IT IS A loaded and politically important question.
In a modern high-tech society in which more than 97 percent of the population has no direct connection to food production and the value of farmers’ production is a small part of overall economic output, how important is farming?
Is it a key part of a modern complex economy or a “sunset” industry, feted more out of nostalgia than relevance?
The answer is an important factor as society decides whether to support farmers when they are in trouble.
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Last week’s Conference Board of Canada assessment of provincial economic outlook offers at least a partial answer.
The report suggests farming’s importance should be judged not by direct output alone, but by ripple effect as well. By that measure, its economic clout extends well into the broader urban economy.
The example examined was the impact on Manitoba’s economy of last year’s spring floods in the southwest.
Manitoba is a place to raise the issue, since the increasingly urbanized province often acts as if it has outgrown agriculture.
During the flood of 1999, attention was concentrated on the relatively small group of farmers washed out and looking for help.
Brandon Conservative MP Rick Borotsik demanded help. Along with Saskatchewan Reform MP Roy Bailey, whose farmers were also hit, Borotsik worked to make it a broader issue, to catch government and public attention. It sometimes was a tough sell.
Ho hum. To the deep thinkers who run society, where was the crisis?
A few farmers had a lost year. There are safety net programs to deal with that, aren’t there? Besides, there was no crisis in the supermarket. The food is plentiful and cheap.
And aren’t farmers always are crying for more help?
In the grand scheme of things, Manitoba has gone uptown. It is no longer an agriculture-dependent province. It has Winnipeg and manufacturing, high tech and other sunrise industries.
Ontario is the same, a place where farming often is seen as nostalgic, small town and yesterday.
In Saskatchewan and Alberta, agriculture does not even rate a full-time reporter at daily newspapers anymore.
The conference board, an influential private economic research institute, offered a few reasons why that may not be true. Manitoba’s floods were a disaster for the provincial economy and not just for a few farmers and small towns, said the Ottawa-based board.
“Spring floods that prevented farmers from seeding large areas led to a large decline in agriculture output. This in turn hammered the manufacturing sector, as sales of farm equipment plummeted.”
Meanwhile, last year marked the end of construction at the Maple Leaf hog plant in Brandon. The lack of activity there “crippled construction.”
That means more good jobs gone. The construction industry will not rebound until food processing expansion resumes.
The board suggested Manitoba’s economy will do better this year, in part because of a better farm economy.
It makes taxpayer support for down-on-their-luck farmers sound more like an investment than a giveaway.
