October 2001
Lobbying a job for farmers or professionals?
That is the question facing many farm organization leaders as the business of dealing with governments becomes more complexby DON STONEMAN
Hire a gun, or do it yourself? That is a question dogging farm leaders as lobbying politicians and bureaucrats in Queen's Park and Ottawa gets more ever more complex.When it was founded in the early 1980s, the Ontario Corn Producers Association (OCPA) hired lobbyists to help them make their points with governments and bureaucrats. That stopped, says its policy analyst, Terry Daynard, when corn producers found that the doors being opened to them were to offices where they had already been. He thinks that professional lobbyists work well for companies which spend their time doing business and only need professional help now and again.
But the OCPA's purpose is to lobby, insists its president, Dennis Jack of Thamesville. "Our mandate, as I see it, is to inform and advise elected officials," Jack says. "If we aren't in their face, the message doesn't get through."
OCPA's budgeted revenue for the year that ended Sept.30 was $1.7 million, roughly a one-cent checkoff per bushel of corn marketed in the province, and the organization plans to double spending on safety nets issues this year. Jack says corn producers aim about $52,000 at national and provincial organizations, investing heavily in the new Grain Growers of Canada, which opened an office a couple of years ago in Ottawa. The soybean board belongs as well, spending $20,000 on its membership and that, says general manager Fred Brandenburg, "is likely as close as we have ever come" to hiring a professional lobbyist.
Like the corn producers, the Ontario Cattlemen's Association (OCA) has lots of members across the province, and a relatively small budget. "The 'have' organizations hire professional lobbyists. I struggle with whether that is necessary or not," says assistant manager Mike McMorris.
The last annual budget of the OCA was $2.9 million, but there is no specific line devoted to lobbying. The organization develops positions and communicates them, using elected officials. But there are exceptions to the rule, says McMorris, citing the 1999 countervail battle with the United States. The OCA's share of the $5-million bill footed by producers across Canada was $800,000.
If the OCA is a "have not" organization, then Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) must be considered a "have." Chief Executive Officer Bob Bishop says his annual budget is about $12.5 million. (Research, advertising and payments to Ontario Dairy Herd Improvement are in addition to that). The actual costs of lobbying are a small part of DFO's total budget, he says. "Three years ago we started to come to the conclusion that our producer numbers were declining and the importance of rural ridings and our issues within them were diminishing," says Bishop. (While there are more than 20,000 beef producers across the province, there are less than 6,000 dairy producers.)
DFO hired Hill and Knowlton, a strategic communications company, as political consultants, paying a monthly fee to consult mostly, on provincial matters. Issues affecting dairy farmers are wide-ranging. Bishop cites a recent meeting with Education Minister Janet Ecker over the school milk program as one example. So are the consultations with the ministry of environment over the coming nutrient management law.
Like dairy, pork producers aren't afraid to hire someone to get their view across. The common link between dairy and pork producers is their relatively large budgets and small numbers. Ontario Pork's total budget for this fiscal year was approximately $8 million. Two years ago, Ontario Pork ratcheted up its lobby efforts, hiring Toronto-based Government Policy Consultants on a yearly contract. The cost "is sizeable" and part of the $337,000 communications budget, says Chairman Clare Schlegel.
The issues at stake two years ago two years ago were the environmental impact of the hog industry and also regulations from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on farm feed manufacturing.
In house, Ontario Pork has developed a set of position papers "so that it is easy for any one of us to remind ourselves what our position is on any one issue." As well, part of the board of directors' time is devoted to lobbying. National issues are handled through the Canada Pork Council, on whose executive committee Schlegel sits.
"Lobbying is a positive, not a negative," Schlegel stresses. "It is important that the communities and the community leaders understand our business so that we can act proactively and solve our problems." BF
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Beware! Your barn may collapse on you
It happened last August to Tim Gray of Thames Bend Farms. Now he and others warn that danger may lurk in the manure pits of hundreds of other newly-constructed concrete barnsby KEN BENNETT
Next time something distracts you away from your normal daily routine, think of Tim Gray. That is what happened to him on the morning of August 31 -- and it saved his life.At around 8 a.m., Tim usually does a walk-through the hog finishing barn he manages at Innerkip. Instead, that morning he was called away to help service a hammer mill. He expected to be back in about five minutes to see how the herd was doing, but by then the roof of his barn was where the floor used to be.
