BSE study

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Study Targets Rural Families


Written by Sun Country/AM1140/The Eagle
Thursday, 03 January 2008The long-term effects of Mad Cow disease on families and communities have been somewhat unknown, but a new study hopes to change that.


Numerous research centres across Canada, including the University of Calgary, are looking at health, well being and coping strategies of farmers and their families in response to BSE. Dr. Wilfreda Thurston with the study, says the social, emotional and physical aspects of health were missing in the research being done. Understanding the effects will help develop programs and policies that promote the health of rural communities and farmers. If you are a farmer, rancher or rural community member interested in participating call 1-877-422-4358

[farmers_son]

Good post, thank you for that. I heard of that study and wanted to participate but lost the phone number.

[PureCountry]

For sure f_s, get your 2 cents worth in and tell the pollers everything in the beef biz is rosy, as long as we keep our nose up the American's @$$, run 477 cows, and vote at ABP meetings when we're told to.

Gee, for a Monday morning I thought I'd be more cheerful. Better go back to the coffee pot for a refill.

This research will be interesting stuff, I hadn't heard of it before. I'm sure someone's phoned already, hey Mr. Kaiser?

[farmers_son]

I would hope many producers phone to get their 2 cents in. There was a fellow talking about this on QR77 this morning. They are interested in the effects that BSE had on producers health, not the direct economic iimpacts of BSE as there had been lots of study done on that already.

But since it is coming on 5 years since BSE hit in Alberta and slightly over 4 years since the U.S. found their first case of BSE I gave some thought to just what impact BSE had on our farm.

The drought in 2002 and for us also in 2003 was worse by far than BSE. We sold our market cattle in March 2003 so dodged that bullet. We had CAIS margin in 2003 and 2004 and that helped quite a bit. We changed our cattle operation a lot. We went to finishing calves instead of backgrounding calves. There was a very good risk premium built into finishing calves in 2004-05 and some in 2006 and we were making very good money on the finishing end. Basically our cattle income stayed the same through those years because we retained ownership longer. We have lost about $100,000 cash liquidity as a result of BSE. Not that we ever had that much cash lying around but we had to sell down our inventory of grain to cash flow the operation. We tightened our belt quite a bit. It was quite hard to cash flow the operation for a while there but things are getting better as we are starting to reap the benefits of expanding our herd. Since 2003 we expanded our cow herd, expanded our land base, continued to pay down the existing debt, expanded our line of equipment only with older equipment. Land prices continued to rise through those years with people paying as much for native grass as cultivated land was selling for. On our farm we have been fortunate that we have had good pasture in the last few years which was critical because it would have been a wreck if we had another 2002 drought and were forced to liquidate the herd.

I think the real impacts of BSE are still to come for us. Our CAIS reference margin is gone so we do not have that important backstop. Our cow herd has expanded but it has grown older and that needs to be dealt with. Cows did not go up in price like I though they would. The real, real important impacts [to paraphrase another topic heading] will be how these last tough years will affect our children’s decisions to farm or not.