Ep. 365: Corporate farmers: Who are they?

Guest: Adrienne Ivey

Adrienne Ivey asks you to close your eyes and form an image of a corporate farmer – a corporate farmer with a board of directors who has shares and receives dividends, a corporate farmer that owns a large 10,000-acre ranch with 1,000 head of cattle, a corporate farmer that runs the business based on the numbers, and who sells products into a food production network, not at farmer's markets.

She then asks you to open your eyes and look at her, a mother in her 30s who, along with her husband and in-laws, run their corporate ranch. The shareholders are her family – a business that has a succession plan, a succession plan to pass on ownership to her children.

Ivey says, “We're not alone. We’re not outliers in agriculture.” More than 95% of farms of consequence in Canada are family-owned and -operated businesses. Ivey is a strong and proud rancher who says, “We’re worried that Canadians are being told to fear me. I’m not to be trusted, I’m to be feared, that I don't care for the land or the animals that I raise, that I’m only in it for the money.”

She says, "Look at me. Is that what you see?" Adrienne Ivey says the images that others are using to promote their products at the expense of people like her and her family are wrong. So she decided to stand up, and in the words of Paul Harvey, "Tell the rest of the story."

Stuart McNish invited blogger, speaker, and one of the voices of ranching in Saskatchewan, Adrienne Ivey, to join him for a frank Conversation That Matters - Food for Thought episode about cattle ranching.