WHEN THE RULES OF FARMING START CHANGING THE FARM I was recently sent an interview with Alberta dairy farmer Tyler Henning, whose family has reportedly dairy farmed the same land for 76 years. And it sent me down a rabbit hole. Because there is something happening in Canadian agriculture that I think people who buy food need to understand. Canadian dairy farms operate under a national program called proAction, covering milk quality, food safety, animal care, traceability, biosecurity and the environment. But before we talk about regulations, I think something needs to be said. Farmers didn’t need regulations to tell them they wanted healthy animals and clean milk. Farmers are actually very good at taking care of their herds. Their livelihood depends on it, but it goes far beyond that. These are animals they see, feed, watch and care for every single day. A dairy farmer can know an individual cow — her behaviour, appetite, health history and when something simply isn’t right — in a way that will never be captured on a checklist. Generations of farmers have produced clean milk, managed disease and raised healthy animals long before today’s compliance systems existed. That doesn’t mean we don’t need standards. Of course we need food safety, accountability and good animal welfare. But there is a difference between protecting good farming practices and gradually replacing a farmer’s judgment with an increasingly complicated system of rules, documentation and infrastructure requirements. Every new procedure has to be carried out by somebody. Every record has to be kept. Every assessment has to be completed. Every infrastructure change has to be paid for. And eventually we have to ask what the cumulative effect of all of this is on smaller, independent farms. Vaccination is a really important example of how this has changed. Vaccines themselves aren’t new to dairy farming. They have been recognized as one possible herd-health and biosecurity tool for years. But that does NOT mean dairy farmers traditionally had to vaccinate their cows. They didn’t. Some farmers vaccinated. Others, based on the health of their herd, their management practices and their own experience, chose not to. I personally know farmers who have successfully raised healthy dairy herds without routinely vaccinating their cows. That’s an important distinction. When proAction’s Biosecurity module became mandatory nationally in 2019, vaccination became part of the formal compliance framework. Farms are required to formally address vaccination through a documented Standard Operating Procedure developed in consultation with their veterinarian. And to be completely clear: That still does NOT mean every dairy cow in Canada must be vaccinated. A farmer can assess the risks and determine that vaccination isn’t necessary and document that decision. But something has changed. What was once simply a decision made within the management of an individual herd now has to be formally addressed, documented and incorporated into a national compliance program. That’s the bigger conversation. How much decision-making should remain with the farmer who actually knows that herd? And more changes are coming. Beginning in April 2027, additional animal-care requirements affecting calf housing and dry and lactating cows are scheduled to become part of proAction farm validations. The intention is improved animal welfare. But we need to be able to question how regulations are implemented without someone immediately assuming we’re against animal welfare. We’re not. And neither are farmers. The question is what happens when individually reasonable requirements are added one after another until the cost, paperwork and infrastructure needed to comply become incredibly difficult for smaller farms to absorb. A large operation may be able to spread another major infrastructure expense across hundreds or thousands of animals. A small, multi-generational family farm may not. And that’s what made Tyler Henning’s story worth listening to. Because when a small farm disappears, we don’t simply lose another business. We lose knowledge.We lose infrastructure.We lose another independent food producer.We lose another family capable of producing food in its own community. And slowly, food production becomes concentrated among fewer and fewer players. This is exactly why I keep talking about small-scale food infrastructure. Supporting farmers isn’t simply buying something at a farm stand or looking for a Canadian label at the grocery store. It’s understanding the system behind our food. Who produces it? Who makes the decisions about how it’s produced? What are we asking farmers to do? What does compliance cost them? And after we’ve added all the rules, paperwork, infrastructure and expenses, can the next generation actually afford to continue? We absolutely need safe food and excellent animal care. But let’s stop talking as though farmers didn’t already want those things. The people who spend every day caring for these animals deserve to have their knowledge, experience and judgment remain part of how we produce food. Because once enough of these farms disappear, we can’t simply recreate generations of knowledge and food-producing infrastructure overnight. Food security isn’t just having food sitting on a grocery-store shelf. It’s having enough independent farmers who still know how — and are still able — to produce it.
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