Only On The Walters Post

You know… every so often something nags at me enough that I feel the need to sit down and talk it through. Lately it’s been the price of meat, and not just the sticker shock. It’s what’s going on behind the scenes that most folks never hear about. Makes you shake your head a bit.

You see… we keep hearing about droughts and high feed costs, and sure, all that’s true. But the bigger picture isn’t just weather. It’s the way Canada treats its own farmers.

This country has the land, the feed, the people, and the know-how. We could feed ourselves without much trouble. Yet here we are… importing a pile of meat while our own ranchers sell off their herds because they can’t make a living.

Most people don’t realize how much of the meat in the store didn’t come from a Canadian farm. The package might have a little maple leaf on it, which looks comforting enough, but that doesn’t mean the animal lived here. A lot of it was raised somewhere else, shipped in, cut up by a plant in Canada, then sold like it was born and fed right down the road. Folks don’t question it, because they shouldn’t have to… but that’s how the system plays the game.

Meanwhile the ranchers we do have are getting squeezed. Feed bills, fuel bills, repairs… nothing’s cheap anymore. And when it comes time to sell their cattle, the price is set by a handful of big processors who have more power than they should. Then the grocery chains add their markups, and by the time it hits the shelf, the farmer hardly sees a dime of it. The consumer pays top dollar, and the person who raised the animal gets the scraps.

After a few years of that, you can’t blame ranchers for walking away. Some are older and worn out. Others are tired of being pushed around by a system that’s supposed to support them. And once a ranch shuts down or a herd is sold off, you don’t usually see it come back.

That affects all of us, whether we think about it or not. Because when we don’t support our own farmers, we end up relying on imports. And when something goes wrong out there in the world … shipping delays, drought, war, politics … our prices jump overnight. That’s exactly what’s happening now.

And here’s the part that bothers me… Canada could fix this. If we bought Canadian meat first … truly committed to it… farmers would have a reason to grow their herds again and young people might actually see ranching as a future instead of a dead end. In doing so the money would stay in our own communities instead of being sent overseas. Prices would settle because supply would stabilize. This isn’t complicated… just ignored.

But as long as we treat foreign supply like the easy solution and keep squeezing our own, nothing changes. Bottom line is… we’re watching the backbone of rural Canada wear thin, one ranch at a time, and most folks don’t even know it’s happening.

All I’m saying is… if we want strong farms, steady prices, and food we can trust, we’ve got to back the people who raise or grow it here at home. It’s that simple.

Until the next time: Keep Your Minds Open & Your Stories Alive. GW