What do you carry in your pocket? During my life of 78 years, I have spent countless days and nights away from home. It started in my days in the local calf club (which was later replaced by 4-H clubs and young farmers), then the Quebec Farmers Association and UCC (Union catholic des cultivateurs), replaced by UPA (Union des producteurs agricoles), local milk, beef, and general farm organizations. Some of those groups paid compensation and travel expenses, but the best groups that I was involved with were totally volunteer. Volunteers were there because they cared, not because of any compensation.
Jeannie and I also spent hundreds of days attending dairy and crop information days (sometimes weeks). I count those times as continuous education where we often exchanged stories and things that we learned the hard way. Some nights I shared a hotel room with a farmer friend to save money for whatever organization we represented. When Jeannie came, she usually wanted our own room. Some people slept with a sleep apnea machine every night. Some carried a blood sugar monitor everywhere that they went, also with a needle and a chocolate bar too. Those times, I realized how lucky I was. Most farmers always carried a cell phone, their wallet, a roll of Tums and a jack knife. Dad taught me that a jack knife had to have a bottle opener, a screw driver to adjust the points on a tractor and the water pump in the basement, and a knife to gap the plugs on a gas tractor. Later, when there were girls around that drank wine, a corkscrew was a must.
Once I found out what caused that acid reflux problem, I never carried either Tums or Rolaids after. Antacids were available in every corner store and gas station in every town. About 10 years ago, we took a trip to Ireland for two weeks with close friends. Most of us had relatives or friends there. A friend is just a stranger that you haven’t met yet. On my first day in Ireland, I noticed that there were no antacids on the shelf at the corner store or any ads on TV advertising them. In Canada 10 years ago, there must have been a dozen antacids advertised every night on TV! I decided to find out why this was.
About 35 years ago, there began a debate about whether or not glyphosate was carcinogenic. Ireland decided to allow food packaging to state whether ingredients contained any GMOs or not, so the consumers could choose for themselves. Many GMOs are engineered specifically to be able to withstand use of glyphosate. Within a very short time, Irish consumers made the decision to not buy any foods that contained GMO material. Soon, the drug companies lobbied the governments, and it was decided to not allow GMOs to be discriminated against by labeling. The Irish consumers had already made up their minds to not buy any foods that might have a residue of glyphosate. Many stores just didn’t buy any GMO foods or put them on the shelf.
One of the health problems with glyphosate is that it is also a bactericide that reduces the helpful bacteria in your gut biome that not only help digest foods, but those little bacteria also repair small lesions in our gut (which prevent “leaky gut” or perforated bowel). Maybe that’s why I couldn’t find antacids in Ireland. All the two weeks that we were in Ireland, I never had an upset tummy. I also noticed that if I enjoyed an odd beer in Ireland, I never had any reaction to their beer. Their barley used to make the beer is not sprayed with glyphosate either.
Some of the small breweries in Canada buy all non-GMO barley from Europe to make their beer. Jamaica makes excellent rum made from 100 per cent sugar cane. Some very good vodka is made from potatoes (according to Jeannie). Both Irish whisky and beers are smooth. At our vineyard, we learned that any herbicide used on our farm could not be sprayed anywhere close to the vineyard or up-wind of the grape vines because even a smell of spray could cause the buds on the grape vines to abort and not produce any grapes. You never forget expensive mistakes.
Just recently, my dairy farmer friends reminded me that since the first Free Trade Agreement signed by Brian Mulroney, Canada has bargained away 10 per cent of Canadian dairy farmers’ market as well as the Canada-U.S. auto pact that guaranteed a major percentage of every North American car had to be made in this continent. When will Canada get some of those concessions back?
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
