Farmers embody can-do spirit

There's a business buzzword that's overused these days, but which perfectly sums up what farmers are being forced to do this spring: pivot.

In corporate jargon, to pivot really means to make a quick change when things don't work out as planned.

To bend another metaphor, it's a way of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Or in Terry Beck's case, a piglet's ear. Beck is a pork producer in North Kingston, in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley, who is faced with some tough decisions this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. He's got hundreds of baby pigs that normally get shipped to Ontario every month.

But reduced demand and backlogs caused by COVID-19 outbreaks in meat processing plants in Canada and the U.S. have put a hitch in that plan. In a story in Tuesday's paper, Beck wondered whether he will have to euthanize his piglets.

He said their maximum value is tied into a two-week window and he doesn't have room to keep them on his farm, if he can't get the piglets shipped out.

Timing is everything, he said, which is something Andy Vermeulen knows all about. He grows fruit and vegetables at his 450-acre farm near Canning, also in the Annapolis Valley.

He was forced to destroy 26,000 tomato plants that he couldn't get planted in time, due to labour shortages.

Coronavirus restrictions slowed the entry of migrant workers to farms all over the country and Vermeulen couldn't get enough people to do the work when it needed to get done.

The tomatoes have a schedule, he told Saltwire journalist Ashley Thompson, and when he couldn't meet that schedule, he had to make the tough decision to scrap the crop.

Fortunately, local workers are supplementing his migrant workforce and he'll have enough people to plant other crops to meet the demands of grocery chains.

Farmers everywhere are no strangers to difficulty. Weather, new technology, changing markets and changing demand and labour challenges all routinely complicate agricultural life, and so they are used to changing quickly, or pivoting, when circumstances demand it.

There are long-standing crop insurance plans for backup and among the federal measures to help Canadians affected by the virus are several funds designed to cushion the blows felt by farmers.

But as Dalhousie university food scientist Sylvain Charlebois warned last month, the crisis will undoubtedly be the final blow for many farms, and Canadians need to be aware that prices, and food supplies, could change drastically as a result.

Both Vermeulen and Beck, though, sounded optimistic this week. Beck says local demand for pork has helped him, and Vermeulen is already planting his strawberry crop.

How can we help them?

Buy local.