The mystery of what happened at Farm #10 of Thames Bend Farms was still hidden in a pile of concrete rubble after the Labour Day Weekend. Jagged edges of the steel roof hung precariously over a deep pit that was once the east half of the 200 x 50-foot sandwich-wall construction concrete building. Destruction stopped at the mid-length retaining wall, but the cantilevered roof gave witness to a structure that apparently succumbed from the bottom upward.
Built in 1989, the entire building was capable of holding almost 1,200 head. Part of the puzzle was that there was only about a pen and a half of pigs loading the floor of the downed section at the time. Feeling "like a cat with 10 lives," Gray described the catastrophic failure of the building as sudden, with no previous visible hint of cracks in the walls or floors. Intact sections of floor slats now lined the bottom of the manure pit, surrounding short, vertical stubs that were once centre posts. Evidence of the explosive compression failure, characteristic of buckled concrete posts, could be seen where reinforcing bars grew out like wilted flower stems.
As the president of Thames Bend Farms, Stein regrets the loss of some of his hogs, but he is also concerned about the possibility of similar incidents happening. "Everybody believes these barns are indestructible because they are concrete," he says. "What happened here should be a shock to the whole industry." Not only did it put lives at risk, he notes, but this kind of failure represents considerable environmental risk. All the liquid manure needed to be removed immediately, and he is grateful to his neighbour, Maurice Vanboekel, for offering his wheat field to take the pit contents.
While engineers representing the farm, contractor and insurance company investigate the cause of the collapse, Stein raises suspicions about what is going on structurally in the manure pits below the floors of hundreds of similarly constructed buildings in the industry. He believes hog farmers should immediately inspect their barns from below. And, while he admits nobody can put a finger on the actual reason for failure, he is not alone in his sense of foreboding.
Jim Zyta is also concerned about what is happening in other barns. As Vice-President of Claims for North Waterloo Farmers Mutual Insurance Company, he gives coverage to both the building and the livestock. For him, this failure has been one more in an increasing number of building collapses that tend to be of recent vintage. The assumption of insurers, he points out, is that a policy would tend to cost less for a newer building. Yet, having seen more failures in this past year than in the previous ten, he concludes that "it's telling us we've got a problem here." He believes the fault lies with a system of building standards less stringent for farms than for other commercial buildings.
Michael Flynn agrees. A forensic engineer, he is one of the expert investigators of what he considers a catastrophic failure. He believes that pressure should be brought to bear on government to bump up the standard for farm structures. "Not too many old-style barns collapse," he notes.
The reason for that is what he refers to as an overall lack of redundancy in the farm code, by which he means that, with older buildings, one part of the building could fail without threatening the entire structure because other members are backing it up. Without redundancy, the failure of one link can create a domino-like reaction. Farm buildings, he says, are treated as low occupancy with low consequence. In fact, they should be treated as industrial workplaces with due consideration for the workers and families that occupy them.
While Flynn emphasises that the ongoing investigation prevents him from making any speculative statements about what went wrong here, it is clear that investigators must look closely at possible flaws in design, workmanship, materials or some combination of the three.
In the meantime, Richard Stein will be looking for structural defects in the manure pits of his other barns of the same design, and he advises other farmers to do likewise. "My message to anyone who owns this type of building is to get in and find out what is going on in there," he says, "using the proper precautions." BF
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Ont. sewage system failures Charts
Environmental report cardSewage spills: how do municipalities and farmers stack up?
