Agriculture sector too complex for one-for-all help
Amid the fiscal and existential uncertainty of a pandemic, amid the vast and conflicting waves of information and amid the fear permeating the Canadian psyche, the agricultural sector has all of a sudden become relevant in Ottawa.
It is hardly surprising, given the questions swirling about the country’s food supply. Also unsurprising is the sector, despite an aid package unveiled this week, is having a tough time leveraging that new-found prominence.
Part of the problem is that the term ‘agriculture’ is a misleading linguistic convenience used to unify a sector comprising tens of thousands of individual corporations and sole proprietorships. Agriculture is C. S. Lewis’s wardrobe. You can point to it and refer to it, but until you swing the door open and walk in, it’s just that old piece of furniture.
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy capable of accommodating Canada’s ag sector and its workings are too complex to summarize in a briefing or two and too dependent on export to tease apart from a global marketplace.
Our food security, if defined as our ability to grow enough protein and enough different kinds of it to feed everyone inside Canada’s borders, is absolutely and without a doubt also anchored on our ability to export what we produce.
If agriculture is really to be considered an essential service, part of that consideration must in practice treat export as one, as well. Border closures and port complications surrounding the pandemic would make this commitment hard for Ottawa to set in motion, even if they make it.
My farm relies on export. The wheat, canola and soybeans I grow enter a supply chain with end-points around the globe. A strawberry farm, by contrast, does not necessarily rely on exports. To close the borders and start talking about the ag sector’s ability or inability to ensure Canada is food secure is a misrepresentation of how things are set up to function.
In early April, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture issued a statement suggesting the nation’s ability to plant a crop this year is in jeopardy if Ottawa won’t take action on implementing better risk-mitigation strategies/programs.
“What we’re hearing some farmers say is: It’s too risky. I think I’m just going to sit this one out,” CFA President Mary Robinson told reporters in April. “If a cherry farmer has a COVID breakout on his farm the week before he’s meant to start harvest, and he’s invested millions and millions and millions of dollars in that crop, what happens to him?”
The CFA wasn’t talking about all farmers, but the public doesn’t know that and news organizations enjoyed the shock value of letting a quote like this sit on its own. The challenges facing grain farmers are not the same. I have yet to meet a farmer who is contemplating not growing a crop.
Then, on April 30, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Agrifood Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, was quoted in a Financial Post piece in reference to recent meat processing plant closures in Canada.
“Ottawa should be lauded for helping many desperate sectors of our economy. But given how urban- centric the government currently is in Ottawa, agriculture has been somewhat forgotten. The foreign worker program issue was just the beginning, the worst is yet to come. Farmers need help, and fast. Or else, Canada could lose up to 15 per cent of its farms by the end of this year,” Dr. Charlebois was reported as saying.
The livestock industry is indeed hurting and Canada will likely, as Dr. Charlebois said, see an uptick in farm closures — but that outlook is not the same for all farmers across Canada.
Tuesday, the government did make a move to support the sector, announcing a $ 252 million aid package to support farmers, about one-tenth of what the CFA had requested. There is $77 million to address issues connected to temporary foreign workers, another $125 million for livestock producers, and $50 million to buy up excess food that would otherwise go to waste due to changes in demand patterns.
If this is just a start of the support for agriculture, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, it’s a confusing one. For the industries that need the fiscal aid, the amount seems paltry compared to the billions earmarked for others parts of the economy.
While it offers positive stimulus for the dairy, cattle and hog sector, the announcement is deaf to the asks of the groups representing grain farmers, who have been relatively consistent in urging Trudeau to strengthen business risk management programs and to take a leadership role in establishing or maintaining the health of our global trade partners.
I am embedded in the ag industry in almost every facet of my professional life, and hear of all kinds of concerns that would never touch on my own farming experience.
Trying to address such a massive spectrum of challenges with only a few strategies is an exercise in absurdity.