With advice from the National Farmers Union, a left-of-centre policy research centre has produced a federal budget proposal that would take Canadian agriculture in a different direction.
In its 10th annual “alternative federal budget” published Feb. 17 in advance of this week’s real federal budget, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argued that existing agricultural policy has been a recipe for declining farm income and diminished market power while agri-business power and profits grow.
“Clearly firm and decisive steps must be taken to save the remaining family farms and to bring farm and food security to the whole country,” the centre said in its alternative budget.
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“Comprehensive measures are needed to increase the prices that go to farmers, reduce the cost of their inputs and to move to a more sustainable form of production.”
The farm income crisis has “to a very significant extent … been the result of corporate greed and government neglect,” it said.
The centre proposed:
- Spending $450 million annually to take grain land out of production. It would be part of an international grain acreage set-aside program to reduce the amount of grain produced and increase grain prices. No other grain-producing nations have suggested they are interested.
- Committing $210 million to help farmers create co-operatives that would manufacture or collectively buy farm inputs, reducing the market power of existing agri-food companies and the cost of inputs.
- Providing up to $250 million annually to help farmers switch from producing for low-return export commodity markets to organic production for higher-priced local markets.
The alternate budget also proposed that government require mandatory labelling for genetically modified ingredients in food and a label indication of how little farmers receive from the retail price of food purchases.
As well, it said the government should commit to ending hunger in Canada, giving farmers new domestic markets. It said hunger in a food surplus country is inexcusable.
“Working with its farmers, Canada could easily guarantee zero hunger for all its citizens,” said the CCPA.
“We make a commitment in this alternative federal budget to take the first decisive steps to assist and encourage our farmers to help achieve this far-too-long-delayed goal.”
The alternative budget did not propose specific policies that would end domestic hunger and help create markets for farmers. Instead, it said government could use a budget to set a goal.
“Ending hunger in Canada calls for a major commitment that goes beyond the scope of a single federal budget,” it said. “But it is a pressing and achievable goal if given the needed priority and resources.”
