Task forces grapple with the big issues facing Ontario farming

by SUSAN MANN

Restoring that confidence is the task now facing European farmers. Their public image is tattered and their political clout weakened, largely due to a series of disasters ranging from BSE and foot-and-mouth disease to swine fever and dioxins in food and animal feed. Add in concerns about Genetically Modified Organisms in food and huge European farm subsidies and you get the picture.

Europeans think their food was safer 100 years ago, says Roger George, a Powassan farmer who is fresh from an overseas tour last fall as chair of the Agricultural Odyssey Group, a coalition of provincial farm organizations and commodity groups charged with examining issues that may affect Ontario agriculture over the next five to 10 years.

The Group has been consulting with government and the agricultural community throughout Ontario and in October a nine-member delegation visited a number of European countries. The Odyssey report is due this summer.

At home, public confidence in agriculture remains strong, if a little tarnished. "I don't think the public's image of farmers here is all that bad," says Terry Daynard strategic planner for the Ontario Corn Producers' Association (OCPA) and policy adviser to the Odyssey Group.

But it's another story in Europe. "To a large degree I think European consumers are saying, 'We've put all this money over the last 20 years into the Common Agricultural Policy and what have we got to show for it except one disaster after another,'" says George.

Another major change for European farmers is the shift away from direct agricultural supports into programs that consumers find more attractive, such as food safety, environmental issues and rural development. In response, says George, Canadian farmers "have to make sure that we have the wherewithal to deal with food safety concerns, HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) issues and traceability of the product, as well as convince the consumer that our environmental farming standards are among the best in the world."

The industry here is anxious to embrace HACCP-type programs and traceability, but there's a price. For almost eight years, governments have downloaded food inspection costs onto processors and farmers. Distributors can pass these on to consumers, but for farmers the opportunities are limited. George argues that taxpayers and government must assume a greater responsibility for the costs of food safety programs, just as they are for airline and other security issues.

Odyssey Group representatives delivered that message directly to the Prime Minister's Task Force on the Future Opportunities in Agriculture in Brampton last month. Both Odyssey and the federal task force, chaired by Haldimand-Norfolk-Brant MP Bob Speller, are looking at similar questions, though the Prime Minister's Task Force is looking at the whole country, not just Ontario agriculture.

In addition to those two groups, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario has given the task of developing a vision for agriculture to its strategic policy adviser, Elbert van Donkersgoed. The discussion is focusing on agriculture's pivotal role in the countryside, on renewing farming as a respected and trusted vocation, and on the emergence of a pattern of change based on innovation, values and quality of life.

Van Donkersgoed says the pervasive pattern of producing food cheaper and cheaper is being held up to question and should perhaps be discarded. Instead, agriculture could focus on providing a whole range of assurances to consumers: protecting ground and surface water, sustaining biodiversity, minimizing antibiotic and pesticide use, maximizing animal welfare, providing full traceability, offering decent wages and safe working conditions for employees, and maintaining moderate sized farms.

CFFO past president Bob Bedggood believes that CFFO's vision is taking a different direction from Odyssey's. He sees Odyssey's work as an updated version of a report compiled in the late 1960s called The Challenge of Abundance, which went against the dire warnings of the time that the world would run out of food-production capacity.

Bedggood sees the CFFO's project as "being more specific." Through this winter's workshops, CFFO hopes to develop its vision from the grassroots members and end up with a "a physical picture of where we'd like to see the industry be."

Speaking with one voice

Odyssey, meanwhile, is examining the need for farm groups to speak with a more centralized voice on issues that don't deal with a specific commodity, a notion supported by Peter Lambrick, a Halton Region cash crop farmer.

Lambrick said he pays more than $1,000 a year in fees to the corn, soybean and wheat organizations. "They only deal in one sector and they expect the OFA (Ontario Federation of Agriculture) to look after hydro, child care and all the other big picture items for $150 a year."

He questions why each of the seven grain and oilseed groups in Ontario need different buildings, and why each group has divided up the province differently for regional representation.

Wouldn't it be easier for the farmers, as their numbers dwindle, to go to one meaningful meeting in their area instead of going to different ones on corn, soybean and wheat?

"For the last six years, the major component of what they've been talking to us about is safety nets," he says. "After a farmer has been to the first one, he's not inclined to go back and listen to the wheat board then tell him about their view of safety nets, or the corn association the next week."

Representatives from Ontario's seven grain and oilseed groups started meetings last year to talk about how their organizations can share resources. And Lambrick believes that's a good start.

Terry Daynard of the OCPA is serving as a policy adviser to the Odyssey Group. He thinks focusing on farm organization structure will overshadow the larger questions Odyssey is studying. "I don't think the big question is how farm organizations will operate in the future," he says. "I think it's how are you going to make a living farming. Obviously that depends on a lot of things, in addition to what farm organizations do."

Farm organizations will play a role in assisting people to make a living on the farm, Daynard says. "But they're not going to be front and centre. What's will be front and centre is what happens on the individual farms and that depends on markets and on technology," he argues. It also depends on changing consumer demands for products, on how well Canadian farmers can compete internationally and on what price and quality basis they compete.

