Mission

Why am I doing this? Why am I driving across Canada showing my film in person instead of just telling people where they can see the film online? (Super Channel Plus, by the way.)

When I set out to make the film, my goal was to solve the farm income crisis: To make farming a financially viable career. I'm a long way from doing that. But, the film taught me why farmers do what they do, despite the dismal finances. The success of the farmers in the film taught me that we can have an economy that's about more than the bottom line.

I want to share what I learned with the rest of the country. The thinking that underpins our economy has been shaken by tariffs and the collapse of the global 'rules-based order'. We need to rebuild the Canadian economy, and I think farmers can remind us how we built it in the first place.

This tour is inspired by a Californian lawyer named Aaron Sapiro. In the 1920s, Sapiro was hired by the Saskatchewan Farmers Union to talk about co-operatives in prairie farming communities. He toured the prairies for the better part of two years, and the outcome of the tour was the rise of the prairie Wheat Pools. The Wheat Pools were farmer-owned co-operatives that dominated the farm economy in Canada for the next 80 years. They ensured that the proceeds of farm labour came back to farmers instead of padding the books of multinational grain traders.

The concept was simple: Bring farmers together with their neighbours and talk about their economic issues. That's something we can do today to face our own economic uncertainty. And it's why I am touring the country in person. I can send people a link to The Hands that Feed Us, and people will watch it alone in their living rooms. If I bring it in person, I can facilitate a discussion in every small community I visit.

My mission is to rebuild Canada's economy so it is no longer dependent on financial thinking. It's an even bigger, more impossible goal than making farming more viable for farmers was when I set out to make the film six years ago. I'm quite sure I can't achieve it. But, I can be a catalyst for economic renewal every time I show the film in person. Because that's how an economy is built: One farmer, one business, one community at a time.