I am always happy to hear concerns about farming in Canada aired on national news. There was a time when a word was rarely heard about family farmers in Canada unless it was on regional networks in agricultural areas, usually the prairies.
But the disruptions in food supply triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the very serious fragility of the Canadian food system. That’s a good thing. It is a wake up call.
For years, many family farmers have been trying to get policy makers at all levels of government to take seriously the loss and pending retirement of thousands of family farmers across Canada.
This month even the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) sounded the alarm in a new report it sponsored. And one of the key findings in the report concludes that Canada would need 30,000 immigrants within the next 10 years to replace retiring Canadian family farmers, along with 25,000 farm labourers. That finding set off a few alarm bells, and many comments, to the CBC which reported on the study.
The report titled “Farmers Wanted: The Labour Renewal Canada Needs to Build the Next Green Revolution” states: “A rapidly approaching demographics crisis is set to make the problem worse. In 10 years, 60% of today’s farm operators will be over the age of 65. Never have so many Canadian farmers been so close to retirement. In addition, the number of operators below the age of 55 has declined by 54% since 2001.”
While the call for more immigrants to engage in family farming was only one of the recommendations, it garnered the most comments from the public. The comments were not at all about excluding new immigrants from family farming, but more to emphasize how superficial it is to focus on labour alone instead of the need to provide programs and policies that support family farmers more generally.
Comments from listeners included the call for zero-interest loans so the next generation of farmers might have a fighting chance in accessing land and acquiring equipment to farm. Speculation on farmland over the last several years crushed the ability of a younger generation to access land. Other comments called for policies that would encourage rent-to-own programs for a younger generation wanting to farm. All good comments challenging the lack of depth of the RBC-funded report.
The RBC report, researched and published with the BCG Centre for Canada’s Future and the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph, concludes that what is required is a three-point plan for growth:
- Increase immigration of farm operators by 30,000 over the next decade.
- Promote agricultural education across colleges and universities to attract new students.
- Accelerate the adoption of autonomous and mechanized solutions on farms.
But the farm and food crisis is about much more than just retiring farmers or the use of autonomous equipment. Depending on big data and big finance to renew farming in Canada won’t solve the farm and food crisis, as a recent rabble column notes.
Solid solutions depend on intergenerational transfer of farmland and recognizing that our system of farm production has, over the last several decades, not only actively discouraged new entrants into farming, but also marginalized and indebted farmers to the point of where many have given up or lost the farm.
While any attempt to encourage policy solutions for the pending food crisis in Canada is laudatory, the three-point plan of Farmers Wanted, fails miserably, I think, at identifying the root causes of the loss of family farmers and farms in Canada. It does little to consider the wider issues of climate change, exploitation of family farmers and their production, land speculation and corporate concentration generated by agri-business. It falls right into the call for another Green Revolution and further use of technology, without analyzing historical or future impacts on family farmers, food production, and society more generally (for more on this see the rabble column “The Dazzle of Precision Agriculture”). Basically, this report is stuck in the same-old, same-old.
While the Farmers Wanted report made headlines when it was published in early April, the traditional media missed a much more comprehensive policy report on food security and sustainability published a few short months before.
“Growing Common Ground: Pathways to Advance Agroecology Policy in Canada,” is a report published by the Agroecology Policy Research Initiative at Wilfred Laurier University. The 68-page policy document raises many questions and provides much food for thought about agroecology policies that need to be implemented in Canada if we are to encourage family farms, food security, sustainable production and distribution systems, and mitigate climate change.
Based on interviews with farm and civic leaders, and referencing published reports and information on the state of farming here in Canada and around the world, “Growing Common Ground” focuses on specific policies that would apply a “food lens” to encourage change in the Canadian food and farm system. The report’s summary includes 21 main findings that help to outline the depth of the policy changes required. It is a welcomed, detailed, practical policy guide.
In its first few pages this report, importantly, defines agroecology:
“…Agroecology is a holistic response to the many rapidly escalating crises in the system— climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction, widespread hunger and malnutrition, as well as the urgency of farm renewal. Social change organizations see these interconnected crises as symptoms of a deeper crisis of inequality, corporate hegemony, of financialization and a mindset of ‘othering’ nature, and dominating it through technological fixes. A main driver of these crises is increasing corporate concentration, and the unbridled expansion of industrial agriculture and the associated land use change.”
Essentially, agroecology applies a food system lens to environmental, social, health, energy, infrastructure and economic development policies. It includes political dimensions such as farmers’ rights, land rights, and human rights. It is not just about the number of farmers we have in Canada, but also how we farm. Agroecology calls for a move away from the commodification of agriculture. The report also notes that the practice of agroecology is on the rise around the world — from Central America, to Africa, Asia, the urban gardens of Europe, and beyond.
“Growing Common Ground” clearly identifies the issues that signal the coming collapse of family farming as we know it. The current corporate industrial food production system has been mining family farmers. As it currently stands, Canadian farm debt has nearly doubled since 2000 and now stands at a record $129 billion. The report notes that agribusiness corporations have captured 95 per cent of farm revenues by selling inputs such as fertilizers, chemicals, machinery, fuel, rents and other services. That has left only five per cent of farm revenues in the hands of farmers. Add to that scenario, climate change, the dismantling of supply management, the inaccessibility of land for new farmers, health and environmental concerns due to pesticides, GMOs and increasing corporate control over seed and more — well it’s pretty clear that this recipe has been promising disaster for quite some time.
Meanwhile, as the report underscores, agroecology is not just one more tool in the toolbox…rather, it is the toolbox. It is holistic.
“Growing Common Ground” calls for a clearly articulated national agroecology strategy that is embedded in a national food policy. Among its 21 main findings is providing access to land, seed, and educational supports. For example, it calls for the creation of the Canada Farm Resilience Administration to support a new generation of farmers.
Above all, Canadian food and farm policies need to be anchored in sustainability, local food systems, access to land, and equity and justice, so that those wanting to farm sustainably are supported.
“Growing Common Ground” identifies key issues by stating:
“Family farms face serious challenges that have made farming more unpredictable than ever, affecting farmers’ bottom lines, and their ability to gain farm livelihoods and sustain farm incomes. Conventional farmers remain caught on the treadmill of being forced to keep using high priced inputs, seeing lower margins and net incomes, and higher debt—all the while losing their grip on the farm’s future. Organic, agroecological and new farmers are facing prohibitive barriers to entry into an arena where they could have an opportunity to escape the high-input-high-debt treadmill. And they find themselves in an equally risky place where government programs are not geared to supporting a transition, nor to softening the risks of failure in the first years of a new venture. Deeply connected to and compounding these challenges is the crisis of ageing farmers and the urgency of farm renewal. Intergenerational farms, and access to land for new farmers are a desperate need with few supports from policy.”
Without a solid understanding of how we got into this mess of having fewer and fewer farmers, it will not be possible to get out of it. Simply calling for digital tools, autonomous tractors and increased labour, foreign or otherwise, is not a solution. Increased labour will not end the cycle of exploitation that indebted and encouraged thousands in this country to abandon farming in the first place. It will not provide decent pensions to farmers wanting to retire without selling their land to the highest bidder. It will do nothing to encourage intergenerational transfer of affordable land to a younger generation of landless farmers currently struggling to access land and knowledge without much-needed public policy support.
We do need more farmers, and we do need more farm labour, and we do need more people living in the rural, — but how to ensure this renewal demands a national strategy predicated on fairness and environmmental sustainability. We have to quit mining family farmers.
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