Behind the headlines, Canadian farmers are still struggling

by William Van Tassel, President, Ontario-Quebec Grain Farmers’ Coalition

Many headlines over the last several months would suggest that Canadian farmers -- particularly grains and oilseeds farmers - have hit the jackpot, as world prices for corn, soybeans, and wheat commodities surge worldwide.

The truth is that farmers are struggling. Canadian grain and oilseed farmers can barely meet their cost of production, as fuel, fertilizer, seed, labour and transportation costs have soared. The crisis is even worse for livestock producers, who have been jammed between stagnant world prices and skyrocketing feed and input costs.

On top of that, the latest version of the U.S. Farm Bill passed by Congress is fraught with market-distorting agricultural subsidies. These subsidies have played a major role in driving down world prices and made it nearly impossible to earn a decent living on Canadian family farms.

Family farms throughout Canada have faced an income crisis since the beginning of this decade, brought on by international agricultural subsidies. And despite the current agricultural price surges, in 2007 Ontario’s net farm income fell from negative $33,687,000 in 2006 to negative $179,770,000, according to Statistics Canada.

As a result, farmers have left family farms in droves. In 2006, 1,200 abandoned Ontario alone. Over time, this will have a grave effect on Canada’s ability to maintain its own secure food supply.

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture along with the Quebec-Ontario Grain Farmer’s Coalition has asked the federal government to adopt AgriFlex, a program that encourages provinces and producers to design “companion programming” to address regional shortcomings such as cyclical declines in farm income.

AgriFlex also aims to make the family farm more viable by ensuring that farmers can make long-term financial plans. It is meant to replace the system of politically motivated ad-hoc funding for commodity groups that has delivered too little too late for troubled farm sectors in the past.

The need for ad-hoc emergency funds will always be there, as long as natural disasters and diseases like BSE are around. But AgriFlex would go a long way in eliminating ad-hoc programs in the case of hardships caused by volatile world markets.

AgriFlex needs the support of the federal government. The Hon. Gerry Ritz, Minister of Agriculture, appeared supportive of the program in May 2008, expressing a wish to expand programs “to get away from ad hoc on the farm sustainability side and business risk side.”

“We want the provinces to know what's coming and we want it to be affordable for them,” he said. “We want the producers to know what they can count on. If we need to expand those programs, that's what we will do.”

Since then, Minister Ritz and the Stephen Harper government have had a change of heart, rejecting AgriFlex because they are afraid it might provoke a trade challenge from the United States.

Canadian policy makers must show backbone and stand up for long-term sustainability. They must realize that higher world prices are not a solution for farmers. In fact, volatile world markets do more harm than good, because right now, farmers don’t know what the future holds for them and their families.

With a commitment to support companion programming, however, farmers will be able to add a small layer of security in protecting their incomes.

And Canadians will be able to count on a secure, stable food supply from future generations of farmers. For more information, check out, LINK.

About the writer:

Mr. Van Tassel is a farmer in Hébertville, Quebec., just west of Chicoutimi.

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