Could Canada be in line for a food security referendum?

IN OUR COUNTRY, REFERENDUMS are rare, and not for the faint of heart. Remember the Quebec separation votes? They nearly tore the country apart.

It’s a different story in Switzerland. Here, referendums, like the one on food security that concluded on Sunday, are common. It’s not unusual to have four or more referendums take place in a year, owing to what’s called the country’s direct-democracy style of government. They have referendums about topics most other countries would deal with in less democratic ways.

But despite their frequency, this latest referendum – a five-point proposal for a constitutional change – was especially pertinent to agriculture. It was billed by its champions (in particular, all parties in the government and the Swiss farmers’ association) as a prescription for at least some of the country’s agricultural ills, social concerns and economic challenges.

And some people think it could be a template for food-related referendums in others countries …

maybe even ours, because the issues are not totally dissimilar.

For example, many Swiss people are alarmed that their country’s population is on the rise – up 1.1 per cent last year, mainly due to immigration. That’s an eye-opening leap for a relatively small country. Along with ongoing concerns about globalization, disappearing farmland and food safety, a debate has ensued about how the country is going to feed its citizens if that population growth continues.

An associated worry is how Switzerland’s farmers, who do not have economies of scale on their side, will cope with competition from imports and struggles from low prices. They’re especially concerned about what they claim are dismal prices for one of the country’s most popular and important commodities, milk.

A mitigating factor in all this is that Switzerland has known hunger and isolation through the ages. So these days, it takes its food supply and image seriously. For example, mountain farmers get huge subsidies to raise animals in challenging alpine regions, tending to verdant pastures and pockets of livestock on what seem to be impossibly steep slopes. In doing so, they preserve the alpine farmland that creates the incredible, unparalleled postcard-like vistas that draw awestruck foreigners by the millions to Switzerland.

Without such commitment by farmers, this pasture would give way to the natural forests there that would start crawling back down the mountains. That would bring an end to increasingly popular tourism events such as the alpine cattle descent that’s been officially celebrated in the UNESCO Biosphere Entlebuch for the past 14 years.

So all things considered, the farmers union figured it had a timely case to make to Swiss citizens for supporting agriculture.

In the weeks leading up the final day of voting, the referendum drew little opposition, except from the urban media. Its members did what media is supposed to do – namely, probe and disrupt comfortable opinion leaders who figured they had the referendum in the bag. A few sources came forward to call the referendum unnecessary, meaningless, confusing and politically motivated. But it was mainly the farmers’ union, not the farmers themselves, that drew fire.

In the end, farmers won. The final tally showed an impressive 78 per cent support, almost 20 per cent more than earlier polling had predicted. The wide interpretation is that Swiss people support their country’s farmers and the need for an affordable, sustainable food supply.

All this is worth gold to the Swiss farmers’ union. The strong referendum numbers give it a solid platform to go forward later and propose more meaningful measures that could help support farmers’ sustainability. This could mean even more subsidies for Swiss farmers, who globally are already at or near the top of the food chain when it comes to government support.