Ottawa and the provinces, with the notable exception of Ontario, recently agreed to a new set of guiding principles that will form the basis for this country’s agricultural programs for years to come.
These principles will almost certainly lead to policy priorities, funding allocations and clear directions that will affect every farmer and the industry for the foreseeable future.
It is important the politicians get it right.
The Growing Forward 2 principles as agreed to are trade competitiveness, adaptability and sustainability, innovation, and institutional and physical infrastructure.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
Ontario refused to sign the final document endorsing these principles after Ottawa and the other provinces rejected its request that the federal government fund provincially designed support programs.
The existing Growing Forward programs are slated to run until April 2013, so negotiations for Growing Forward 2 have a long way to go and will see many changes before they come into play.
But still, the talk now is a marked change from existing programs, especially with so little emphasis given to business risk management programs. Developing affordable, effective, timely and trade friendly risk management programs has long proven a major obstacle to governments.
The present supports are seen by many farm groups as too slow to pay out and as paying too little during cycles of successive poor financial years because they are based on a five-year net return average.
But why are governments today much less concerned with risk management issues than they were in 2008 when the present Growing Forward was signed?
Stability in the marketplace is one reason.
Commodity prices were high in 2008, but the market was seen as volatile. There were varied opinions out there about how long the upswing would last. Was the agriculture industry, at least as far as grain and oilseeds are concerned, really in for a bright foreseeable future or was it a mere bubble about to burst?
Those questions weighed heavily in the design of the overall package.
Since then, farmers have had their share of battles with unco-operative weather and pests, but grain and oilseed prices have, overall, remained relatively strong.
The attention has shifted to research and development and trade. A coalition of farm groups with varied interests appeared on Parliament Hill last summer to ask Ottawa to restore research funding to 1990 levels. Money is necessary to restore facilities and staffing levels and to fund base research that has no immediate commercial application, they said.
The trade component has also received considerable attention from this government.
Last week, sources announced a Canada-European Union trade deal is expected to be complete by 2012. As well, the Conservatives have spent considerable time and expense in negotiating bilateral deals with various countries.
In this way, the Growing Forward 2 principles appear to build on initiatives that are either already well underway or have been much sought after by many farm groups for some time.
The mood in the countryside and in the agricultural industry is more hopeful and with hope comes less angst about the future.
However, the halcyon days cannot last forever.
While the need to boost research and innovation funding is critical, as is the need to explore more trade agreements, flawed business risk management programs will someday become a problem again, once agricultural commodity prices cool. That must not be ignored.
And if the Conservatives are as serious as they say about ensuring Canadian farmers remain competitive, they need to back up their words with generous funding commitments to restore Canada as a worldwide research and innovation leader.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Joanne Paulson collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
