The Rural Voice, 1989-07, Page 24problem facing our society, facing our
ministries of agriculture, is which of
these two groups of producers is really
the most important to support: the
commercial 9 per cent, who are large,
well organized, well managed, highly
capitalized farm producers, or the 60
to 70 per cent of the actual landholders
who are the bulk of the farmers in our
society but who produce, in effect,
very little. And if you wanted to be
very blunt about it, they produce the
surplus which we can't get rid of.
So in strictly economic terms, the
unfortunate picture is that we really do
not need the production from about 60
per cent of Canadian farmers at this
point in time. And the government
will always be tempted, in order to
retain its competitive edge, to support
in large part the commercial farm
producers, simply because of the need
to produce the commodities which can
be exported competitively.
The likelihood then that there
might well be two types of farm pol-
icy, a policy for commercial producers
and a policy for other farmers, I refer
to as "decoupling" — the type of sup-
port that the average general farmer
can expect will be less commercially
oriented (i.e. it may be tied to envir-
onmental management — and in
addition support will be given to all
manner of rural development) than the
type of support that will go into the
fully commercial producers.
The 60 per cent of the farm oper-
ators in Ontario and in Canada gener-
ally will be expected to remain on the
land, to undertake some farming and
generate some income from that, but
in order to participate in the same
quality of life as everybody else will
have to also, as they're already doing,
undertake non-farm activities, which
bring in extra earnings as well as
social and psychological satisfactions,
the fundamental thing being that
they're still on the land, they're still
farming, and they're still basically
doing what they have always wanted
to do, but their lifestyle, and their
work style, is already and will have to
go on changing somewhat.
This is the relatively new factor in
the mix of considerations for agricul-
tural policy, and what I would like to
offer here is that from the European
perspective, the environment has come
forward almost like the cavalry in the
western movie saving the day, and
the environment is offering one of
the ways in which European policy
makers in agriculture are trying to
resolve their problems. And in some
cases I think this is also true of farm
organizations.
The environmental movement
criticizes the farm sector as being one
of the major contributors to environ-
mental degradation. Be this as it may,
it's important, in my view, that the
farm community, which has changed
its behaviour in regard to the environ-
ment, must be seen to be doing a much
better job and to gain the credit from
that. So there could well be an alli-
ance between governments and farm
producers if they were willing to get
behind the environmental lobby such
that they become seen as "saviours"
of the environment.
9. What is the "European Cam-
paign for the Countryside" and
what influence is the powerful
environmental lobby in Europe
having on agriculture?
The European parliament has an
annual theme. Their themes are often
cultural. But for two years — they're
usually annual — they stepped out of
the normal mode and said that the
countryside was the most important
issue in the minds of European
parliamentarians and European local
politicians. So over two years they
organized a series of seminars, events,
activities, demonstrations, theatre —
all sorts of things — to celebrate the
importance of countryside.
This increased — it didn't begin,
but it increased — the consciousness
of many Europeans that the country-
side is a very valued resource, that
the people who live and work in the
countryside are important contributors
to human good, and therefore the
countryside is something that we have
to be very careful about, and have
very clear conservation policies for.
This leads on to the fact that
historically speaking there's a
somewhat different concept of the
countryside in Europe. As far as
Canada is concerned it is a bit differ-
ent here, and the difference relates to
the effort that must be made over the
coming years to reacquaint urban
dwellers, the majority of Canadians,
with the value that the countryside of
Canada offers the total Canadian
society, with the "countryside as a
public good."
And the environment, a good,
clean, healthy environment which
renews the water resources and renews
the air, provides the trees with oxygen
and also provides good, healthy food,
could all be packaged together as
being the reason society should value
its countryside much more than simply
as a place where certain food com-
modities come from.
... We've got to make the
association with countryside broader
than food products. We haven't done
a particularly good job with food
products, but we've also got to make
it much broader than that. And the
environment is a heaven-sent oppor-
tunity because urban people are very,
very worried about the environment.
And if farmers can be seen as offering,
in addition to good food, a safe envir-
onment, then they're going to be seen
as champions rather than the enemy.
And will this affect policy?
It should. Because then the
Canadian government, I'm sure,
would react the same as the European
governments and see that they have a
golden opportunity to limit production
by insisting on environmentally sound
practices in farming, for which there
will be compensation.
So for those farm people who are
willing to engage in more organic
practices and to reduce their chemical
inputs there will be compensation for
them during the interval period while
the yield of products drops off and
while the organic produce is registered
and standardized in terms acceptable
in the marketplace.
Environmental control will be
for all. Large producers will have to
shape up, and many are already doing
so. But the bulk of the land lies with
the others, and here the main gains
will come.0
(Interview by Lise Gunby)
22 THE RURAL VOICE
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