Guelph is still a leader in sewage bypasses, according to data from the MOE's Spills Action Centre. Farmers are becoming more diligent about reporting, but have more work to do to lick the problemby DON STONEMAN
Just because the municipal sewage treatment plant in your area isn't on the accompanying list doesn't mean that sewage isn't bypassing regular treatment during times of high water flow.This fact came to light as Better Farming assembled information for this year's environmental report card for Ontario -- information which includes the database of municipal sewage plant bypasses and spills as reported to the Ministry of Environment's Spills Action Centre (SAC).
A bypass occurs when an operator diverts either raw or partially treated sewage around a treatment plant, usually because of increased volume because of storm water, but sometimes because of an equipment failure. All sewage treatment plant bypasses are reported to the ministry; but they aren't all being reported to the SAC, says John Steele, communications officer for the ministry.
About four years ago, all municipalities were advised that they didn't have to make reports directly to the SAC, says its contingency planning coordinator, Jim Renahan. Instead, bypasses that were part of the normal course of business were to be reported in writing and mailed to the local district office of the environment ministry. Renahan recalls that "the issue was that there were reports of things that were unlikely to have an adverse effect...that were part of the normal course of events at these facilities."
Reporting these bypasses to the SAC made some occurrences at plants "sound like something more important than they were," Steele said. Furthermore, said Renahan, if there was a continuing series of these routine occurrences being reported directly to the MOE's local district office, it was more likely that notice would be taken of them quickly.
So the bypasses that are recorded in the accompanying list are from sewage plants where power or equipment failed. Sometimes the reporting of bypasses to the SAC is required as part of the plant's certificate of approval, most likely because effluent is discharged into a "sensitive" stream and immediate action must be taken.
The list may also include reports from plant operators who continue to report bypasses to the SAC as before to be on the safe side. Reports to the SAC are made by telephone and all reports are put into the database, regardless of whether the plant in question is required to make such a report.
As far as sewage spills are concerned, Steele confirmed that the spills reported to the SAC are likely to consist of a cubic metre or more of sewage. A spill is defined as when raw sewage seeps into the ground or overflows into a plant because of a break in a pipe, a pump failure or an overflow at a pumping station.
Last year, Better Farming's reports on spills and bypasses from municipal treatment plants in the province created quite a stir, in particular in the city of Guelph, which sends discharges from its sewage treatment plant into the Speed River, which in turn flows into the Grand River. The Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) went so far as to produce a study to satisfy its own board of directors.
The GRCA report said that last year Guelph's sewage plant bypassed treatments 41 times, with 38 incidents occurring during May and June. Most took place because of high volume flows and one incident occurred because of "a condition of biological fouling in the sand filtration process." The report's conclusion: Guelph already has the highest levels of sewage treatment of the 26 municipal plants in the watershed. The city remains high on the list of municipalities reporting bypasses and spills to the SAC.
Every municipal treatment plant has a certificate of approval stating what and where it can discharge it's effluent, the treated and sometimes untreated sewage from a city, town or village. A municipality must apply to the MOE's director of approvals when there is a sewage works, says MOE's Steele, often upgrading their treatment plants from primary to secondary and even tertiary treatment. Municipalities that aren't growing will continue to deal with sewage effluent as before. There's no program in place requiring municipal plants to update their facilities.
Meanwhile, more manure spills are being reported, with increased awareness of manure handling being cited. What constitutes a manure spill? "There is no differentiation between five gallons and 5,300 gallons," says Sam Bradshaw, Ontario Pork's environmental officer. A spill can be "a little bit of a dribble out of a tile drain. It could be a half gallon" and includes the escapes from a dairy farm's milk house drain. "The big qualifier is whether it leaves the farm."
Farmers are more diligent about reporting, says Craig Merkley, conservation services specialist with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority and secretary to the Livestock Manure Prevention Project Initiative, a multi-stakeholder group devoted to reducing manure spills. Farm groups pitch in to fund the group, while Environment Canada pays the cost of the secretariat.
The accompanying chart (page 39) compiled by Murray Blackie, the MOE's agricultural impact specialist for the southwest region, reveals that while the number of manure spills increased in 2000 from the previous year, only one fish kill was reported. In the past, fish kills were often a signal that there had been a mishap, Merkley says. Now "there's a lot more willingness to look over the bank and make a phone call" to report an incident.
