The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is pushing for a national food strategy that connects farmers to a broader, consumer-friendly policy.
“Canada could be positioning itself to be a major contributor to food security and renewable energy needs,” CFA second vice-president Garnet Etsell told the federation’s annual meeting Feb. 24.
He chairs the federation’s strategic growth committee that recommended the food strategy campaign.
“If you were to ask someone what is Canada’s strategy for the next 25 years, what would they answer?” he asked delegates.
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“We have short-term programming. We have mistaken programming for goals, and the spending is not particularly strategic.”
CFA president Laurent Pellerin said current short-term thinking does not serve the industry well.
The government is paying hog farmers to leave the industry while the United Nations projects that world population will grow to nine billion people within decades, he said.
Canada has untapped protein production potential that could be part of the solution.
“Is this a wise thing?” he asked of the hog cull program. “If it is true that we will have nine billion people to feed, what are we doing here?”
But the debate at the CFA showed it is still a work in progress.
For some, it was a way for farmers to unite so they could extract more from the marketplace.
For others, it was a way for farmers to recognize their interests are just part of a broader chain dominated by consumer perspectives.
University of Toronto political scientist and food system analyst Grace Skogstad told the convention the previous day that the ground was shifting in the food debate from “the politics of production” that emphasized the farmer role to “the politics of collective consumption” that stressed the consumer side and makes health, environment and social policy part of the debate. She said the transition in the debate has been slowed by farm organizations and rural-based
governments.
“I don’t think this is in the best interests of agriculture.”
She illustrated what she called farm organization confusion by noting that while farmers support “product of Canada” labelling so that consumers know they can buy Canadian, they reject consumer demands for labelling to indicate the presence of genetically modified organisms in food.
“That is contradictory.”
During the CFA debate the next day, British Columbia Agricultural Council delegate Dennis Lapierre said the national food strategy initiative was following Skogstad’s advice.
“What I think we’re seeing is a shift to the politics of collective consumption.”
However, there also was skepticism about whether food companies and processors would ever cede their position of power in the system.
When the issue was raised of growing consumer and government concerns about unhealthy eating, Keystone Agricultural Producers president Ian Wishart argued that farmers deliver healthy food.
“It’s what happens to it afterwards (in processing and food manufacturing) that is the problem,” he said.
