OTTAWA (Staff) – Canadian farmers increasingly are challenging the orderly marketing systems that have been created to give them some collective market clout, a senior government agriculture spokesman conceded last week.
Ontario Liberal MP Lyle Vanclief, parliamentary secretary to the agriculture minister, said he is getting more telephone calls from farmers who don’t want government support and who don’t want marketing boards.
They are anti-Canadian Wheat Board, challenging the Ontario pork marketing system and opposed to supply management marketing boards.
“Where are we going wrong?” Vanclief asked Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Jack Wilkinson April 13 during a meeting of the Commons agriculture committee.
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Wilkinson conceded a growing disenchantment among many farmers with traditional institutions.
He said part of the reason is the many changes affecting farmers, from new liberalizing trade deals and international trade disputes to a regular overhaul of domestic policy and income or security problems.
In these uncertain times, many farmers are looking for alternatives.
“There has been a hell of a shake-out,” said the CFA president.
There also has been a loss of many middle-sized farms, leaving more large farmers who think they are big enough to deal with market forces on their own, without the levelling influences of marketing boards and price pooling.
Wilkinson said it is a time of farmer questioning.
“What worked in the past may not work in the future,” he said. “But we can’t throw everything out either.”
