Feb 13th - White Desert & Hutterites

My host while in Calgary was Nuffield Scholar Ryan Bonnet. Ryan organised for me to meet with one of the leading farmers in the community and a Hutterite community. Lindsey Good runs a 1600ha farm near Calgary and another 2400ha farm in Saskatchewan province. The Saskatchewan farm is all rented from an investment company and Lindsey has a manager running it. Lindsey still uses paper records for managing his property, but is looking at new cloud and tablet based technology. He gave me a few leads to follow up and look into further.

Linsey Good & I outside his house

Canadian Countryside

I also visited Rosehill Hutterite colony with Ryan. Hutterites are a communal branch of the Anabaptists. They migrated to North America following religious persecution in Europe. Their beliefs of community living and absolute pacifism were the main reasons behind much of their persecution, which has continued at times even in Nth America.  In 2004 there were 347 colonies in Canada, mainly in Alberta. The colony size varies from 10 to 20 families of up to 240 individuals. Once a colony gets too large another farm will be purchased and set up for the colony to split. The Hutterites are very progressive farmers and are open to new technology on their farms. Technology within their homes is still limited and to an extent will vary from colony to colony.  The houses are built dormitory style in blocks of about 5. Ryan and I enjoyed lunch with the colony which was eaten in a large dining hall with the men on one side and ladies on the other. We also had afternoon tea inside one of the houses.  They were nice modern looking homes which were simple and uncluttered. The houses had phones, but no televisions. Filtered internet access was for business use only.

The farm was cropping about 6000ha and also had a 120 cow dairy a, 30,000 hen laying enterprise and a 2000 Sow piggery.  My impressions were of a very neat tidy well run business. The intensive enterprises were immaculate and a credit to the management and people in the colony. I have seen kitchens that are a lot dirtier than the milking parlor. A great example of what can be done when people work together in Agriculture.

Although the this colony was fairly tech savy in their farming enterprises I found that the management systems they were using, were far less developed.