Food sovereignty
To the Editor:
It is alarming that in this election no one is talking about food sovereignty and security. It should be right up there beside health care because access to affordable, safe, nutritious food can save many health-care dollars.
According to my cowboy logic, if you eat steak, you have a stake in it.
In the cattle sector, the market and supply are kept captive by two large multinational corporations. It is neither a free nor open marketplace.
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Since May of 1989, the farmers’ share of the price paid by Canadians for their food has shrunk steadily, as has the net farm incomes of farmers, while farm debt rose to record levels. In 2010, I managed to get the same price as when I sold cattle in 1993. The export experiment is a dismal failure, failing farmers and Canadians alike. And it is time to take our leaders to task on it.
The $231 million earmarked for the large packers as grants would be better to go to farmer organizations as a repayable loan to build regional packing plants. The loan would return to the taxpayer their dollars with interest, and would help a struggling manufacturing sector in Ontario that could retool to build parts required for a farmer-owned industry.
This money would build 23 regional packing plants capable of processing 120 head per day in each facility. The plants would need to be on the new generation co-operative model.
This would put competition back into the marketplace and a fair price and rate of return on investment to farmers…. It would revitalize rural Canada and reduce the strain on our environment caused by current agribusiness practices – and it is agribusiness, not agriculture. It would help revitalize Ontario’s manufacturing centre … and encourage Canada’s next generation of farmers….
When you read the platforms of the various parties, they fall short of where Canada needs to go in terms of food safety, security and sovereignty. Today, Canada imports more than 50 percent of its meat, yet we are focusing on exports. If I were to use cowboy logic, it would seem to me that we should focus on filling the domestic market before we worry about exporting. And in continuing in that logic, Canadians want the same safety systems for the production of the food they consume from domestic farmers for imported foods.
Neil Peacock, Sexsmith, Alta.
