OTTAWA (Staff) – Canada’s increasingly fractious and often under-funded farm lobby is a symbol of declining farmer influence in the country, says a former national and international farm leader.
Glenn Flaten, recently retired from a federal government job after many years as a leading farm lobbyist, said last week the Canadian farm lobby has been weakening in recent years.
“I would say if you look in general, the farmer voice is strengthening in many countries,” he said. “In Canada, I see it weakening.”
In part, it’s because the trend in recent years has been for farmers to organize around commodity interests rather than general farm issues, he said in a Sept. 7 interview.
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In part it’s because provincial and regional interests are threatening the cohesion of once-unified industry groups formed around marketing boards.
And in part, it’s a reflection of financial and organizational weakness within some provincial member organizations of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
“I’m concerned about it, the direction of the farm lobby here,” he said. “The NFU (National Farmers Union) appears to have less impact than it did and many of the provincial federations are having real problems.”
Increasingly, instead of farmers hammering out differences among themselves and taking a strong majority position to government, farm organizations are relying on government to form advisory groups, filled with conflicting opinions, from which governments squeeze a lowest-common-denominator solution.
“Of course, it also gives the government the opportunity to do its own thing, to promote its own agenda,” said Flaten. “We have seen examples of that in recent years.”
The one-time Saskatchewan grain, hog and chicken farmer served four years as president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, four years before that as president of the CFA and before that, three years as president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Agriculture.
He retired this summer after eight years as a part-time member of the National Farm Products Council.
Flaten said in many countries he visited during his years at the head of the IFAP, the trend was toward creating farm organizations that went beyond commodity organizations.
He has formed a consulting company that will work with farmers in developing countries to build organizations that will give them an extension and education vehicle.
