Former Premier Is Optimistic About Agriculture

Jun 17, 2021

Canada's Farm Show kicked off yesterday with a full day of presentations, including a fireside chat with Former Premier Brad Wall.

Wall is a consultant and is also now involved in the Agriculture sector, he's working and enjoying life on the ranch in the Cypress Hills, as a silent partner in his son's cattle operation CW Cattle Co.

Wall talked about the Agriculture sector and noted he sees a bright future ahead for the industry in Saskatchewan.

"If it's plant proteins that are going to be in demand and they are while thats Saskatchewan. Now think of all the plant proteins we grow in numbers that are world leading, 51 per cent of the world exports of lentils for example are from Saskatchewan farmers alone. Nevermind Canada, nevermind the Prairies, 31 per cent of peas."

He notes as for meat proteins Saskatchewan has a third of Canada's beef herd.

Wall also commented on the increase and interest we're seeing in canola crushing capacity in Saskatchewan and its future potential.

"You know, we're not just talking about demand for food based canola oil or food utilized canola oil, but it's going to play prominently in the renewable fuel space. We do have a clean fuel standard on its way in partially arrived, I guess."

Wall says there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future of Agriculture, but also cautions that what happened to Canadian oil being branded "dirty oil"
is a cautionary tale for Canadian modern agriculture.

"Many of the NGOs that lined up against Canadian oil and gas, they don't much care for modern agriculture either. You know you can check it out in the leaked manifesto in some of the more extreme documents. There's a long list of things we do in modern agriculture they'd like to see stopped. So let's be vigilant."

Wall notes its important to promote the good things that agriculture is doing pointing to the CCA's documentary "Guardians of the Grasslands" which focuses on the
important role that producers and cattle play in protecting our grasslands.

You can check out the Fireside Chat with Brad Wall as part of the on-demand section at Canada's Virtual Farm Show.

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Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

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