BRUDENELL, P.E.I. – For more than two decades as a farm leader and then a federal Liberal MP, Prince Edward Island farmer Wayne Easter has complained about the farmer’s declining share of the food dollar and stagnant or declining farm incomes.
Now, the government has asked the former president of the National Farmers Union, four-term MP and former solicitor general to do something about it.
Easter, who is parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Andy Mitchell, has been told to figure out why farm incomes are low and what can be done about it.
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“Clearly, one of the big problems in the agriculture sector is the declining income at the farm gate,” Easter said in a Sept. 22 interview during a federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting.
“How do we find a way to ensure producers over the long term have stabler incomes? That’s what the minister has asked me to look at.”
Easter said the safety net system has a built-in flaw because it is based on the principle of guaranteeing a portion of historic income levels. Many farmers see that as stabilizing poverty, since the base is a percentage of low average returns over the past five years.
“If incomes are over the long term declining down, you are stabilizing based on lower margins,” he said.
“So we need to get at the fundamental issue. Why is farm income declining, what’s the cause and what do we do about it?”
Easter said he has not yet decided how he will conduct the review or how quickly he will be able to make recommendations to the minister.
He said he will tap the resources of the agriculture department and also the opinions and advice of farm organizations across the country.
Undoubtedly, he will receive the usual array of proposed and sometimes conflicting solutions – freer trade, fewer regulations, lower cost recovery costs, preservation of marketing boards to give farmers market power, controls over the concentrated power of suppliers and buyers and safety nets that get money to farmers more quickly.
The basic question in all the enquiries will be the same.
“The bottom line is how do we establish a basis where farmers get their income out of the market?” Easter said.
During the wrap-up ministers’ news conference after the federal-provincial meeting, Mitchell reinforced the point.
He said that since he was appointed minister in July, he has been trying to work on all the files with one over-riding goal in mind.
“We want to create the conditions that will allow our producers to be successful.”
