Oil Springs, Ont., beef and dairy farmer Joe Dickenson, 30, joined more than 40 other young producers last week to give the federal government an earful about the problems they face.
They were invited to do so.
“A pretty common theme was the massive startup costs young farmers face, succession issues, access to land,” he said in a Nov. 17 interview after spending two days in Gatineau, Que., at the first ever National Future Farmers Network organized by Agriculture Canada.
“I would say it was a good first step but we’ll know better when they publish a report on the meeting. I would say both the minister and the deputy minister were listening.”
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Jean-Pierre Blackburn, secretary of state for agriculture, said later he was listening and learning.
“These young people have all the dynamism and energy of youth and they are brimming with new ideas and they are not afraid to be blunt when they need to,” he said.
One of the complaints he heard was that financial institutions often require parents to co-sign loans needed for transition financing.
“I was surprised to hear that,” Blackburn said. “So you can imagine from the parents, there’s no security around that.”
The forum was the first concrete result of Blackburn’s promise to create a young farmer strategy, giving young and beginning farmers “the keys to the department” so they can influence program development and the details of the next long-term policy framework that takes effect in 2013.
He said representatives of other departments, as well as farm leaders and lenders, were at the conference as observers and he plans to organize workshops in coming months to see how complaints can be addressed.
Most of the 45 farmers invited are connected to the Canadian Young Farmers Forum, financed by Agriculture Canada and affiliated to several national farm organizations.
Last week, National Farmers Union youth president Kalissa Regier complained that NFU youth were excluded. She said consultations led by Blackburn last year seemed weighted to industry and agri-business interests.
