DIRECTOR PROFILE - Brian Sterling

by Karen Emilson

Last winter, Brian Sterling attended a National Cattlemen’s meeting in the U.S. At the next MCPA Board meeting, he delivered an impressive, half hour power point presentation on what he learned. I’ve been looking forward to interviewing him ever since.

It is the dead of winter and about as cold as it can get. The sun is bright but there is a bite to the wind that makes it unbearable if facing in to it too long.

I have zig-zagged my way southwest to Tilston, and just discovered that it is a half-horse town at best—only three miles from the Saskatchewan border and pretty much 25 miles in every direction, from anything. Much like where I live.

I park in front of the post office boxes and pull out my cell phone. Surprisingly, there is service. A face suddenly appears at the driver’s side window and scares me half to death. It’s Brian - wearing red coveralls and a fur hat with the flaps down.
“Perfect timing!” he hollers and waves for me to follow his truck home. Earlier he told me that his place was easy to find, that you can see their barn from town, and he wasn’t kidding. He and his wife Sandra live pretty much at the end of Main Street.

We step into the porch and I hang up my coat, then follow him into the warm kitchen where Sandra is making a wonderful lunch. Brian tells me that she does not call soup and sandwiches a meal - that whenever she is home, they have a sit down dinner that includes “greens.” My timing is perfect once again.

Sandra works as a librarian and educational assistant at the school in Reston. It is the weekend so she is home. “So now you have an appreciation for how far I have to drive to meetings,” Brian laughs when I confess this was a longer drive than I expected. “That’s why I often can’t make it to Winnipeg for extra meetings. When most guys are giving up one day, I’m giving up two.”

He tells me that he isn’t a morning person; they don’t like to make plans and are usually late—confirming what I thought I knew all along—Brian is a bit of a free spirit.
We sit down at the table to chat. He tells me that he and Sandra grew up in the area, have been married since 1975 and have farmed here their whole lives. Brian did spend some time when he was younger working out - in a steel mill and on a combining crew - but basically he has always made a living right here in mostly cattle but also a bit of grain.

“This was my grandfather’s place,” he said. “Right here where we are sitting used to be a horse stable. He slept upstairs and the horses rested downstairs.”

Brian and Sandra have two children: a daughter, Jessica, 23 who lives and works in Brandon and a son, Andy, 25. Andy arrives in time for lunch and joins in the conversation. He lives 20 miles south at Pierson, and is back in Manitoba helping out on the farm while he waits for the Saskatchewan drilling rig he works for to start up again. Andy took AgriBusiness at College, but like most young men in the area, can earn more money in the oil fields. He would like to farm full-time and has built a herd of 40 cows. We talk for awhile about the idea of expanding at someone else’s expense.
“I was sitting next to someone who was buying cows and he was mad,” Andy says. “He was shaking his head, saying that it was #*!@ crime that cows were selling for so low. It is a good time to buy, but you feel bad for the guy selling.”

Brian says that when he and Sandra took over the farm, they did all the things that were popular back then - including scrubbing out the sloughs and turning marginal land into productive grain land. His thinking has since changed.

“When we talk about land use transition—taking land out of cattle and turning it into grain—this is where it is happening, right here in this area. Further south they are bulldozing trees that have been growing since the 1930s.”

Brian began turning his grain land back into acres suitable for cattle in the 1980s. Since then, he has noticed an increase in the amount of wildlife in the area. Sustainable farming and environmental protection was an interest of his long before he became a Director with the MCPA.

“But I have to admit, a lot of it I just fluked into,” he says, “which just goes to show how practises that benefit cattle work naturally well with the environment.”
He tells this story: In 1985 he was grassing 300-400 yearlings but was having a serious problem with foot rot, so he decided to fence off the areas around the creek and put in a watering system.

“A grazing guy came out and took a look at it and thought I was doing it to save the riparian area.”

The fencing he put around the creek created natural paddocks and because most of their land is connected, he added a few cross fences and began moving the cattle from one paddock to another. “Then they started calling me a pioneer in rotational grazing but I was doing it for other reasons, mostly because it was easy. I had to get the cattle from one side of the creek to the other.”

Brian says that when he converted some of his grain land to grass, he decided to sow meadow brome and alfalfa. He had two bags of western wheat grass that he decided to throw in.

