Photo,Webshots.com
Farm report misses the point, farming is strategic not just any business
By Stephen Pate, NJN Network, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada, January 30, 2009
with story from the CBC
The report of the Commission on the Future of Agriculture and Agri-Food is a predictable urban reaction to farming. City people think farming is just another business which is not true. Farming is a strategic business to life itself. Without food we die, like water and air. Without a domestic food industry we become victims of international food conglomerates. As Opposition Leader Olive Crane reminded the folks in Covehead this week, the amount of first class farm land in the world is very small and PEI has the some of the best, some of the best in Canada for that matter.
There is a movement among multi-nationals to snap up the world’s arable land. “Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies,” reported The Guardian in the United Kingdom. Well intentioned but wrong thinking reports like the one above will drive our land into those hands.
Every industrialized nation in the world realizes that food production is strategic to the country and maintains the industry against foreign competition through price subsidies, price management and import restrictions.
The United States subsidizes agriculture products to the tune of $8 billion dollars, including feed grains, cotton, wheat, soybeans, rice, dairy, sugar, tobacco and peanuts. Peanuts are so tightly subsidized and controlled a gentleman farmer like Jimmy Carter can become a president. He is a rich man based on price and import control for peanuts and what are they but peanut butter right?
Add to that list Japan, New Zealand, France, and the whole European Union for that matter. Why is Canada afraid to protect its strategic farm industry?
This constant call for farmers to upgrade practices and markets flies in the face of reality. If this assumption is correct, farmer’s need MBA’s, a master’s degree in bio-chemistry and horticulture. They need to have the business savvy of Donald Trump to squeeze the best price from their customers in the right markets. Farming already is one of the most highly mechanized industries in the world. An auto mechanic with $20k in tools can make a living: a farmer with a $1 million investment is always at risk.
Of course, that are not likely candidates for PhDs. Farmers are smart people but the system is geared towards subsidies and grants for the middle man – Irving, McCain and Westons for example. In an oligarchy like Canada, the rich and the powerful prey on the unorganized farmer.
Daily farmers live in a controlled production/price world. With reasonable business practices they can expect to make a living. Milk, cheese and butter are not overpriced priced at the consumer level. What is wrong with that model for all strategic farm crops?
The problem with government farm management is the policies are designed by well educated bureaucrats who aren’t farmers. Whenever Canada has a powerful Minister of Agriculture like the former Eugene Whelan, the farm sector gets the respect it deserves. It is true farmers need to protect the land and the environment but the demand to make a profit in an unfair system renders that goal a dream. If the government, not likely, has a better course to take, they need a comprehensive policy to protect the farmers over the 10 to 20 years it will take to make the transition and assist them in the transition.
What ever is decided, we need food. We need our farmers to produce it and we’d better make sure we protect them and ourselves.
orville
Your article is right on the money. Only someone who is a bureaucrat would recommend that 100% of agriculture in this province be directed to produce for an organic market that has peaked at 2% of the total demand. It’s absurd, and no fix for a failing industry!
Governments pat themselves on the back for spending money on agriculture in this country bur the safety net programs are designed to compensate some producers at about 10% of their losses. Payouts are so low and slow that farmers can’t depend on ever receiving what they should be entitled to receive. I know this because I had to take the government to court to have my 2004 claim reviewed. I won but I still haven’t received money… Some disaster assistance program when one has to fight 4 years for fair treatment.
The 12 million dollars provided from Ottawa last September for assistance to farmers with weather related losses was never spent. Rumor has it that $9 million of that money is still in provincial coffers.
It’s a crazy system and as you indicated, it needs to change soon. Farmers are disappearing quickly and soon there won’t be any of us left. I guess the public really won’t know what they have lost until it’s gone….