Optimism

It was tough going for Canadian beef producers for a while. Prices went down after BSE, we went from drought to floods and back again, and we faced international economic collapse on top of it all. It's in times like that that people look at you kinda cross eyed when you say, "I want to go into farming." The older generations know just how difficult farming can be, how volatile the feed supplies and weather can turn, and how completely unpredictable the cattle markets are. I admit that I am just a fresh-faced young-un, i know very little about most things, and have some awfully crazy dreams. I believe, however, that there is a difference between my generation and the generations that came before.

The two generations preceding mine lived through the toughest century the world has known since the Industrial Revolution. Massive outbreaks of war, the bloodiest the world has seen, and an economic depression and North American drought that lasted ten years plagued the first half of the 20th Century. After that, the Cold War, increased instability in the global political system and more economic woes throughout the seventies and eighties allowed people to lose faith in their chosen occupations. Most notable to me, the farmers of Alberta who today look at me and tell me, "Stay out of the cattle, if you know what is good for you."

This is where optimism comes in. Optimism means looking forward, not back, having hope and faith in your own ability, and not believing that chance plays any part in your life. I am optimistic that I will do things that have never been done before. I will go places in the industry that no one expects me to. I will find niches and use them, make and break deals, fall subject to poor markets and reap the benefits of good ones. I am confident in my own ability. I know what I can and cannot do. Those things that I cannot are things that I will figure out. Optimism, in anything, is believing that you can. It really irks me to hear the old farmers say "Don't". They had their own triumphs and their own failures, and it is clear to me that their failures where greater than their triumphs. Instead of telling me to stay away, they should sit me down and say, "This is the mistake I made, and here is what I wish I could have done."

The fastest way to kill an industry is to discourage new people to come in. The beef industry needs new leaders, new young people, new ideas and fewer mistakes in order to remain a viable way of life. I am optimistic that my generation and I hold the keys to the doors holding the rest back. We have more money, we have a better education, and, perhaps most important, we have a vast resource of information in the form of our parents and grandparents.

"The Wisest men follow their own direction" --Euripides

"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own."-- H. G. Wells