Interesting Stats - Women in Agriculture

[Victoria]

Taken from the Alberta Beef Producers site:

# Of the 385,610 farm operators in Canada, one-quarter or 97,345 are women

# Of the 276,550 farms in Canada, 5% of farms are run by women and 30% by male-female teams

# 49% of female farm operators in Canada have post-secondary education, compared to 37% of their male counterparts

# Of those who make agriculture their primary source of employment in Alberta, 29% are women, 71% are men

 

[Carlos D.]

Well I.m thinking about quitting--It has finally hit me in the face that there is no money in this occupation--I overheard my wife telling one of her friends--(I don't know why he works so hard for so little --I guess hes just not ready to give up yet)
I'm 60 years old have retired and thought I could run 50 cows and make myself pocket money--I knew that was all I could expect.--but its not even doing that -
I heard that a new packing plant opened up in alberta and it took 8 months for tyson and cargill to break them When you have corporations that big, and with that much control--Have at er boys I'm stepping aside

carl

 

[Victoria]

It is tough Carlos. Are you talking about the Rancher's Beef plant? We got a few cents more/pound from our commercial calves last year thanks to them. It is sad to see what happened to them. Wish I could blame it all on Cargill (they are part of it) but there were so many factors. Calgary cut off their water for awhile, why they went where they did for location is kind of beyond me. They had neighbours suing them. They never processed over 450 head a day and the plant was designed for 800. A lot of bad timing was there too. It's hard for a little guy to make it, even our taxes don't support it.
Every year I see less and less cows in the countryside. A lot of ranchers that are still hanging in there are becoming the working poor. It's a sad state and I don't know where it will end.