A safety net for agriculture planned without farmer input
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
While governments claim that there has been extensive industry consultation on the issue,
farm leaders beg to differ
by BARRY WILSON
Autumn gatherings of farmers are often optimistic affairs with harvest done or pending and the fruits of the year's work visible.
Yet there was a strain of apprehension and uncertainty in the room in early September when members of the Ottawa Federation of Agriculture assembled for their annual meeting.
Part of it was due to unease about the impending government response to this year's drought-reduced crop in eastern Ontario and the ripple effects it is having on forage, grain and livestock operations.
But there was a deeper question on the minds of some farmers at the meeting. Where exactly do producers and their organizations fit into government planning for the programs that provide a safety net for agriculture when weather or markets go south?
The experience of government planning for the next five-year Growing Forward policy framework was something of a wake-up call for farmers, who were largely excluded from the process while government officials and ministers worked for the better part of two years to design a new policy framework set to launch April 1, 2013.
It will reduce program support, particularly through AgriStability. It will save governments significant money over the next five years and change the emphasis from program support when needed to an expectation that farmers will largely live – or die – according to market returns and forces.
At the core of the shift in government emphasis, directed by federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz with mostly compliant provincial ministers in tow, is that existing programs are too "rich" (in the blunt words of a senior Agriculture Canada official) and effectively discourage producers from making the innovation investments and decisions that would prepare them to be more market competitive and less reliant on program support.
For many farmers and their leaders, however, the idea that they hide behind government and program largesse that shields them from market realities is insulting.
More disturbingly, program redesign based on that assumption has been done over the past few years largely without farmer input. While governments claim that there has been extensive industry consultation on the issue, farm leaders beg to differ.
Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice-president Debra Pretty-Straathof, an eastern Ontario dairy farmer, says farm organizations have not been included in the discussions nor asked to comment on the potential impact of program change on their members. "They talk about all their consultation, but who were they talking to?" she asked. "It wasn't us."
In late August and early September, as farmers began to get wind of the potentially drastic program funding changes in the works, governments and Conservative MPs began to call hastily arranged meetings with producers to ask them what they wanted in a new suite of programs.
Pretty-Straathof attended a meeting called by eastern Ontario MP Cheryl Gallant and reported that the official line was that no decisions had been made, so no detail on potential changes was available. This was just two weeks before ministers met in Whitehorse to agree to the principles of the next five-year plan.
The OFA vice-president said it was not credible to suggest that, going into the meeting in mid-September, ministers did not know the likely outcome.
A producer at the meeting wondered aloud what farmers could do to increase their leverage with, and influence on, governments.
It is probably the most important question farm organizations will face in the next few years. There are no obvious answers. BF
Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.