Beginning farmers' petition lands in Queen's Park

Friday, March 20, 2009

© AgMedia Inc.

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Wayne Bartels wants the Ontario Ombudsman’s office to tell him why he didn’t get any money from a 2007 provincial program intended for cattle, hog and horticulture producers.

Bartels is among 100 young and expanding farmers who failed to qualify for the one-time emergency assistance to producers, who faced a rise in input costs, drop in market prices and a strengthened Canadian dollar all within one year.  

Members of the group, mostly hog producers, say they fell through the cracks because the province, in order to speed the program’s delivery, calculated payments based on 2000-2004 information already filed with federal and provincial cost of production programs.

 “They got hammered,” says Carl Moore, a Woodstock area financial planner, former hog producer and a former chair of Ontario Pork.

The group and its supporters recently petitioned the provincial government for compensation “thereby, preventing beginning farmers from exiting the agriculture sector.” Oxford MPP Ernie Hardeman tabled the petition at Queen’s Park last month.

Standing orders of the legislative assembly give the government 24 sitting days to respond to a tabled petition. Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky, who has not yet responded, has until April 7 to do so.

Bartels, 36, has farmed for nearly 20 years. He and his brother switched to hog production only two-and-a-half years ago. Previously, they ran a 65-cow dairy operation on their farm southeast of Hamilton. 

In the summer of 2007, Bartels, facing escalating input costs, explored enrolling in recently announced federal and provincial cost of production programs. He was told his operation did not qualify because it had been supply managed in 2004, one of the programs’ benchmark years.

The Dec. 2007 provincial cattle, hog and horticulture program brought hope because it was touted to address problems arising within that year, he says. “So we were counting on it and it never came.”

Why not? The new program used numbers derived from the programs for which the Bartels’ operation had previously failed to qualify.

When he contacted program administrators, Bartels says he was told he should have been considered a new producer under the cost of production programs and should have appealed the decision to exclude him.

Those programs’ deadline to apply as a new producer, however, had long since passed.

Bartels approached the ombudsman in December, 2008 after exhausting other avenues, including contacting his local MP Diane Finley. The office is currently evaluating his complaint to see if they will take it on, he says.

In the meantime, “we’re just about broke.”

Like Bartels, Oxford County hog producers Tina and John Vehof say they didn’t fit the criteria of the cattle, hogs and horticulture provincial payment program.

In their case, a switch from contract feeding to raising their own pigs in 2005 caused the problem, says Tina Vehof. The couple has farmed since 1997.

They did receive a payment; $267 for shipping nearly 20,000 hogs. They calculate the amount should have been closer to $140,000. “We’re at a loss; we’ve literally been pushed out by the government,” she says.

Moore says the idea behind the program was good but the delivery was ill-conceived because it used outdated information. 

Hog producers who were active from 2001 onwards, enrolled in the 2004 Canadian Agriculture Income Stabilization program and derived at least half of their total 2005 and/or 2006 commodity sales from any combination of cattle, hogs or horticulture, received payment, regardless of whether they were still in operation in 2007, he says, asserting that many did leave the industry during that time. “With the parameters of the program, those producers that went out of business probably received a payment.”

Moore, who left hog production in 2004, won’t confirm if he received a payment under the program but notes that he fit within its “parameters.” 

Moore wonders why the government didn’t use a 2007 database. “This would have solved both situations.”

Beginning and expanding producers weren’t the only ones left out. Moore points out the program applied only to producers who derived 50 per cent or more of their commodity sales from the affected sectors. BF