Support for farmers is woefully lacking

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday November 17th, 2008

A few weeks ago I was in a meeting with Jennifer MacDonald, who is a second generation beef farmer, VP of the NB Agricultural Alliance, chair of a new task group set up to make recommendations to the premier around farming labour issues, Maritime representative to the National Board of the Charolais Association, and also works with the marketing association for beef farmers.

She was there to talk to a group who works on social justice issues throughout the Maritimes and what she had to say was interesting, to say the least. Perhaps we should even call it disturbing.
Here are some quick statistics she shared:

More than 70 per cent of beef farmers in Canada have to have an off-farm job to keep going. Twenty per cent of the world's fresh water supply is in Canada, and we are wasting it, taking it for granted. In 1999 there was a food reserve in this country that would last 119 days, now there is only 56 days. Farms are still the anchors of many communities, but they are dying: in 2006, there were 2,776 farms in New Brunswick, down by 629 since 1996.

One of the problems that she pointed too was the lack of belief in farming as a viable career. Guidance counsellors hardly ever suggest it; and who can blame them?

Most people do not want to take on a job that actually causes you to go deeper and deeper in debt with no way to repay. No one is getting rich, only six to seven per cent of the price of food in the grocery store goes back to the farmer.

But what is going on?

Why do we devalue such a basic and life giving occupation that literally none of us would exist without?

We are in serious trouble, and there are many sides to it.

For one thing the negative image has caused a labour shortage; so much so that we often require seasonal workers. Their availability directly relates to the "amount of product" a farmer is able to sell. Most farms could plant a lot more food, but there is no one to harvest it.

New Brunswick is currently working on a plan to share work with migrant workers who work in Nova Scotia, where there is an earlier growing season; but there is a lot of red tape which prevents such an easy solution.

What we are ending up with is a lack of experienced workers in New Brunswick. There are very few vegetable farmers left in New Brunswick, although we still have lots of potato farmers.

Offshore labourers involve red tape, barriers, attitudes, and a host of other problems not limited to losing our own expertise in something we were once really good at.

One good idea that came out of a recent farming summit recommended that we look for tax incentives for people to work part-time in agriculture; this might become something that interests those who are retired, or on welfare, or need part-time work for personal reasons.

Look at it another way; agriculture employs less than two per cent of the population, on two per cent of the land, and is the number one revenue generator in our province. We are also the province that processes more of its own product than any other province; think of how many potatoes go through McCain's for example.

Would a renewed interest in agriculture save us from the economic downturn that threatens to destroy our economy? It is certainly something that might lend a hand, but we have let it slide, and treat it as completely unimportant.

Back to our beef farmers; did you know that 75 per cent of Canadian beef is exported, so a free market for beef is something that would help our farmers greatly. At the same time, to open new markets, we import beef as well. The average beef herd is only 55 cattle, and many farms also do grain and other crops to boost profitability.

The different agriculture areas are interdependent -- also dependent on the larger society for support; which is where we are letting them down.

We need to take a good hard look at just how hard it is to be a farmer, and understand that this way of life is dependent on the variability of climate, and other uncontrollable factors. Money for agriculture is an investment in the future.

And we pay far too little for our food.

Government subsidies have led us to believe that food is cheap. Even when grocery prices have risen sharply in recent months, we are still not paying anywhere near what it is worth.

Did you know that we now spend considerably less of our income to pay for food than people ever did before? Have you ever stopped to think about how much labour, water, grain, energy, and even oil goes into making one $12 T-bone?

We need to start thinking about it, because as Gwynne Dyer has said, any future wars will probably be fought over food and water!

Another truism of Keynesian economics is that every time you spend a dollar on local products, there is a $7 multiplier back to the community; which is to say that we need to buy locally, we need to support our farmers, it is good for them, but it is great for us.