Daynard thinks farmers and their organizations will have to assume much more responsibility for functions traditionally performed by governments. One example may be agricultural extension.

In the 1950s and '60s, the provincial agricultural representative was the most important person in farming in every county. "You used to be able to go to the ag rep for all kinds of technical information. Now you can't do that because they don't exist," he says.

The provincial agriculture ministry still provides some technical information and service to farmers. "But there's no reason to assume that's going to go on forever," Daynard says. "You've got fewer and fewer farmers and it's less and less of a priority to governments, which are swinging their resources into other areas, such as health and education."

The Quebec example
Ontario farm organizations have made good progress in the past decade in trying to work with greater co-ordination, sophistication and cohesiveness. Just look at coalitions, such as the Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council, AGCare, the Ontario Farm Environmental Coalition, the Ontario Field Crop Research Coalition and the Ontario Agricultural Research Coalition. But more structure and co-ordination are needed to fill the gaps in leadership and technical support caused by shrinking government ministries.

There's no doubt that there is a high level of cooperation among the various grains and oilseeds groups, but Daynard says he believes they should amalgamate. "I think they should be one organization."

Others point to Quebec and its powerful Union des Producteurs Agricoles (UPA) as an example of a co-ordinated farm group. UPA has a board of directors made up of regional general farm groups and presidents of most provincial commodity groups and specialized farm interests. Commodity organizations and specialized groups make up about two-thirds of the UPA board membership.

But it's unlikely that Ontario will adopt the UPA structure. "One of the things in Quebec that would be hard to duplicate here is that the commodity groups are very subordinate to the UPA structure," says Daynard. "For example, none of them would lobby government outside UPA. So you work out everything within UPA and then take your presentation to government."

In Quebec, UPA, basically speaks for all farmers on all issues, but Daynard doesn't see that happening in Ontario. "We've got commodity groups that have a strong presence and I don't believe they would be willing to give that up."

But Quebec still offers some good ideas on how Ontario farm groups can work together under some type of umbrella organization. Deciding what type of structure would work in Ontario means figuring out "what you need to do and how do you get there," he says. "It's fairly obvious to me you can't do it by maintaining the status quo." Ultimately, coming up with an answer to the farm organization problem means standing back and answering a number of questions, such as what are the markets going to be, how rural communities will evolve, what is the farm going to be like and what are farmers and farm organizations going to need to do.

"Only when you've answered that can you say what kind of farm organization you need," he says. "Wayne Gretzky says, 'You score goals by going where the puck's going to be, not where it is right now.'" That's what agriculture has to do.BF

Allan Thompson's one per cent solution

by SUSAN MANN AND DON STONEMAN

Not all of the details have been worked out yet and Thompson plans to refine his idea this winter. But one of the features would be that the levy would apply to all grocery store products, since things like diapers and dog food are made with corn, and to both domestic and imported products. The money would be administered by farmers and be divided up among growers based on per acre returns. It would cover input costs such as fertilizer, seed, labour and costs of getting the product to the market.

Thompson farms 1,600 acres with his brother, David, near Georgetown. Their father, Roy, is still partly involved in the farm, which includes dairy, cash crops, seed crops, spray and seed businesses and custom combining. So far, he's taken his idea to both the Agricultural Odyssey Group and the Prime Minister's Task Force on the Future Opportunities in Agriculture.

"We all complain and the government says there's no money," says Thompson, who is president of the Peel Federation of Agriculture. "Well, there has to be money from somewhere and we have to take it out of the marketplace. So let's put on a levy."

Based on 1999 grocery store sales in Canada of $560 billion, a one-per-cent levy would bring in an estimated $5 billion for farmers. "Our agriculture budget isn't even at that now. But something like that would definitely help agriculture across Canada, especially the commodities that are in trouble," Thompson says.

But would consumers balk at paying what amounts to an extra tax, especially since they'd have no say in how this money is spent? Thompson believes the idea will be an easy sell among consumers. "Once I tell everybody what we're up against and why, I don't think there will be a problem."

Farm income was very much on the minds of Odyssey group delegates who went to Europe last fall and learned that one of the strengths there is co-ops. But it is unlikely that Ontario agriculture would be able to make the widespread conversion to European-style co-ops. "You can't take something and just plaster it into Canada. It likely won't fit," says Ron Bonnett, Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice-president and a member of the Odyssey Group committee.

However, he points out that coops are just one way that European farmers are able to "value add" to farm incomes. While co-ops are strong in Denmark, which is devoted to production agriculture and where nearly 70 per cent of the land is cropped, they are far less of a factor in Britain where the economy is much more diversified. That industrial powerhouse has turned the countryside into a place to visit, which has been good for the rural economy.

Converting to organic production to add value and thereby boost farm incomes isn't necessarily the answer either, Bonnett says. In Europe, organic production is driven by government subsidies on organic production and intensive marketing campaigns which, says Odyssey Group chairman Roger George, have led to over-production. In one instance he cites, subsidies led to four times as much organic milk production as the local market could handle. The majority of it went into the regular milk market.

"If there are opportunities to take advantage of (organics), we should pursue them," says the OCPA's Terry Daynard. But "if you overdo it, you kill the profit potential." BF