Factors such as financial insecurity, uncontrollable weather and isolating working conditions contribute to high depression, anxiety and suicide rates among farmers, according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Devin Wozniak, a farmer and life coach from Glenavon, Sask., said he thinks there is a lack of emotional support for farmers.

“When I used to run a business, I used to get validation or gratification from my customers,” he said. “And then as I shifted into full-time farmer, I felt needy. I was constantly needing from my family, from ag stores. You need them to be open.”

After struggling with anxiety and depression for many years, Wozniak knew spending hours upon hours alone in a combine was not helping his case. He needed to find a support system outside of his family and his employees.

“There’s never really a ‘thank you.’ There’s actually resentment. Like the weather, we can’t control the weather. As the leader of the farm, we’re considered the boss so we’re needing people to work long hours, and they look at us as being the slave driver. Our boss is Mother Nature, but we feel the brunt of it.”

Wozniak found education and belonging through an online program called The Bulletproof Husband, which provides support to men struggling with their personal relationships.

Along with finding a community within that program, Wozniak said he was mentored by a psychiatrist for many years and explored other online programs involving mental wellness.

Wozniak said he would be interested in the DMAF program and he thinks rural communities could benefit from this type of offering.

“Especially in a small community, when you are going through a tough time a lot of people avoid it, they don’t know how to relate to it,” said Wozniak.

Literacy

DMAF is expanding its programming from last year to include multiple options for webinars and in-person workshops.

New to the DMAF menu this year is AgCulture, a program for mental health professionals looking to gain agricultural literacy to better care for rural patients.

“This year DMAF’s focus is on supporting the industry as a whole,” DMAF executive director Megz Reynolds said. “This means bringing mental health literacy and educational workshops to farming communities, hosting national webinars to bring Canadians in agriculture together, and bringing AgCulture to mental health clinicians across Canada to ensure an understanding and connection to agriculture.”

The three workshops available for communities are Talk, Ask, Listen; Mental Health First Aid; and In the Know.

“Talk, Ask, Listen” is a half-day workshop intended for farmers who want to increase their understanding of mental health and begin to unpack the stigma surrounding mental health issues.

For more intensive training, “Mental Health First Aid” is facilitated by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and provides a framework for people to better manage their own, or a loved one’s, mental health problems.

The DMAF website describes “In the Know” as an evidence-based workshop which “aims to build mental health knowledge and increase help-seeking among farmers.”

Individuals looking to bring any of the no-cost workshops to their communities can apply to DMAF’s Community Fund by filling out an online form. Applications are open until Dec. 10.

— Hannah Polk reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Regina.

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Transport Canada, in a release Wednesday, said the goal of the terminal project is to “increase the number of containers stored onsite, improve the quality of the grain-cleaning service, optimize traffic flow in the yard, and increase capacity for loading and handling containers.”

Set up in 2014 by La coop federee (now Sollio) and other investors, the CanEst facility is sited next to the port’s container terminals to receive grain by rail and truck and provide services such as product cleaning, sifting, packaging and containerizing.

The CanEst terminal, served by both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways, has capacity to receive over 100 rail cars and also has with 91 concrete silos, for storage capacity of 68,000 tonnes.

Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra and Annie Koutrakis, parliamentary secretary for transport, announced the CanEst funding a week after the final report from the National Supply Chain Task Force was released.

That report, released Oct. 6, the Task Force included a letter to the minister with an “urgent call to address Canada’s transportation supply chain crisis.”

Alghabra said Wednesday the investment for CanEst will help keep supply chains running efficiently.

The task force report goes on to list multiple calls to action, directed mostly at the Canadian government and transportation and supply chain stakeholders.

“Immediately undertake actions to ‘unstick’ the transportation supply chain,” the report’s first recommendation reads.

“These [actions] include addressing congestion at port container terminals and prioritizing government attention on regulations, policies and procedures that are impeding the effective operation of a reliable supply chain.”

Transport Canada said it considers the CanEst project a step toward addressing the issues raised by the task force.

The CanEst project will cost $18 million in total, with the federal component coming from the department’s $2 billion National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF), which can back both public- and private-sector projects.

CanEst general manager Marc-Aurel Clapperton said the events of the past couple of years have “only deepened our commitment to streamlining the export process.”

Montreal Port Authority CEO Martin Imbleau said the project’s “favourable repercussions” will be “felt even on farms in the Prairies, Ontario and all of Quebec.”

“As Canada’s trade volumes continue to increase, investment in critical infrastructure assets such as seaports, railways, highways and roads, and airports must also increase to meet demand,” the task force said in its report.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, in Wednesday’s release, said port infrastructure is “critical” for supporting the flow of Canadian ag products.

— Hannah Polk reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Regina.

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Steve Biggar, associate vice-president of fertilizer and energy products for Winnipeg-based Richardson, said it was the right time for the company to launch CirrusX because of new treaters the company has installed to allow liquid products to be applied onto granular fertilizers.

“Over half of our locations have these new treating systems and most of our customers are able to access the technology either at their local site or at a neighbouring Richardson location,” he said.

CirrusX, a liquid product, could be used in combination with granular fertilizers to improve efficiency of the fertilizer and control loss of nitrogen due to volatilization, denitrification and leaching.

Biggar said that Richardson chose a nitrogen stabilizer as its first proprietary crop input because having the new treating equipment made entering the market easy.

“For us it made sense because we have control over the whole supply chain in terms of bringing the material in in totes, hooking those totes up to a treater that is attached to our fertilizer blender and then shipping out the blends to our customers,” he said.

CirrusX is already on the market and available for purchase, but those looking to get their hands on CirrusX will have to go directly to a Richardson Pioneer location. Biggar said CirrusX is a Richardson Pioneer-exclusive product, and the company has no plans to wholesale the product to other retailers.

“Typically, how we would recommend a product like this would be through one of our agronomists or salespeople,” said Biggar.

Currently, there is no plan for Richardson to release a pricing deal for growers who already use their products.

“We have over 100 certified crop advisors who work with customers to develop individual crop plans. We’ll be approaching the market mainly through our own sales and agronomy people.”

Going forward, Richardson will be looking to gradually add to and expand its own line of products.

“We’re looking at other foliar micronutrient products,” said Biggar. “We probably would look at some crop protection products. We’re looking for products that have proven value and a good track record.”

Richardson hopes the launch of CirrusX will help its customers attain the 4R Nutrient Stewardship method to increase crop yields.

Richardson Pioneer, Biggar said, is a “firm supporter” of 4R, a framework meant to help farmers achieve optimal crop production by way of the four R’s: right fertilizer source, right rate, right time and right place.

“We know that growers don’t want to spend any more money on fertilizer than they have to, so having urea that is treated with CirrusX will allow growers to have the right nitrogen source and ensures the nutrients are available at the right time.”

Richardson believes its customers are sustainable growers and world leaders in following best practices when using fertilizer, he said. “We see CirrusX as just another tool to allow growers to increase their efficiency and reduce their environmental footprint.”

— Hannah Polk reports for Glacier FarmMedia from Regina.

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