The Rural Voice, 1998-05, Page 14LESLIE
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10 THE RURAL VOICE
Robert Mercer
Survival by surviving
Farm Survival meetings keep
going and going and going ... I think
1 have attended farm survival
meetings since the early 1960s. This
was when the Milk Act was first
proposed in Ontario by the then
Minister of
Agriculture Bill
Stewart.
This past
month I attended
a farm survival
meeting of a
different kind. It
was not about
the survival of
traditional
agriculture such
as grains,
livestock, milk
or poultry, but
rather how to
adapt traditional
agriculture to the
needs of a local market area. This is
where land is too expensive for
"commodity" production and cost too
high to compete internationally. Yet
the climate is one of the best in
Canada for agriculture.
Long term, the survival of
traditional agriculture on Vancouver
Island is not bright. There is only one
federally inspected hog plant, one
large and two smaller fluid milk
plants, one low-volume, federally -
inspected beef plant, only one large
scale chicken processor threatening
to close and no multi -product
industrial milk processor at all.
Even with an unsure future this
survival meeting was geared to being
positive. "Help Island Agriculture
Grow" was the approach which
zeroed in on identifying opportunities
and solutions. But as nearly always
happens when farmers get together,
government policies take a beating.
Farmers survive Farm Survival
meetings. Farmers have the ability to
make changes, innovate and adapt.
They must, to survive and it seems
that they have an inbred dominant
gene to excel in this ability.
At this survival meeting two of the
most telling statements, which could
have been made at any farm meeting,
were given. First was that the current
provincial government (NDP in this
case) seemed to be more interested in
policies that were enforcement
related, and less interested in any
policies that encouraged agriculture.
The other statement came from a
farmer who had just sold out his
quota, dispersed the milking cows,
and was selling the farm and heading
to Alberta to start again. He said of
the provincial government that "they
want us to be environmentally
sustainable, but don't worry about us
being economically sustainable."
With less than 100 dairy farms on
Vancouver Island this farmer, Allen
Looy, feels that after 26 years on the
farm, his chances are better in
Alberta where policies are more
farmer friendly. In BC there appears
to be no long-term policy to
encourage agriculture, he says.
With land so expensive and
limited to few uses under the
Agricultural Land Reserve, Looy is
finding that the only type of buyer
who can afford his 116 acres is
someone more interested in the tax
advantages of farming than in the
preservation of land for the
production of food.
On the positive side, Vancouver
Island does offer opportunity,
especially for the smaller family
farms that are geared to specialty
markets that retail their own produce
either directly or as added -value
items.
This indeed was where the farm
survival meeting discussions headed
once the role of government was
thrashed out. How can land owners
make a living serving the needs of the
local population and the influx of
summer seasonal visitors?
As with farming across Canada the
opportunities are there but it needs
new direction, change and adaptation
to the realities of the consumer
dominated marketplace. This came
across during the round table
discussions including the need for a
strong single farm voice to take
concerns to politicians and
bureaucrats.0
Robert Mercer was editor of the
Broadwater Market Letter and a farm
commentator in Ontario for 25 years.