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distinction in 2012, and represents red meat farmers on
KAP’s board of directors.
One of her pet peeves is that farmers have become too
separated into their own little corners of agriculture. There
are livestock farmers and grain farmers, big farmers and small
farmers, organic farmers and biosystems farmers, but she sees
them all as farmers who can help each other.
“That’s why I believe so strongly in KAP. It’s where
beekeepers and hog producers and canola growers can all be
in the same room together, and there are so many challenges
common to us all,” she said.
Like many hog farmers, she laments that people in her
industry are always being put on the defensive. She thinks
animal rights groups might look closer to home at the way
some people confine their pets.
“(Actor) Ryan Gosling will tweet about how awful it is
that sows are in stalls – or crates! He’ll say, ‘It’s horrible, it’s
awful that they are segregated from each other,’ and society
believes him. And I think, ‘Why don’t you ask me?’ I’ve been
taking care of sows for 40-plus years.”
About 20 years ago, she and Ron tried group housing for
about a third of their sows and dropped it six years later. The
sows didn’t want it. They wanted their own stall where the
other pigs didn’t bug them.
Her pigs can still back out of their stall into a common
area for “tea-partying,” she says, but by and large they stay in
their stalls where they can sleep undisturbed and no one steals
their food. A study from the Netherlands found 92 per cent of
pigs spend 98 per cent of their time in individual spaces, given
the opportunity, she said.
And yes, meat production follows a mass production
model, but so does every other kind of production in the
world today.
“We don’t depend on the village cobbler for our footwear.
We have big factories turning out our winter boots and sandals
and work boots.”
She gets questions from other women about running a
farm, sometimes from young women who need encouragement.
“She may be the only sibling that is passionate about
farming, but can’t convince her parents to sell her the farm
because they don’t believe she can do it,” Marg said.
Her message: “Don’t give up. Just because we have to prove
ourselves a couple more times than some others, that’s just life.
The only way we’ll change it is one step at a time, by me doing
this, by you doing this, and by your neighbour doing this.”
Marg’s faith is important to her.
“It’s just being able to marvel at how you stick this little
seed in the ground and a couple weeks later it’s green and a
couple months later you’re harvesting,” she said.
Marg believes farmers are more inclined towards having
faith because they work so closely to creation.
“I think we’re past the stage of saying if science can
explain it than the spirit has nothing to do with it,” she said.
“We can explain a sunset scientifically, but its beauty still
resonates within us. Or we can grow a crop and explain scientifically
all the nutrients that went into that crop – farming is
very much science-based – but then then you see that wheat
crop gently waving in the breeze and it touches your soul.”
FV
Manitoba Farmers’ Voice § Fall 2019 § 7
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