Crops growing in a field.
Crops growing in a field. Credit: Steven Weeks / Unsplash Credit: Steven Weeks / Unsplash

I was raised on the prairies, and what I refer to as big kitchen table conversations — these “table” discussions were all about what a brighter future for our communities might look like. These were discussions based on individual and family needs, building community, common struggles, and also optimism — and how we could improve our circumstances if we worked together to determine a better future. What might our communities and world look like if we got together to dream big about policies and actions that could improve our lives and those of others?

I still like dreaming big …but I am also very practical.

This week, the House of Commons Finance Committee will begin hearing from organizations and individuals who have prepared briefs outlining initiatives that could be included in the 2024 federal budget. Close to 850 briefs have been submitted, and an estimated 50 submissions will be asked to present five-minute summaries directly to the finance committee.

While it’s the only avenue that many groups have to voice important concerns to federal MPs working on budget issues, it is also a sad process in many ways and one that has little accountability. How many of these ideas will be implemented? How many will even be considered? How many will be repeated in submissions year after year, as important recommendations are simply ignored? Does this process feel more like having organizations arrive cap in hand, hoping to be recognized? And how disjointed is this entire process when you consider that individuals and organizations from across the country have little continued engagement in the process?

Given the flawed process for input into the federal budget, the Alternative Federal Budget (AFB), caught my eye years ago. And it is my annual go-to for the latest policy thinking on key issues across Canada.

For the past 24 years, the AFB has been researched, compiled and vetted by labour and non-profit organizations, and coalitions from across the country. The AFB is published annually by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in the lead-up to the federal government’s calls for organizations and the public to submit their priorities for the upcoming Federal Budget.

The AFB helps inform the general population, as well as policy makers, about what might be possible if some of its policies were implemented in the 2024 Federal Budget. Readable, informative and detailed, the AFB maps out how to create and finance policies that make a difference to working people. Not only does it design policies through consultation with worker, community and non-profit organizations, it also maps out exactly the cost of implementing each initiative — right down to the last dollar.

The AFB covers the federal budget alternatives by issue and covers policies related to environment and climate change, decent work, public health care, affordable housing and homelessness, senior care, gender equity, arts and culture, First Nations, international development, food security, fair taxation, and much more.

It is the section on agriculture, of course, that I explore here.

The 2024 AFB, “Building Momentum: A budget for now and the future,”  includes this explanatory note:

“The AFB is an exercise in imagination. Our purpose is to expand the collective imagination of what is possible, to instil hope in hard times, and to make crystal clear alternatives to the status quo. And these alternatives aren’t just imagined. They are clearly articulated. We’ve put a price tag on them. And we’ve found realistic ways to pay for them.”

Agriculture

The AFB’s section on agriculture is multi-faceted and puts forward policy directions that face the reality of loss of family farms, retiring family farmers, depopulation of rural communities, and the financialization and speculation of land by pension funds and other actors. It challenges decades of negligence and profiteering policy initiatives that have led to ever-increasing land degradation and concentration, manipulation of seed stock, corporate control and capitalization of production costs. This alternative budget clearly calls for policies that encourage intergenerational transfer of lands, along with community-based food production.

The AFB also identifies the need to advance policies that work to mitigate climate change by adopting agricultural practices that reduce carbon and encourage sustainability. And there is also the pressing need to address the rights of farmworkers and improve labour conditions. These are tall orders, rooted in decades of mining the soil and exploiting the family farmer and workers at the same time. Neglecting this call is surely to impact food production in Canada going forward — particularly as global catastrophes due to climate change continue to add pressures to food production.

Here are some suggestions from the AFB for improved agricultural policy directions:

“There is an urgent need to reset agricultural policy goals from trade and export expansion alone, and develop instead a multi-functional framework focused on the following:

  • Increasing inter-generational equity.
  • Improving rural quality of life with particular attention to BIPOC, youth, and women.
  • Increasing our capacity to grow, process, and distribute food in Canada.
  • Maintaining the productive capacity of our farmland by protecting it from urban sprawl, enhancing biodiversity, and accelerating climate mitigation and adaptation measures.”

One of the more innovative policy recommendations in the AFB is the call for the creation of Foodshed Land Trusts’. These land trusts would address “the loss of prime farmland to urban sprawl and the lack of access to land for disadvantaged potential farmers.”

The idea is to create land trusts near urban areas where food production could flourish sustainably. These foodsheds, much like watersheds, would be where food is produced to be distributed into local populated areas. The trust would provide affordable land leases to individuals and communities of farmers to produce food through low-carbon emission practices for sale in nearby cities. The Foodshed Land Trusts would be rolled out across Canada with acreage targets for farmland transfers in each province. Publicly held lands that could be identified for land trusts, as well as land acquired from willing sellers.

The other major recommendation which would affect agricultural policy, but also other areas of policy, is the AFB’s call to remove corporate lobbyists from the policymaking process. The AFB wants to see the economic strategy tables on agriculture dismantled, stating that these private-sector policy bodies are led by corporate CEOs.

The AFB states: “Their recommendations, invariably calling for deregulation and other self-interested policies, have exacerbated the power imbalance between farmers and multinational corporations. “

The AFB also calls for local infrastructure investment in processing, storage and transportation for small and medium-sized producers to lessen the distance between producers and consumers. It would also create a climate-change agricultural institute to support sustainable food production practices and encourage learning and connections between new and current farmers.

There are a number of other related recommendations throughout the 200-plus pages.

It’s an enlightening read every time! Take a peak!

BW Lois Ross - Version 4 (1)

Lois Ross

Lois L. Ross has spent the past 30 years working in Communications for a variety of non-profit organizations in Canada, including the North-South Institute. Born into a farm family in southern Saskatchewan,...