Western Producer staff
There were times, not so long ago, when a gathering of the NDP forces in Saskatchewan would almost certainly have produced an agriculture policy debate.
It was considered a rite of passage, a tip-of-the-hat to a traditional and important section of the party.
After all, one of the original coalition partners in the CCF was the radical wing of the farmer movement.
The CCF-NDP fancied itself the only real defender of the family farm, the Crow Rate, marketing boards and all things warm and fuzzy in the farm sector.
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No speech given west of Thunder Bay and east of the Rockies was complete without a mention of the hard-working farmer and an NDP vow to fight to preserve the lifestyle and the sector.
This year is another chance for the party to re-affirm its bond with farmers, who helped elect most of the diminished NDP caucus in Parliament.
The NDP is in the midst of a leadership race and last week, the candidates were in Saskatchewan – something of a mystic promised land for the party’s True Believers.
So what policy gifts did they bring for the farm flock, many of whose members have been drifting in recent years across the ideological fault line into the Reform camp?
Remarkably little, actually.
In Regina at a leadership forum, a general question about farm policy brought some general rhetoric from Saskatchewan native Lorne Nystrom and a confession from the other candidates that agriculture wasn’t really their area of knowledge.
Campaign literature carried barely a word about agriculture.
Formal opening statements dealt with global economics, currency movements and internal party problems.
Of course, if asked a direct question on agriculture by journalists or party members, these politicians, like all politicians, can always come up with words to get them through the moment.
But there were precious few questions about agriculture last week from a region going through a farm policy revolution.
And there were no answers.
What is going on here?
As the party flounders around trying to reinvent itself, it is looking for new ideas, new coalitions, new priorities that will make it relevant to the 21st Century.
Could it be that the new NDP leadership has decided that farmers were yesterday’s constituency?
In an era of high farm prices and empty government coffers, do the leadership candidates feel there are no logical policies to offer from the left?
With many of the party’s “sacred cow” farm policies like the Crow Rate, cost-based pricing and marketing boards either gone or under attack, could it be that the new leadership doesn’t think it worth the effort to create new alternative policies to new farm challenges?
Could it be that the federal party leadership considers itself irrelevant to the farm debate in an entrepreneurial era of low subsidies and free trade?
If so, it is the kind of assumption which could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
