When dairy farming wasn't as idyllic as it seemed
High debt load and high workload was too much for growing number of dairy farmers in 1980
Who knew dairy farming could be such a labour-intensive career?
Dairy farmers, that's who. And in 1980, too many of them were trying to switch to something else.
The National looked at why that was a problem in western Canada.
"Long hours and a seven-day week, high interest rates, a pricing formula that doesn't keep up with rising costs and attractive alternatives such as beef and grain farming, have meant more and more dairy farmers are getting out and fewer are coming in," the CBC's Eve Savory reported on The National on March 19, 1980.
Working 'every night of the week'
Those factors — particularly the long hours, as well as the debt load such farmers had to incur — were enough to push Harvey Aberhart onto a new path.
He sold his dairy herd in 1979 and went to work as an electrician.
When he spoke to The National months later, he did not seem to have any regrets about his career change.
"Before we weren't working every hour of the day, but we still had to be back at 6:30 and we usually worked until 7:30 p.m., 8:00 p.m., every night of the week," Aberhart said, when describing some of the things he didn't like about life as a dairy farmer.
Farming about 'more than money'
Savory said the increasing number of dairy farmers exiting the business meant Saskatchewan was losing 25 dairy herds each year. If that trend continued, she said it could lead to the closing of dairy plants.
The people who were staying in the dairy business had their reasons, though, even if they were aware of how hard that business could be.
"More than money draws a dairy farmer to the land and keeps him there," said Savory, pointing to a farm run by the third generation of the Dodd family in McLean, Sask., where the expectation was the next generation would take on the business one day.
"The Dodds say: 'If we give up, we're not only selling our past, we're selling our children's future,'" she said.
Dairy farmer Doug Dodd admitted, however, that he would be tempted to leave dairy farming behind if he got a good offer for his farm.
