Mats Manifesto on the farming for our future

Feb 16 2024

I am now an old man of 75 years old. It was a complete surprise to me that being older I could not keep up the farming schedule I have been on. We have no heirs so I advertised for a few years in Canada and did not find any takers until I had an application from Ghana. Kari has endured many months of government investigation, my questions and months of waiting has been finally approved to move with his family to Canada to help with our farm with an eye to taking over the farm. We are still waiting on the Canadian consulate in Africa to give the final blessing but hopefully this will all take place in march this year when I am expecting Kari. The experience of applying for Kari to come here and help us farm was a most horrific adventure that is still not fully resolved.

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There is no doubt that Sustainable agriculture is the only future of farming. Whether one is conventional using synthetic fertilizers or organic using compost on the fields, the future is moving to organic and most everyone is heading that way. If you look closely nearly all agriculture based companies are moving towards organic principles and I note that those farms that are conventional now brag about how little fertilizer, insecticides or herbicides they now use which is a good indication of where we are headed.

We are not certified organic since this certification does not guarantee good quality microbial soil nor much of what makes our product suitable for what I feel is healthy eating. A good example of this is most organically certified oils do not print the date it was pressed on the label (so you know how old the oil is,whereas ours is always labelled with the date it was pressed. The best before date is very misleading.

With climate change making our farming more difficult (at times impossible) and the depleting soil health on most farms, increasing costs of fossil fuels, inflation pressures on our finances, lack of drinkable water in most areas, various wars in the world, more diseases, too many people occupying to little land and multinational corporations controlling nearly all farm produce and convincing governments for farmers to purchase farm inputs like seeds, fertilizers and herbicides. We need to rethink were our farming is headed and if there is a future for farming. But of course this only affects those how like to eat.

If one wants to continue eating nutritious food one needs to know their local farmer and to ensure available food they will need to join a membership for a local farm. It will become difficult to justify expense for a vehicle to visit a farmer outside of your walking or cycling distance so those in the city will have to resort to gardening and supporting the inner city farmers.

For the consumers one needs to get the healthiest raw food to cook and not rely on the grocery stores that are more interested in what it looks like or how long it lasts on the shelf other than fresh vegetables grown in good healthy soil.

Sustainable agriculture is the future that involve animals on farms to ensure the making of compost for the crops which promotes good microbial life. Whether one is conventional using synthetic chemical or organic farms using compost the future is organically motivated and most farms are heading that way as the cost for synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is becoming no longer affordable because of the tremendous amount of energy to produce these items. It is no joke that many weeds and insect are becoming immune to the herbicides and pesticides.

The knowledge of those involved in organic farming should not be underestimated as it takes decades to have an understanding of how to grow things organically.

Recently I have decided to visit other farmers who have a garden, a few animals, a few crops and are quite self sufficient so we can share ideas with other like minded farmers. How we can help one another and encourage each one to keep going?

One of my main aims is to create a small group of farm owners to volunteers with various projects on each others farms who get a meal and have a wonderful time learning about how each of us is surviving under difficult conditions and to promote friendship in difficult times. I will also introduce a select few new farmers who are experienced with our farm and have experience to help out and to see a better way to farm for food rather than just profit while having fun.

We have many issues for us small farmers such as the extensive use of the emails and internet to respond to governments. Very few departments take into account that we are in the countryside and internet use can be very inconsistent, very slow with frequent timeouts and being disconnected by a time out because we can't respond quickly enough. Yes one can phone in to talk to someone if you can wait the expected hour long wait for someone to answer then you can stumble through the many security questions that I can't always remember or know the answers. Some of us farmers do not even have internet and yet we are mandated to only use the internet to reporting on farm activities to the government.

Keeping warm is going to be very difficult under job losses and loss of income in the near future for all of us. Wood heat for us has been important but it will not take long for humans to decimate the forest around us. So what is the future? As with the soil on farms it is all in the hands of microbes. Tremendous amounts of heat is generated by compost and bio gas using microbes from human and animal waste to produce methane and used in similar ways to Natural gas which is mostly methane.

My first eye opening visit was with Gorden and families farm, who has a full time job during the week Monday to Thursday and yet runs a remarkable well thought out farm that suits his lifestyle and his customers needs. Gordon grew up on this farm and in time purchased it from his siblings. Some of his farm is rented out but he has animals such as goats, chickens, does Christmas trees, hazel nut trees, along with various fruit trees. He has a wonderful composting process with his pigs as well as having the goats recycle the Christmas trees that he sold at Christmas.

Another farmer friend, Greg and family are more rudimentary using horses for most of the heavy work and have designed and built specific buildings that are simple but very functional. Toby the son is deaf which creates a very different atmosphere so I had to get out a pencil and paper to communicate and had to remember some of my sign language. They sell vegetables at the local market, make their own hay, produce some lumber from their own trees and live very simply as we all should.

Ken is very organized farmer. He has built a number of very useful buildings and has sheds for his animals that are on skids so they can be moved around very easily with a tractor. He has three friendly cows in a electric fenced area. There are three pigs, a few chickens and ducks. He has very well thought out farm machinery for working in the fields, vegetable garden and a good barn to keep them inside. Something Ken has that is very important is an underground vegetable storage recently built. It was very impressive. Ken also has a field of red fife hard wheat that I would like to get to produce some hard wheat flour. Ken also had some red corn which I thought would make excellent corn meal!

Like ourselves I need help once and a while for things like haying, building a firewood shelter, a small enclosure for the horses or just a shed for our cow. My idea is to gather a few of us at each farm for a good day of work and get fed by the farmer but also bring and share food from each participant.

Do I have any takers?

mat