MFGA 2021: Where do we go from here?
By Larry Wegner, MFGA Chair
I love the Christmas season, the good food and drink and the company and conversations with family and friends. I am not that fond of commercial Christmas shopping and making sure every gift is right for the person it is bought for. On that front, I am “Bah Humbug”. But the time between Christmas and the New Year holidays is my time to reflect on the past year and use that reflection to help plan ahead for the next year, usually with optimism. On our family farm near Virden where I farm with my wife Rosemary and our sons Max and Herbert, we are closing the books on 2020 plans and looking back at whether we accomplished our 2020 goals and what we need to adjust for 2021. I was at a conference many years ago and the speaker said “failure to plan is to plan to fail” that stuck with me. We have to have a plan, then we monitor the plan, then if action is required we adjust, re-plan and again monitor. With the year’s end right in front of us, we are looking back to evaluate how we did as we head into 2021.
On our family farm, I will be the first to say I was off base on 2020. This was our fourth year of low rain fall, leaving the ground dry and the drought in fall did not let the grass tiller - an indication we can expect lower grass yields in 2021. Reading deeper into these signals, we told our customer for custom grazing we will not be taking his cattle in 2021. This will dedicate the existing forage for our use and hopefully allow for a faster forage recovery when if and when we get rain again. There is always a give and take and this move also will reduce our potential income in 2021.
As chair of Manitoba Forage and Grassland Association (MFGA), I am sitting back and reviewing our 2020 year as well. My first thought is “WOW” … did we do all that? Let us remember MFGA is led by a volunteer board of directors and a small handful of high-quality part time, contracted staff. With Covid-19 front and center, we planned and re-planned our highly-successful 2020 conference from a 2.5 day in-person event to four Thursday nights in November. We presented an online, free conference for our conference participants and that was due to our sponsor and trade show participants who trusted in us and what we were trying to do. To all of these sponsors, a big thank you from me and MFGA for your appreciated support.
In my way of thinking, a conference is only as good as the speakers that headline the event. To Diana Rodgers, Nicole Masters, Mark Shepard and Ryan Boyd we all thank you for your professionalism and for working with us to make it all happen. We also designed “Made in Manitoba” producer panels to sit in after the speakers and bring us a local perspective on how the information from the speakers parlayed into a Manitoba producer’s field view. Thank you to all our panel members.
From a production point of view, in the mid-70’s I was on camera for a TV show Sunday morning in Alberta called “4-H Club Time” where I asked a veterinarian about vaccination and cattle diseases. I saw then how hectic things were back stage and how many people it took to do the telecast. Things have changed over time. For our conference, we had two people in Winnipeg playing traffic and video coordinators to all the conversations going on and switching the feed between host, moderator, videos and live segments. To Dean and Nitin of Howling Pro Productions, I am in awe of the work you guys did. Thank you.
Manitoba Agriculture Resource Development (MARD) also graciously stepped up and helped fund our conference. One really important highlight for MFGA was opening the conference each of the four nights via the video welcome from the Hon. Blaine Pedersen, MARD Minister. I am very glad we have a good working relationship with the MARD. We also showcased Manitoba-made short videos to highlight some Manitoba projects such as Manitoba Beef and Forages Initiatives and research underway led by Dr Terence McGonigle (Brandon University), Dr. Emma Mcgeough (U of MB and MFGA Board Member) and Dr. Yvonne Lawley (U of MB). My biggest thanks go to our part-time, contracted MFGA staff that work so hard to make everything run seamless: Duncan, Denice, Terra, Chris and John. I thank all of you for the great work you did in 2020 for MFGA. To all the board members, the volunteer work you do for MFGA is outstanding. It is a true pleasure to sit as chair when everyone wants to be involved and make things happen.
We started planning our first MFGA conference four years ago with the goals of engaging local producers, building up our MFGA membership base and support to our MFGA AGM via the associated attendance of producers and members. By either strategic design or dealing with this unprecedented pandemic, all three of the conferences we have held have been different. We flew out of the gate in 2018 with a large in person gathering, reduced our event in 2019 to not compete with our friends and partners at the Western Canada Conference on Soil Health & Grazing in Edmonton, AB. And we all know what 2020 did to our best intentions. Still, I am happy to say we hit all our goals the first year and have been building on that since. This year we had about 1,000 producers from all over sign up for the conference and from as far away as the United Kingdom and South America. To me, that is peer-to-peer producer engagement. Although we provided the conference for free, we have had attendees sign up for memberships from Manitoba and from other provinces. Others gave donations to help MFGA’s financial outlook and in support of what we are doing.
As we start to plan our 2021 MFGA Regenerative Agriculture Conference, we hope to host it live November 15-17, 2021 in Brandon. But if not, we now know we have the ability to do it online again. (I do miss the people interaction and a social beer). For those wondering, you can visit our MFGA website and check out the 2020 conference and our other past ones. To date, we have over 1000 hits on the 2020 MFGA Regen Ag Conference presentations. Please share the MFGA YouTube channel with friends and family, in particular our four minute MFGA Regenerative Agriculture video expertly produced by Steve Langston of Dirty T-shirt Productions out of Onanole, and keep the Regenerative word out there in these locked down times. For those that prefer to read, The Regenerative Book Club is hosted by Graham Rees from Australia and has organized tours of regenerative farms in the USA for Australia and New Zealand producers. I would love to someday tour regenerative operations in Australia and New Zealand and I always learn when I do farm tours. When travel starts again, Graham has told me that he wants to include Western Canada in the next tour. I hope MFGA will be his contact point for Manitoba.
Looking ahead, I am concerned that everyone is using the Regenerative Agriculture handle. MFGA does not own the name but we have helped build it up. Companies like General Mills – one of our MFGA Platinum Supporters – are very dedicated to the movement and they realize that it starts with the producer. To me that is OK. General Mills is transparent on their interests and actions. Where I do have a problem is with people and companies using the handle and yet, not saying how or what they are doing to be Regenerative. To me, Regenerative Agriculture is selecting practices that make sense at the individual farm gate and building a system to be more profitable with less bought inputs. This starts with getting the soil healthy and building off that for now and into the future.
In the last month following the USA election, we have seen many competing interests that seemingly have all the answers and have something to sell to us on the importance of soil health. (FYI: nobody sold me anything when I started do this style of management though I have paid out of my own pocket to take several courses over the years). There are no short cuts to improve our soil health and you cannot buy anything in a bottle to make it happen faster. The talk of carbon credits is interesting to say the least. In the last year I have sat in on several meetings on a Canadian-based Carbon Offset system organized by the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association. From my point of view, the plan is not perfect but at least it is a Canadian Plan. We, as producers, need to engage in the carbon dialog or we run the chance of being told how and what we must be doing. With all the discussions and announcements around carbon taxes, nature-based climate solutions, offsets and incentives and the clear cut need for leaders on all these fronts to be working with the producers to increase carbon capture and long term storage in well-managed systems - i.e. perennial forages - are the biggest opportunities for producers to make their voices and actions heard either individually or via an organized farm group like MFGA, Manitoba Beef Producers or Keystone Agriculture Producers. Take the time to look into what the position and strategic approach of each group is, select the one you feel best supports your views and start to engage. These are my personal thoughts and concerns and not specifically that of MFGA. But as I look ahead as MFGA chair this is what I see.
I would like to again thank all of for your role and welcome involvement over the last year to make MFGA a success. Stay healthy physically and mentally and Season's Greetings to all!
