Western Producer staff
In some of the most controversial food policy debates of the day, non-food-sector interests are key players. In the fiery confrontation over whether or not to use bovine growth hormone in Canada’s dairy herd, the opposition is being led by the Council of Canadians, a coalition whose interests more typically are anti-free trade or anti-foreign control than issues of food safety or farming.
Yet the CoC has been feeding MPs with hostile questions, challenging the objectivity of pro-BST witnesses and generally operating an effective campaign.
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One of its allies, the Toronto Food Policy Council, offers another glimpse of the future. This Toronto City Council-sponsored group is demanding a say in how agriculture policy and the agricultural industry is structured.
It goes beyond traditional consumer interest in safe, cheap food. It is an ideological view of society, the environment and the structure of rural Canada.
The Toronto Council advocates “a food and agricultural system that promotes human nourishment and development, and environmental and economic sustainability.”
Those generalities get translated into strong stands on drugs, chemicals, trade, animal welfare and a host of other issues that farmers have long considered matters to be resolved within the food sector.
No more.
In Canada and the United States, non-food sector interests are demanding, and getting, a say in how policies on farm bills, subsidy programs and supports are structured and written.
It is a development that some people deeply involved in the food-making business see as both inevitable and troubling.
Agriculture minister Ralph Goodale is one. Over time, he says, more and more “broad public interest groups” will demand a say in what have traditionally been the preserve of agricultural interests. “That’s just the nature of the beast as these kinds of issues evolve.”
Everyone consumes food. They all feel they have a legitimate stake in deciding what is in their food and how it is grown.
Goodale said farmers and their leaders must be sensitive to this growing public demand.
But there is a need for responsibility on the other side as well. Those who insist on a say also have an obligation to understand the complexity of the system with which they would tinker, he says.
Otherwise, this broadening of the policy debate could be dangerous to the health of food producers.
“I would make the argument that these other groups need also to take into the account the vital interests of agriculture,” says the minister. “It cannot be a one-way street.” Don’t count on it.
With the number of farmers declining, their lobby under-financed, their influence waning and governments insisting that farmer influence be diluted by the views of other “stakeholders,” the writing appears to be on the wall.
Food policy was once one of the few areas of influence left to farmers. It was too arcane for others to care much about. Once that wall is breached, there will be few if any preserves left where farmer influence can win the day.