Over 13 years, there were 255 farm manure spills reported in a 12-county area stretching from the Muskokas to Woodstock and west to Windsor, where "the vast majority" of manure spills in the province are reported.
Bob Bedggood, president of Christian Farmers of Ontario and chairman of the working group, thinks farmers are "more sensitive to the effect that we have on water quality than we were 15 years ago." With education, farmers are "using a wiser rate, a wiser timing and a wiser choice of land."
"We've got to control these spills. They shouldn't happen," says Bradshaw, also a committee member. Many of the spills reported as from pig farms. He predicts that with the reduced number of pork producers in the province (4,400 today, compared to 5,500 a few years ago), farmers will beat the issue.
Liquid manure is often cited as a culprit in spills. Commodity groups agree that irrigation guns should be phased out and replaced, either with drop pipes or injectors on a drag hose pulled behind a tractor.
"Farmers are so much more up to speed today than they were three years ago," Bradshaw says. "We realize that we've got to smarten up." BF
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A growing unease about wheat - the next GMO frontier
There's a serious disconnect between the federal government and a coalition of skeptics worried who worry that the introduction of GM wheat may jeopardize all bulk exportsby BARRY WILSON
It is not news that the farm community is divided over the issue of the value and risks of genetically modified varieties. So is society at large.Ontario corn and soybean producers and Prairie canola growers have embraced the technology and the regulatory safeguards set up to make sure it is safe, market qualms be damned.
A powerful industry-financed lobby, supported by the federal government, endorsed by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and tentatively supported by what passes as a consumer lobby in this country, insists that the issue is regulation and not the method of production. Biotechnology, they say, offers the hope of more production, less chemical use and more widely adaptable varieties.
Their position was bolstered this year by endorsements of GM varieties as a potential hunger fighter by the United Nations Development Program and by leaders of the eight most industrialized countries in Genoa, Italy, including Canada.
But there clearly is another side to the issue -- a consumer reluctance, a foreign market resistance and some uncertainty among farmers about whether they are in danger of wandering into a dangerous blind alley. Many, particularly on the export-dependent Prairies, are reluctant to sign on to a variety that has much of the world in a "wait and see" mode.
Which brings us to wheat, perhaps the next GMO frontier. On this one, there seems to be a serious disconnect between the federal government, its regulators and queasy farmers. Agriculture Canada continues to support Monsanto research into Roundup Ready GM wheat, despite clear indications that much of the wheat industry does not want the hassle. And there is no guarantee that a GM wheat variety eventually to be developed by Monsanto and put forward for registration will not be registered, whatever the political or market opposition. In early August, Lyle Vanclief, the federal agriculture minister, confirmed that Ottawa continues to support GM wheat research and will let the variety registration system do its work.
"Once an application is made, we pride ourselves on having one of the most stringent systems in the world," he said. It guarantees that the new product is environmentally safe and safe for human consumption. "It is not until 2004 that anything could happen commercially," he said. And a lot could happen by then. "People may not choose to grow it."
For GM wheat skeptics, that is not the point. A powerful coalition that ranges from the Council of Canadians and the National Farmers Union to Greenpeace Canada, Manitoba's Keystone Agricultural Producers and the Canadian Wheat Board say this is not enough. The introduction of a GM wheat variety to a Canadian bulk system that does not allow foolproof segregation would jeopardize all wheat exports to skeptical markets, they said at a rare joint news conference at the end of July.
In a way, with farmers and anti-free trade activists joining together on this issue, the lion was lying down with the lamb. And Ottawa seems poised to dismiss their concerns, insisting the world accept its science. Farmers, who depend on markets more driven by politics and consumer demands than by scientific judgment, have the right to be uneasy about future access and befuddled by their government's reliance on the letter of the law, politics be damned. BF
Barry Wilson is a member of the Parlimentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture
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