Farmers from Manitoba and Prince Edward Island were named Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2009 at an Ottawa ceremony in early December.
Grant and Colleen Dyck, grain and oilseed producers from Niverville, Man., and Tania and Greg MacKenzie, vegetable producers from Stratford, P.E.I., were the winners in the 30-year-old annual competition.
The federal government used the occasion of the OYF presence in Ottawa to announce that it will contribute $120,000 to the program over the next four years, a 20 percent funding increase.
And the House of Commons agriculture committee took a break from its increasingly partisan, bitter and personal bickering that has almost halted productive work to invite some of the Outstanding Young Farmer candidates to testify.
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The MPs heard what they considered surprising answers.
The young farmers said Dec. 3 they were not necessarily looking for government handouts as the answer to their cash flow and debt problems.
Instead, they talked about government help through more promotion of Canadian food to consumers, rules that do not put Canadian producers at a disadvantage with foreign competitors and more consistency in farmer support between provinces so producers are not forced to compete against other Canadian farmers who have more support.
Typical was what followed a question from Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter to hog farmer Leony Koelen from Paisley, Ont.
After reciting a number of possible answers, Easter posed the question: “What would you propose that would get you in this farming game so that you could survive?”
“Well, that’s really simple,” she said.
MPs guffawed, assuming she meant it was an open-ended question with many complex answers.
She didn’t.
“Well it is,” she said. “We’re not looking for money. Personally, I don’t think that’s the answer. We need to have the same import rules as export rules.”
Her complaint was that pork from the United States is taking an increasing share of the Canadian market. “That pork is not produced under the same standards as what we have so that should be changed as soon as possible.”
John Cote, a farmer from northern Saskatchewan, also said he does not see government payments as an answer.
“Often, I think it’s money very poorly spent, to be subsidizing farmers unless you can really see where the money is going to go and it is going to get that farmer through to where he’s going to be profitable, just throwing good money after bad,” he said. “Just because it buys you votes back at home doesn’t mean that that’s good policy.”
Stephen Snider, an Alberta organic grain farmer, said governments could help beginning farmers by allowing them to claim a tax credit for payments on their farm debt.
He said it is frustrating to be told each year he can get a tax credit for putting money into a registered retirement savings plan while he is trying to pay off debt. “I always question the wisdom of not being able to take that exemption and use it to pay down my land as a tax shelter to stabilize my farm more quickly.”
Northern Alberta farmer Glen Van Dijek even had some complimentary words for the politicians around the table. He said he has long been opposed to government subsidies for farmers.
“Over the years, I’ve reflected many times on why we are doing this socialist farming in Canada and if that was the route to go,” he said.
But now he realizes that with other countries doing the same, Canada has to decide whether to stay in the “agricultural welfare” business as well.
“It’s a real tough balancing act for you people to try and keep free enterprise going within a socialist economic climate globally,” he said. “There’s no easy answers but we really appreciate the effort.”
