you see that potential just evaporate. The crop starts to go backwards, you start to see down the rows.
This year, following the drought of 21 this year, we had a tremendous amount of grasshopper pressure and other insect pressure that comes off of those dry years. So the sights and the sounds of that was something I've never experienced in my time farming. And then on top of that, just the feel of it is just that dry, dry wind that just really just feels like it's sucking the moisture out of everything. And then those extreme temperatures, you're trying to work outside and it's just unrelenting the heat. It cools down to 20 degrees at night. You don't even really get a break. So I think that's what my experience has been.
[00:30:11] Speaker E: Could you describe what effect this had on you?
[00:30:15] Speaker F: I know for myself personally, it was very challenging because, like I said, I wasn't in a position where you have that generational backstop of generational, investment in the land, investment in machinery, investment in the wealth to withstand, I guess, a prolonged period of that economic depression. I guess.
It was really tough because you want to be a good producer. You want to be good at what you do. And unfortunately for myself and for others in this line of work, there's so much out of our hands. So when you saw things going backwards, when you're questioning yourself, you're wondering what you could have done differently. You're starting to run the numbers in your head, and how do I pay this bill? How do I pay that bill? How do I make this work? And then you start to question the future, I think, because I would like to keep doing this, but you have to be realistic too. You have to be able to sleep at night and support your family. So where does that all come together?
[00:31:20] Speaker E: I suppose so what happens to a person during a disaster can be affected by how much help they get. Could you describe the help you received during the drought?
[00:31:31] Speaker F: Yeah, I would wear the responsibility for that. I think it also depends on how much you're willing to put yourself out there and be vulnerable and tell people where you're at and share that you're worried, that you're concerned, that you're uneasy, that you're nervous, all those anxious. I guess it's tough because you want to be proud and you want to put on this brave face. And and I think we're very fortunate as as producers in the sense that we have a great it's more than just a job. It's a lifestyle. It's a terrific way to make a living, despite what you might hear when things are going well, it's a great way to make a living. There's a tremendous opportunity to be successful, but it is by no means easy. And then when you have a drought come along and expose, I guess, some of those vulnerabilities, it really opens your eyes. So then it becomes incumbent upon you to how do you deal with that? There are resources available, and I think there needs to be more resources available. But one of the things that I've been a champion of is just having that conversation, being willing to talk about it, to tell people that you're struggling to acknowledge that it's not great right now, hopeful for better days, but you're just not there right now. And that regardless of the fact that you might have been successful the year before or two years before or whatever, there's always going to be that next challenge. So it's trying to find ways to deal with that.
[00:33:07] Speaker E: Could you describe the help you would have wanted during the drought but maybe didn't get?
[00:33:13] Speaker F: I think if I'm being honest, I think that as someone who didn't start out with a whole bunch of backing, you rely on a whole bunch of different entities, businesses, lenders to help make the finances go. And at the end of the day, I think that's as much as it is personally trying, because like I said, I want to be good at what I do. I want to do a good job. You take it personally when things don't go well, when the yield isn't there, when the quality isn't there. You look at as a failure on yourself, and you have to find ways to internalize and deal with that from a mental health perspective. But then there's also the overarching theme that this is still a business and you have to find a way to make ends meet.
I know for myself personally, it was a bit of a letdown that you had these people that tell you that a lender let's say that we believe in agriculture, we believe in young producers, we believe in the future and all this. And then when the challenge comes, I guess, is where the rubber hits the road. And I was in the tractor in the spring putting on some edge, and one of the lenders phoned and said, you have to pay this line of credit off now. And I said, Well, I can't.
Physically, I can't. I don't have the funds to do it. If you give me another month, I can sell this, I can do that.
I want to make this right. I'm not trying to shirk my responsibility, but just to have this and then the other end of the phone is just dead. And it was very demoralizing that after being what I thought was a good customer and you always pay your bills on time, you do everything right, and you do the things you're supposed to do. That when you were at your lowest point, just to be piled on, it was demoralizing.
[00:35:09] Speaker E: Yeah, definitely. Could you describe the help you did receive after the drought?
[00:35:15] Speaker F: I think I'm fortunate.
A lot of producers are fortunate in that way too.
You surround yourself with good people. Your family is your support network, and I think they're willing to look past.
They don't care if the crop is not there. They understand what it means to you, but they also understand that it's not your fault and that you need to release yourself from that burden. So I think family for me is huge. I have a tremendous support network that way. And then, like I said, those other producers that you can look around and say, well, they're going through the same thing. Maybe the circumstances are different, but you're going through the same scenario, same situation. You're facing those same challenges. So maybe you can learn something from what they're doing, how they're doing it.
And then, I guess, learn from yourself too. Realize that maybe you can't dig that hole that deep, and maybe you need to have something a little more in reserve here, do something there.
It affects everything, right? Your marketing plan, your cash flow cycle. So then you can also use this as a learning opportunity too, to try and best set yourself up for success moving forward.
[00:36:26] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. People who lived through climate disasters often have solutions to the problems they face. And that's why we'd like to ask you these questions. What do you think could be done to help people like yourself if drought ever happened again?
