Sep. 02, 2009 - Issue #724: The Drowsy Chaperone

Alberta Sustainable Agriculture Apprenticeship Program

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... : New apprenticeship program gives city slickers first-hand experience of the farming lifestyle

Alberta farms have for decades witnessed a seemingly inexorable drain of people—especially their youth—out of rural areas and into the province's larger urban centres. Compelled by the economics of an increasingly globalized food system which has gobbled up and consolidated small family farms, and drawn by the lure of greater educational and career opportunities and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, generations of Albertans have left behind life on the farm and headed to the bright lights of the city.

Of the province's 3.3 million people more than 82 percent now live in cities, according to 2006 Statistics Canada numbers. Of the remaining rural population fewer than 25 percent—just over 155 000 Albertans—now live on farms, representing less than five percent of the total provincial population. It's a far cry from the heyday of the farming-dominated provincial economy which existed before oil was struck at Leduc No. 1 in 1947. In 1931 more than half the province belonged to farming families, meaning that in a single lifetime the province has shifted from one in two Albertans living on farms to less than one in 20. Around half of those remaining no longer make their living producing food, choosing instead to work off-farm.

But with increasing awareness about a range of pressing issues, from climate change to peak oil, pesticides to food safety, more and more Albertans are beginning to ask themselves where their food comes from, how it is produced and are taking an interest in growing more of it themselves. Community gardens, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture programs and organic foods are all soaring in popularity. Some young people are even starting to go against this decades-long trend of the grain drain by trading in their urban lifestyles and heading back to rural Alberta to make their living producing food.

It's an choice that appeals to Michael Hunter. After moving to Edmonton four years ago, doing what he calls "typical living-in-the-city activities," the 36-year-old and his wife, Beth, began making an effort to learn more about the food they were eating.

"Beth and I were both getting increasingly concerned with issues of food security, reading and watching documentary films about food security," he explains. "We were also making long-term plans for having a family and were realizing that the path we were on was not going to be a sustainable one to leave to the next generation. So we decided to start looking into changing our lifestyle."

That exploration led the couple to discover a new pilot program in the province—the Alberta Sustainable Agriculture Apprenticeship Program (ASAAP)—that aims to connect young people like Hunter who are interested in sustainable agriculture with farms and farmers who are willing to offer them seasonal apprenticeship positions to help them learn the ropes.

"The underlying goal of the program, really, is to provide people with the hands-on experiential knowledge that they need in order to make an educated decision as to whether they want to go into a form of sustainable agriculture as a career choice," explains Becky Lipton, the program's coordinator. "It got started last winter because I saw that there was a lack of infrastructural support for people who were interested in getting into sustainable agriculture, whether it's someone who doesn't come from a farming background or someone who is interested in transitioning over from some type of conventional agriculture who didn't have a background in organics or the high-value niche products."

Lipton's perceived need led to conversations with some farmers she knew in the Edmonton and Peace regions who were focused on sustainable practices—organic growing, free-range and grass fed livestock, niche products, direct-to-market selling—and were willing to share their knowledge with a new generation of potential farmers.

In the pilot season 10 farms signed up to take on apprentices for full-season placements—which Lipton stresses is necessary to really get a sense of the true experience of running a farm—and pay them a combination of a stipend and room and board in exchange for their labour. In the end five apprentices were placed in the Peace region and three near Edmonton, including Hunter.

"I was making plans about what I was going to do with my summer and this came up," he says. "We decided that it was important enough that I'd make less money, but get some important experience in learning how to grow food, essentially."

Beginning in May Hunter started spending three days a week at the Inspired Market Gardens, a small operation based on a 160-acre family farm near Carvel, just outside Stony Plain, which focuses on growing and marketing herbs and edible flowers. It has been, Hunter says, an eye-opening experience.

"I was very overwhelmed when I first started. It was a very steep learning curve for me just in terms of plant identification, never mind learning anything about how to grow them," he laughs. "Things just seem to progress very, very quickly; I take a couple of days off and come back out here and see how fast things are growing, so just becoming more aware very quickly of how much of an ongoing effort it is to run an operation. Someone has to be here all the time, there's always things that have to be observed and maintained.

