Experienced farmers see bleak future

Dick Haliburton can recall picking new potatoes on hot days in August during WWII. In those years before he was agriculture minister, his father, Ed, sent a load nearly every day into Halifax.

That was selling at the farm gate. The potatoes grown in Avonport sold roadside in Bedford and young Dick got to see how many ships were waiting in the harbour from day to day.

Today he has one son working with him on the farm, but Dick, having survived a fire in a chicken barn this past summer, shakes his head at the future of agriculture in the Annapolis Valley. So too do all of the senior members of the farm community with whom I chatted with last week.

Keith Boates of Woodville gave me the notion that history might be able to point us in the right direction today. I mean, it must’ve been damn tough back in 1939 when the Second World War stopped apple shipments from Nova Scotia going to Britain, their main market.

Keith says in those days farmers used to go broke; now they just walk away. A famous name in local agriculture, George Chase, who I’m told started the poultry processing plant at Canard, displaced about 38 farm families. He foreclosed, Fred Walsh of Rockland said, “and Chase died alone.”

Anne Hutten's history of the apple industry, Valley Gold, outlines how producers in the 1930s built ample warehouses co-operatively, but they never quite recovered from the loss of the British market.

Keith, who knows his apples, says they had to switch from culinary to eating apples after the war and plant whole new varieties.

Hutten quotes the historian Margaret Conrad, in 1980, blaming the federal government for the state of decline into which the industry fell after WWII. “By purposely confining Valley agriculture to a limited, regional market, and by refusing to assist in the search for external markets, Ottawa sealed the fate of agriculture in the Atlantic provinces."

Conrad charged that, by its inaction, the Canadian government had permitted the apple industry to fall into a dependent and underdeveloped role. Are we seeing history repeat itself?

Herman Van Hattem came to Canada in 1960. As a boy in Holland, he “did everything by hand and I’m thankful I learned all those things.” His first job on a Valley farm, he earned 30 cents a day.

Herman says the big grocery stores have too much control. They can bring in meat from New Zealand, for example, repackage it and call it Canadian.

Keith has learned from personal experience that “all the (corporate) decisions are made in Toronto. It’s like talking to a brick wall; then they’re plain ignorant.”

Paul Elderkin of Greenwich, whose family came in 1760 from Connecticut, says he can’t urge his grandsons to go into farming. “Agriculture is in hard shape. Sure we should save the land,” he says, “but the farmers are living on less and less. Their wives have to work off the farm.”

Herman would like to see a farm market added to Berwick. Keith has been getting up at 4 a.m. every Saturday to go to one for over 30 years. He knows from talking to consumers that they want high quality, fresh, untreated produce.

Keith says Kings County has to do more than suck in old folks who want to retire. He’s cynical about a national economy turned inside out by NAFTA so we have to supply oil to the U.S. Herman adds water and basalt to the list.

“It’s hard to know where we're going. We need another Herb Whalen as minister of agriculture,” he says. “We don't have the leaders to stand up for agriculture.”

Keith believes government has a necessary role in marketing. “We have to connect with the buying public somehow.”

Fred, who started farming in 1951 and 20 years later became an ‘ag rep,’ is a firm believer in the co-operative movement that Moses Coady started in 1933.

“Otherwise we’re slaves to the wealthy.” He says, “here we are in this sheltered valley between two hills; we have to have the faith that it’s going to be better and when we’re down keep our spirits up.”