[00:36:42] Speaker F: I think once again I'll go back to the financial side of things. I think programs in Alberta we have Agricultural Financial Services Corporation AFSC that's the provincial arm offers crop insurance lending opportunities. Farmers. That crop insurance program is vital to farmers. I know for us, being young farmers starting out, we are asked to put out so much to get that crop in the ground. We're asked to put out hundreds of thousands of dollars essentially like you're asked to put out $500,000 so that you can make back 550 or $600,000. It's really quite remarkable how thin those margins can be. So just having that capital, having not the capital, having that insurance that backstop on that side, but then on the other side having capital available. So programs like the App advanced Producer Payments program through the federal government, things like that, where the security is, the grain that you're growing, you're not going out and doing extravagant things, you're just trying to get that money advanced to you a little sooner so you can manage cash flow. So I think those programs there's an opportunity that for the different levels of government to help us on those BRM programs so that we can have tools in the toolbox and then the choices we're making as producers.
I'm getting to a point where maybe growing dry land canola where we are isn't an option anymore. You have to look really hard at those those margins and your return on investment. What do those decisions look like? What are you willing to spend on inputs? Really starting to sharpen that pencil and realize that there's just not a lot of wiggle room. So how do you plan for that and maybe give yourself a little bit wider margin of error, I suppose.
[00:38:37] Speaker E: What do you think could be done about the climate change that is increasing the frequency and intensity of these kinds of disasters?
[00:38:45] Speaker F: Holy cow, that's a big question, man. I think that there's so much debate on this and I spend time in a different world on an elected official side of things and we have all these debates about carbon tax and carbon tax rebates and climate change and what we're doing and we see it on the farm scale side of things. Like we're being taxed on our fuel, the nitrogen that we use, the carbon tax directly impacts that and the equipment we use. We're using all these different tools, exhaust gas recirculation, the use of deaf and these diesel powered engines, stuff like that, trying to mitigate our emissions and stuff like that. But at the same time we are carbon sinks in that we're growing these crops and we're trying to capture carbon and hopefully be part of the solution.
So I guess from my perspective, I acknowledge that we can be better. I definitely think that we can be better.
We're still laggers in a lot of ways in some of the technology we use and some of the practices we use. But we've seen just with the adoption of no till and zero till, farming, some of those things. As we get more precision agriculture involved, we're not wasting anymore. I think there was a perception that we just go out there and throw all this stuff on the ground and it's just too expensive, inputs are too expensive. We can't do that. We have to be precise in our application, in our timing. So there is tools available to us, the crops we grow.
But I think from my perspective it's an acknowledgment that we can't do this alone as farmers industry can't do it alone. And it can't be on the backs of people that are just trying to feed their families. Like if they can't afford to heat their homes because of how they're being taxed, I don't know what the path forward is. I understand the carbon tax is. From my opinion, it's supposed to be a disincentive to burn carbon and discourage those pollutants and that. But at the same time, people have to get to their jobs, people have to keep their families warm, people have to get the kids to school and all that stuff. So it's a big question that I don't really have a great answer to, but I acknowledge the role that we have to play in it. And it can't just be that we get off the hook because we grow crops and they capture carbon. I think we can still do a way better job.
[00:41:18] Speaker E: I think that's a great answer. What brings you hope for the future?
[00:41:26] Speaker F: I'm eternally hopeful that people see the value that agriculture brings to the world.
I hate saying that we feed the world because I always find it a little bit ironic in the sense that the crops that I grow go 4 miles down the road to a terminal, get on a train, go to Vancouver and then go on a boat and we don't have that as a grain and oil seed. Cereal producer, Pulse producer we don't have that direct connection. It's not like we're taking our crops to the farmers market and they're going into someone's diet later that day.
I always find it a bit curious. We're producing a commodity that's sold and generates revenue for people throughout the system, I suppose. But we are key to driving that economy, to making the world a better place, I think. So we have to be open and willing to change and adapt and adopt new ways of doing things. And at the same time, I think that if we're talking about global climate change and our impact on that, I think that those supply lines and those shipping lanes and all that, that adds a tremendous amount of carbon that's going out there into the atmosphere. So maybe if we can start adding value closer to home, producing our own finished end products here in Alberta, here closer to home, maybe we can be part of the solution. That way, maybe we can start growing some crops. Maybe there's a huge push for protein right now and plant based protein. So maybe the peas and the pulses that we grow, we can start fractioning those at home and as opposed to sending them on a boat to India, to China, maybe we can be part of the solution here at home. Well, still, obviously that export market isn't going anywhere. We need to feed the world in that sense. But I'm hopeful that maybe we can find some more solutions closer to home that can help other people here, can create jobs, can create revenue, can help build our communities at home as well.
[00:43:32] Speaker D: Perfect.
[00:43:32] Speaker E: Well, those are all the questions I have for you. Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me and answer those questions.
[00:43:37] Speaker F: Thank you very much and I appreciate the questions. I think this is very much in the vein of the conversations we need to be having about kind of evolving and how we as a society are going to move forward and adapt to what's happening around us. So I appreciate the questions. Thank you.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: That's Tori Campbell, dry land farmer in Lethbridge County, Alberta.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to Weathering the Storm stories of the Climate Crisis from Alberta and around the world. I'm Kelsey Arnett.
[00:44:17] Speaker A: And I'm Ethan Seaborne.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: This series was powered by Shaw and a part of the Community Podcast Initiative. Based out of Mount Royal University.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: It was produced on the lands that are home to the Nitsutapi, ayanakota Sutina and Maitis people. We recognize the stewards of these lands.
[00:44:33] Speaker E: And we hope to contribute to a.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Better understanding of our environment by sharing the stories of those affected by climate change.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: Special thanks to our partner, the Climate Disaster Project, and to Rachel Herbert and Tori Campbell for joining us.
[00:44:45] Speaker A: You can learn more about the climate disaster
[email protected].
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Be sure to subscribe to the show to hear the latest episodes and discover new podcasts from the Community Podcast Initiative at thepodcaststudio CA.