"I had an appreciation already, sort of conceptually, how hard it is to make a living growing food," he continues, "but to actually have a hands-on experience of how quickly things change and how you have to be able to adapt to those changes really brought it home and made me realize why farmers are so tied to their land."

Despite the challenges of absorbing as much knowledge as he can and working long hours, Hunter says there are many upsides, too.
"I've never felt more comfortable in any working environment," he says. "The sounds, the smells, the sights—you just feel better about your place in the world, I think, when you're surrounded by a more natural surrounding and not having to breathe in fumes all day. So it's done very good things for my mental and physical health; I feel a lot more at peace with myself."

It's a sentiment that's echoed by 26-year-old Jordan Wilson, a self-confessed city boy who has been apprenticing on Sunworks Farm, a certified organic poultry and livestock farm north of Camrose, since mid-May in preparation to move with his fiancée Megan to her family's farm near Ardrossan.

"None of it has been particularly easy," he admits. "It's been a huge shift for me because I grew up in Edmonton; for 25 years I've been living there and suddenly moving out to a farm an hour away from a major city was a major change for me, but I've learned so much and grown so much that it's been fabulous."

But, he admits, it's not easy.

"The work is never done. There's always more to do out there. More than anything it's getting the stuff done in a day you have to do, and then once you've got that stuff done it's a matter of seeing what is the other stuff, the other projects that we're working on and how much of that can I get done before I'm at a place where I can't work anymore," he laughs. "But the work that you're doing out here is way more important than anything else that's going on, so you're focusing on the work and you want to be out there, because that's what's important. I didn't have that before I went out to the farm."

That appreciation of the intangibles that come from the hard but rewarding work of making a living off the land—especially coming from urban-raised youth—thrills Gwen Simpson, who grew up on her family farm in BC and now owns Inspired Market Gardens with her sister and their spouses.

"I think it's absolutely wonderful," she enthuses. "In our community most of the farmers are the typical age, they're well over 55, there's not that many young folks around, they farm pretty conventionally.

"I have a line taken from Wendell Berry: 'Who will love the land in the way it deserves and needs to be loved?' I really believe that unless people live on the land, unless there are young people who live on the land, how will they understand how important it is? In my generation everybody I knew either grew up on a farm or they knew someone who farmed, had relatives who farmed. And that's not the case anymore. Our generation, the boomer generation, is the last generation like that. If we don't get some young people and their children to have a way of coming onto the farm then we're going to lose that."

And while Simpson is happy to share her lifetime of knowledge, and is glad the program is looking to learn from the experience of the first season and hopefully expand next year, she says it's been far from a one-way experience.

"It has to be an exchange where they feel that they're not just going out to be a labourer on the farm, that they're going to actually learn how they can raise crops and the economics and the market and the soil prep and all of the things that go into it being a viable industry," she says. "And Michael brings an urban perspective and a young perspective. He'll say, 'Why do you do that?' and he makes us think more carefully about what it is we're doing and why. So it's been a really good program."

For Hunter, the experience with ASAAP and Simpson has just reinforced that the path he and his wife are on—to move to a rural eco-village where they can focus much of their time on food production—is the right one for them.

"It hasn't made me feel any less apprehensive about the workload," he laughs, "but I'm more convinced than ever that there's a strong movement growing not just within agricultural communities, but across the province, across the country. People are starting to realize that we can't depend on our industrial food system to continue to supply us with safe food in the abundance that we're going to need it.

"I often say to people that I'm not an alarmist, but there are water issues, climate issues, fossil fuel issues, that all will start to change how we view our food systems and our supply of food, and will, whether we like it or not, force more of us to learn how to work within the field of agriculture and grow more food more locally. So I want to be on the forefront of that, I want to be prepared." V

The Alberta Sustainable Agriculture Apprenticeship Program is currently accepting applications for fall farm apprenticeships. ASAAP also organizes workshops and farm tours, a number of which take place in September. For more information visit startfarming.ca or contact Becky Lipton, ASAAP's coordinator, by email at becky.lipton@mail.mcgill.ca or at 780.271.1116. 

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