It’s just a short walk across a lawn and past some statues to get from the Keystone Agricultural Producers offices to the Manitoba legislature and the heart of government.
That’s a walk KAP’s staff and farmer representatives will need to be frequently taking to keep farm issues in front of — or even recognized by — the new provincial government, which contains almost no rural MLAs.
Manitoba’s other farm organizations will need to be making the same sorts of visits to ensure the farmers they represent aren’t forgotten, misrepresented, misunderstood or scapegoated. Farmers haven’t always been treated well by the folks who work directly beneath the Golden Boy’s butt.
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Rural representation tends to be better in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where a larger proportion of the population lives outside the biggest cities. But more and more, the shrinking farmer population and expanding urban multitudes mean that farmers are almost never likely to be a top-of-mind part of the population and their issues are unlikely to hit the top of anybody’s political priorities list.
Political parties care about votes. Farmers represent fewer of those every year. That has a real political impact.
Farm organizations across the Prairies need to be keeping in contact with their own agriculture ministers, their premiers, the cabinet ministers that affect farmers, backbench government MLAs and opposition members. They need to make sure the provincial bureaucracy understands what’s going on in farming and how provincial decisions are and might affect farmers and the agriculture industry.
Farm organizations are already doing that, but the need will be even greater as farming becomes a less understood part of our society.
That’s where regular farmers come into the situation. Virtually every farm organization is having trouble finding people to sit on committees and boards. The pool of farmers willing to be active in organizations has been shrinking, leading to a lot of exhaustion and burnout among those willing to serve.
This is no doubt partly due to the declining number of farmers. Most organizations no longer represent tens or hundreds of thousands of farmers. There are fewer farmers out there to provide willing victims for farm organizations.
But there also seem to be lifestyle and generational challenges. Heavier farm management demands, greater recreational expectations and growing opportunities for other forms of social interaction make organizational involvement less attractive than it was for baby boomers.
That’s a problem in an age where farmers are more often targeted by special interest groups, when environmental regulations can have disastrous impacts on farms and when critical agricultural issues are often ignored because they don’t show up on the urban radar.
Farmers, especially younger farmers, need to be stepping up to take an active role in the organizations that represent, advocate for and defend farmers. It’s not something that individual farmers can simply assume somebody else will be willing to do.
The rules, regulations and legislation that affect the farm and rural economies can have profound effects on farm financial viability.
The organizations are there already in Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Victoria, ready to raise the issues that affect their members.
But without active member participation, those organizations will have much less impact than what farmers need.
Perhaps every extended family in farming should encourage somebody within the farm to do their bit for the farming community by joining a committee or a board. Don’t consider involvement as a distraction from farming. As regulations become more intrusive, helping to represent farmers with governments and the public should be seen as an important element of farming.
Farmers have been ably represented by farm organizations for more than a century. It is common to take them for granted.
That’s got to change if farmers want to continue to have good representatives near to the decision-makers and wandering the halls of power.
The statues on the legislature ground and carved into its stone are of mostly forgotten people. It’s easy to ignore them in the hustle and bustle of today.
Don’t let farmers become a living version of that. Farmers and farming are going to remain a major element of our society, but if their issues aren’t seen and addressed, the ag economy could find itself slowly disappearing in plain sight, like the statue you pass every day but never notice.
