Kensington, P.E.I., farmer Bertha Campbell has a strong message to politicians running in her province and Atlantic Canada May 2.
Listen up. Agriculture and rural issues are important in this part of Canada.
The president of the Prince Edward Island Federation of Agriculture said politicians often forget where their bread and butter come from, literally.
“Traditionally, agriculture issues haven’t played a big role in campaigns here so that means we have to wake up,” she said. “Out of sight, out of mind but meanwhile our sector struggles. Let’s not wait to deal with it until it’s too late.”
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The PEIFA board meets this week to decide priority issues to raise with candidates.
Campbell said she hopes political solutions for the sector can take a pan-Atlantic Canada approach since issues are similar through the region.
She also wants to support the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s push for creation of a national food strategy that will be used as a lens through which to create policies that make the sector more sustainable, profitable and competitive.
“The response of governments has to be more than piecemeal policies that deal with specific problems,” she said from her diversified livestock and crop farm in west-central P.E.I.
“It has to be about more than just money. This is a time when the public is becoming more aware of where their food comes from and we need politicians who are sensitive to food issues.”
However, there is one issue percolating among some Island livestock producers, and across the country, that candidates will be hearing.
Federal emergency advance payments to get the industry through the trough of the past several years come due this summer and producers are expected to begin paying them back with interest. Some would like an extension, arguing that margins are not yet large enough to afford the payments.
Jeremy Stead, 29, a board member with P.E.I. Cattle Producers, said the sector is not yet strong enough to begin paying back the advances. An option is to roll them over into a private loan to pay off the government “but that’s no solution,” he said.
Between his Wheatley River farm and his father Brian’s cow-calf and backgrounder operation, they owe $160,000 in advances.
“That is a huge hole for us to dig out of,” he said. “We need an extension.”
“The margins still aren’t here with input costs the way they are and prices not keeping up,” he said. “All Jeremy has ever wanted to do is farm but it’s a damn shame. I’d rather almost see him do anything else. It’s such a struggle every day.”
His father Brian, 57, told a visitor to the farm that despite the optimism expressed by industry leaders about the rebound of the cattle industry, he does not see it on his 500-head backgrounder and 60-heifer cow-calf
