Farmers of the future will be knowledgeable and connected, says Brett
Fairbairn of the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for the Study of
Co-operatives.
Speaking to the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan
which met in Saskatoon June 14, he said farmers will operate in a new
kind of entrepreneurial agricultural environment.
“The farmer in the new agriculture will be networked, interdependent,
entrepreneurial with a high capacity for information and for
maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with other farmers and
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enterprises.”
That runs counter to how most farmers conduct their business. Most
prefer independence to being dependent on others.
“Farmers are eager to try new hybrids but resist changes in the way
they do business,” Fairbairn said.
He said it is important that farmers come together in commodity or
general purpose groups like APAS to tackle shared issues and stay
abreast of the trends.
“If there is a good time for producers to start building the kind of
networks they want, that time would be now,” he said.
Their influence is currently limited by “a fragmentation of the
farmers’ voice,” said Fairbairn.
“Farmers have to help define what it means to be a farmer,” he said,
noting they need to work with change and stress the positive. They need
to band together to support one another and demand that government
protect producers and prevent them from being exploited.
While old economies stressed standardized, mass market products,
Fairbairn said the new economy will merge knowledge and information
with wealth and power. It will lead to more service industries,
networks, niches and specialized consumer choices.
“If producers aren’t satisfied with their prices, they need to find a
way to move along the chain to where the power and wealth are, and
exert their influence.”
He said farmers could require full or partial ownership and control of
processing and handling operations to “ensure the system works in their
own favour.”
New generation co-operatives, already well developed in the United
States, are examples of how this can be done for specific markets.
