Canadian farmers know how much they contribute to the national economy. Walk into any farm meeting or conference these days and the sector’s economic prowess is almost guaranteed to be mentioned.
Farmers feed cities. Agriculture and agri-food feed government coffers.
It’s a message that hasn’t escaped one of the Liberal government’s chief financial advisers. In a speech to the Public Policy Forum in Ottawa earlier this month, Dominic Barton, who chairs the federal government’s advisory council on growth, said policy makers need to stop undermining agriculture’s economic growth potential.
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“I think it’s time to think of agriculture not as the old world but the new world,” Barton told delegates.
“We’re going to have to produce over the next 40 years the equivalent amount of food that we’ve produced over the last 10,000 years.”
“We’ve got the land, the water, the technology.… This is an area we’ve got to look at.”
It’s the same message Canadian farmers have started taking to lobby meetings in Ottawa, a shift some, including Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Ron Bonnett, said reflects a change in industry thinking.
Instead of asking for federal money to keep the industry afloat, Bonnett said the mentality now is to look for ways to help innovate agriculture so that it can continue to grow. The economic might of Canadian agriculture is known internationally. Canada is the world’s leading exporter of canola, lentils and mustard, while our beef and pork are recognized worldwide. The sector contributes more than $100 billion to the national gross domestic product, a figure that’s larger than the entire GDP of two-thirds of the world’s countries.
Most Canadians still romanticize agriculture — red barns, a few chickens, a friendly pig — but the technological shifts that happened on farms and in plants in the past decades are truly astounding.
Combines and tractors are basically self-driving — fancy computers on wheels jam packed with all the latest bells and whistles such as GPS and satellite locators.
Drones are changing crop scouting. Video cameras are helping livestock producers keep an eye on their barns from wherever their smartphones happen to be.
Robotic milkers are commonplace in Canadian dairy barns, while automation has helped many food processors battle back against an ongoing labour shortage.
It’s this kind of innovation, Bonnett said, that has helped the agriculture industry evolve into one of the more significant players in the Canadian economy.
Yet, as the Ontario Chamber of Commerce warned in its latest report, public policy officials shouldn’t take agriculture and agri-food’s economic contributions “for granted.”
“Ontario agribusinesses are experiencing significant pressure to adapt to a series of recent government announcements, including the introduction of the cap and trade system and waste elimination legislation,” the report notes.
Those concerns are reverberating across the country. If politicians really want to tap into agriculture and agri-food’s growth potential, industry says they need to be willing to tackle some of the challenges currently impeding the sector’s ability to do business.
Top of mind is the ongoing labour crunch. Ontario’s food manufacturing industry is one of the largest employers in the province, employing one in nine Ontarians. That number jumps to one in eight across the country, or about 2.1 million Canadians.
However, with an aging demographic and a largely rural business hub, farmers, processors and everyone along the supply chain are finding it hard to fill the vacancies.
Labour isn’t the only barrier producers and processors say they are facing. Transportation infrastructure remains a key concern for grain farmers, which Transport Minister Marc Garneau will hear about first hand Oct. 20 in Saskatoon.
Transportation concerns go beyond the railways. Talk to folks who live in rural communities and they’ll tell you the infrastructure deficit facing many of Canada’s small towns is noticeable. Roads are in disrepair and bridges are on their last legs.
The economic potential of Canada’s agriculture industry is there for the taking. Whether policy makers want to make the investments necessary to help the industry become the international super power it could be remains to be seen.
