Large swaths of Ontario farmland are water-logged this summer and a farm income crisis is looming, says the president of the province’s largest farm organization.
The powerful Ontario Federation of Agriculture is gearing up for a strong lobby of federal and provincial governments to try to make sure there is sufficient aid available.
“There are problem areas in many parts of Ontario,” OFA president Jack Wilkinson said June 30 in an interview. “I think we are going to need some help.”
Like farm leaders from across the country, Wilkinson said Ontario farmers are worried that federal and provincial ministers will decide at a meeting this week to set rules for a new three-year farm disaster aid program that are less supportive than the 1999 Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance program.
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“The 1999 AIDA program had a lot of ideal features incorporated into it, and because of the disastrous weather conditions in Ontario this year, last year’s model with adequate funding would go a long way to meeting the needs of Ontario’s farmers,” Wilkinson said in a published commentary.
“Without that extra funding, and given the changes being proposed by government negotiators, many Ontario producers will be unable to feed their families and pay their bills with returns from this year’s crops.”
He estimated that crops worth hundreds of millions of dollars are in jeopardy because of one of the wettest spring and early summer seasons in many years.
Soggy fields
In many parts of the province, fields have been too wet to plant, or once seeded, too wet to produce a healthy crop.
Fields of fruit and vegetables are rotting, soggy tobacco fields are being invaded by blue mould and the hay crop is either too wet to harvest or of diminished quality.
These problems supplement the impact on Ontario’s large corn and wheat industries of low commodity prices.
For farm leaders, there is some irony in the Ontario flooding problems.
Last year when southeastern Saskatchewan and southwestern Manitoba were under water, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief was judged by many to be too slow to react. Even now, the federal government says there is no formula to get additional disaster dollars to those areas.
At the height of the lobby in 1999, when farmers and their politicians were complaining that federal ministers were not travelling west to see the damage first hand, Reform MPs brought a video of the sodden prairie fields to Parliament Hill.
It brought a testy response from Vanclief that he does not have to walk in mud to know there is a flooding problem.
This year, he cannot avoid the evidence. The Belleville area of eastern Ontario where he lives is hard hit.
Wilkinson estimated that 30-40 percent of the crop in the Belleville area had not been planted, disqualifying farmers from significant crop insurance aid.
“Our concern is that just as Ontario farmers are facing a serious problem, the ministers may be backing off of 1999 AIDA, making the program less useful,” said the OFA leader.
His members have launched a full lobby of federal and provincial politicians across Ontario and some provincial farm leaders will be in the New Brunswick capital this week to make sure politicians understand the consequences of any backtracking.