“Well, the cattle didn’t eat the wheat grass and it grew really tall. When fall came, everything was gone except for the wheat grass. The grazing guys thought I’d done it to catch snow, but to be quite honest, I had no idea why I did it. Now it has become a mix recommended by Ducks Unlimited.”

Because his area is traditionally very dry, finding ways to hold moisture is always on everyone’s mind. A few years ago Brian thought it would be a good idea to trap a live beaver and introduce him to the creek.

“That didn’t work out so well,” he laughs. “I thought he’d build a dam and hold the water back, which he did. I just didn’t realize he would attract so many more of his kind!”

He is called “McSterling” when he’s flipping burgers or “Bull Dog” when he has taken a hold of an issue and won’t let go. What I find most interesting about Brian is his modesty. He sincerely doesn’t realize how good he is at furthering the cattleman’s cause, nor does he know how much weight his words carry. Brian is the sort of guy you want to have on your side.

I ask what made him decide to become a Director with the MCPA.

“Trevor Atchison kinda tricked me into it,” he said. “He sent in a letter pretending to be me and I got a call from Keith Robertson (the General Manager at the time) saying he was glad I was interested. I thought Trevor had done it in jest, so I sent back an email saying I’d be glad to do it, thinking they would be mortified by the idea of having me on the Board.”

Of course now, I have to ask him why.

“Well I don’t know. Why would they want me on there?” he asks.

Then he explains that he came on halfway through the year - replacing Scott Hunt from Hartney. Scott had a young family and just didn’t have time.
“Schweitzer was the President. BSE was going full tilt so it was pretty overwhelming. I almost didn’t go back after the first meeting. I didn’t have a handle on any of it and there was so much going on. I didn’t understand what they were talking about.”
Shirley Conibear, a Director from the next District over, piqued Brian’s interest by asking him to help her on the environment committee. He said it took about four meetings before he started to catch on. “And then it was tough to quit because they were a pretty committed bunch of people and it was easy to get caught up in the desire to try and make a difference.” He said that he thought he’d just finish out the year, but then he got hooked.

Brian says what really opened his eyes was the realization that the MCPA is a lobby group but not in the position to affect immediate change.

“The toughest thing for me to understand was that confrontation really didn’t get you anywhere. You can do it; and it makes you feel good at the time, and you would get your point across, but it doesn’t make anyone want to do anything for you.”

He explained that he had been on a few community boards prior to the MCPA and spent six years on the Co-op Board, so he had a hint of what a person needed to do to be a successful board member.

“It doesn’t bother me anymore, but at first it is hard for strong-minded people to accept that the majority rules and if you argue a point and lose the vote, you have to go with it. Because you are suddenly representing all cattle producers, you have to change your attitude. I’ve found out a few times that I’m not always right.”
Brian is starting his fifth year on the Board and the third as the Association’s Environmental Committee chairman. Last winter at a Board meeting in Winnipeg, there was a very serious discussion involving the many contributions cattle producers make to the environment, but how these contributions are ignored. By the end of that day, an idea was formulated and a strong focus has strengthened since.

“It is something most of us just take for granted, but the cattle industry has more to offer environmentally than any other industry in Manitoba,” he said, adding that peer reviewed research is currently being done to substantiate his claims. “We know what ALUS does and doesn’t do, and it doesn’t work for cattle producers. Our Environmental Goods and Services proposal will reward cattle producers for their contribution to a healthy environment.”

The MCPA’s EG&S proposal was put together late last summer by the environment committee and Board Policy Analyst, Shane Sadorski. It was presented to government in the fall.

“We are asking to be paid for environmental goods and services that can be measured,” Brian said. “It is sad when we are compared to the transportation industry. They can reduce, but they can’t offset an environmental emission. Granted, we are producers of emissions, however we not only have the ability to offset our own emissions, but also to offset the emissions of others. When we talk about the livestock industry, lets talk about offsets instead of just emissions. This is a real passion of mine. We are a good industry environmentally and we are getting the short end of the stick. The worst of it is there are smart people saying that livestock is responsible for 20% of the world’s emissions and people listen to them. My problem with it is that first, nobody is questioning that maybe they are wrong, and secondly, nobody talks about offsets.”
Brian said the Board is starting to see support across the country for the proposal and he hopes it will be implemented before his six years as a Director are done.

Another thing that frustrates Brian is the disconnect that exists between farmers and urbanites.

“We are providing an essential service but how do we get that message across to the average urbanite?” he asks. “The things we do every day really matter. We have to get our feed made, we have to feed our cattle. The decisions we make every day determine whether we are successful or not and sometimes we have no control over circumstances that affect our livelihood.

