A century ago Saskatchewan was touted as being able to "sustain 800,000,000 million souls." Today, less than one million currently live in this Canadian prairie province.
Once know around the planet as "The Bread Basket of the World", this land is facing a second bout of life-support. Only radical change can save the province. By resisting Saskatchewan residents "are pulling the plug" on their own survival. Their obsession with the family farm is fatal.
When small farms around the world are shrinking big time, Saskatchewan farmers are still clutching their dream that "The Promised Land" will bounce back again. It did before. After the terrible depression of the Thirties and seven years of draught, nobody thought they would survive. But most did. Now they are bucking time, scientific innovation, computers and globalization.
Fifty years ago farming here accounted for 50 percent of all income. That's down to slightly over one percent. Other similar areas in North America have bit the bullet. Take North Dakota and Montana. Saskatchewan now has three more farmers per small acreage farms than either of those two U.S. States.
At the turn of the century when farmers were the backbone of a youthful and growing Canada, and again just after World War II when a hungry world poured in wealth in return for mountains of wheat, is gone. Yet those that remain in this, least populated prairie province, refuse to give up their obsession. Talk about re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
This "Land of the Golden Grain" lacks the expertise to compete in the off-farm world of even the now vanished Industrial Age, with just over 50 percent of workers with a high school education. Even this level rarely meets entry requirements for the fast-moving Communications Age.
For almost eight of the last 10 decades, the youngest and brightest have walked away from those waving fields of wheat with their bold silo silhouettes to other lands seeking fame and fortune. Many are drawn back, no one quite knows why. Maybe nostalgia for what once was.
The second decade of the last century blossomed elsewhere. Farm hands across the prairies earning $5 a month plus room and board, heard tales of places like "Detroit, where some guy named Henry Ford is offering $5 a day in cash wages". This depleted many a prairie province, not only Saskatchewan, but there it hurt the most. Many left never to return. Some who have come back have stayed but briefly, then vanished again for brighter shores.
Today, those who remain still recall when they told the government what to do, when laws were passed just for them. Laws providing farmers with sweetheart contracts with the railroads for low freight rates, tax concessions and research monies to enhance crops. Farmers now find it difficult to produce $1 in $100 of the provincial wealth. Just 50 years ago they gloried in the fact that "half the annual wealth of Saskatchewan comes from our farms."
Saskatchewan citizens currently receive 15 times more money now from government checks than from food farming. They produce only nine percent of the province's Gross Domestic Product. That's less than their miniscule oil fields drip into the provincial coffers. Only five percent of the
population are farmers. Clout that ain't. That's what really hurts. The future in small-time, flatland farming is D I S M A L. Estimates say old-style wheat farming will drop 75 percent in the next 20 years. For some, despite the facts, their dream is simply too indelible.
Young farming entrepreneurs? Where? The average age of the Saskatchewan working farmer is 60 YEARS. Many are still working at 80. Healthy, yes. Perhaps an outstanding example of eating less and working harder than the city slickers they once despised. Now the despised ones all drive BMWs and worry about their heart and weight. BMW? A car those farmers have only seen in pictures.
Those that remain no longer have enough funds to leave the land, nor see opportunities, even in farming, that may herald another golden harvest. A blip on the horizon heralds agricultural efficiency vertical farming. Two hectare
(five-acre) buildings housing large sewer-pipe-looking structures that contain not soil but inert materials like vermiculite. Farms that are fertilized and irrigated from the top. Plants that spring from openings all around and down the large vertical sewer pipes. The liquid that brings the plants to life trickles down the pipes and is filtered and re-formulated in a never ending closed system. Small air pumps keep the buildings under "positive atmospheric pressure" so bugs flying in get blown back out, no pesticide required. Nothing from these vertical fields ever reaches the water table below. Crops can grow all year. Saskatchewan's more-than-ample year-round sunlight is captured by satellite-look-alike devices on the roof that intensify the sun with Fresnel lenses. Light is carried into the farm area below by fibre-optic cables going through a "light-shift: where harmful ultra-violet light is extracted and disposed of, while infra-red rays are spun off to heat the buildings year round.
"Year-round" means more than using the light. It means these future farmers can capture lucrative contracts to supply supermarket chains -- because their prices can remain constant year-round. Vast savings from not having to re-program checkout counter cash registers or change shelf prices. Restaurants won't have to change menus twice a year.
Farming may come back but it will be vastly different. Those dreams about farming will change just as the city scene has for those who left long years ago, and are now finding a future in the rapidly-moving urban areas like Silicon Valley "where the streets are paved with stock options" and one can get really rich.
The land remains. The Dream must change.