How many people have jobs where they go to work and what they do doesn’t really matter? A lot. And it is very discouraging to watch our industry try to survive, while tax dollars from producers who are holding down two or three jobs are being spent to bail out banks, the auto industry and to pay the exorbitant salaries of corporate executives who dart between government offices asking for bailouts. Anyone in the cattle industry can tell you that too many parasites on an old cow will eventually kill that cow. Then the parasite dies.”

I ask Brian what he thinks of recent decisions made by the current MCPA Board.

“I really like the youth movement that is happening on the board right now,” he says. “I really think the young guys have to take the reigns, they are the ones who will be influenced most by the decisions we make around the table. And they will be the ones still on the Board a few years from now, accountable for those decisions.”
And Brian is especially supportive of the Board’s decision to withdraw membership from the Keystone Agriculture Producers. In fact, he was the Director who brought forward the motion.

“It is difficult for a general farm organization to represent all of the ag sector. Our cow-calf and feeding industry rely on trade to prosper and this is the opposite of the dairy and feather industries. The subsidized ethanol industry makes it difficult for us to compete for feed grains, but is great for the grain industry. We need commodity groups to fight for needs that are specific to that commodity. Having said that, a general farm organization is a very useful tool to lobby for the ag industries on a united front on some common issues such as the environment.”

When lunch is done, we decide to take a drive out to see the cattle. Sandra tells me that she supports Brian’s decision to be on the Board but doesn’t like it when he is away too many nights and worries about him on the road in bad weather. And she says it keeps him very busy. “We call him “Hollywood” because he is on the phone all the time. I think it is good for him, though. It is very stimulating. He can be a very sociable person, but he also needs time alone to think,” she said.

“And all these issues make you think, I’ll tell you!” Brian says as we climb into the truck and head down the road.

Brian points to the house where he grew up, just a few miles from where they live now, then stops the truck and gets out to open the gate. He doesn’t have a dedicated feeding spot and has been feeding the cattle on the fields for years. They have been corn grazing since 1996 and last year found they didn’t have to start feeding hay until early March. They also do some swath grazing.

Hay was in short supply las summer due to an early drought that burned off all the hayfields in June. Timely rains after that meant some grain producers in the area harvested good crops - some with excellent yields. But the challenge of finding the money to buy feed and the task of having to haul water to cows has left many cattlemen in the southwest discouraged.

“Guys in this area are getting out of the industry, plain and simple,” he said. “There are dispersals at the sales every week.”

Brian is also planning to scale back his herd and put more calves on grass. Living in an area prone to drought means he has learned to become flexible with the herd. He says the first time he sold off cows it was difficult seeing them go, but that the decision gets easier every time he does it.

A few years ago, he decided to retain his calves and feed them up to 900 lbs. Since he didn’t sell that fall, he put off weaning and fluked into another management strategy that to date has worked well for him.

“I leave the calves on the cows over the winter instead of weaning,” he said. “We start calving at the end of April and I found that the calves naturally wean themselves by March.”

He says the only drawback he has found is that it is hard on the cows, so he needs to feed them more grain. The benefit is that all the animals are in one place so feeding, plus the calves are easier to wean and they don’t get sick.

Before I leave, I ask Brian to tell me his thoughts on being a cattle producer.

“The thing I like most about the cow-calf industry is that it remains one of the few industries where anyone with $500 and a bit of gumption can experience the joys or pitfalls of owning an animal. They can experience the reward of being paid well for taking a risk, or the disappointment of having worked hard for no return. This industry will welcome anyone—old and young, rich or poor alike, whether you are from the rural area or an urbanite—there is no discrimination, no unions to join, no dues to pay, no quota to buy. Just go to the auction and buy your cow and the game is on. And even if the whole venture is a financial failure, there are life lessons that will be learned that you can’t put a price tag on. The uncertainty of life, the inevitability of death and the acceptance of it, is what allows one to get on with life and enjoy what we have rather than wasting energy desiring something we don’t have.

"Most cattle people I know are not monetarily secure, but generally speaking we are still a relatively happy lot. And I think that is because we have learned one of the secrets to being content and satisfied: That we can’t wait for tomorrow for happiness because we have no idea what will tomorrow will bring. We simply have to enjoy today.”

Well said, McSterling. Now it’s time we get back to work.