KINGSTON, N.S. – If 24-year-old Justin Beck is at all representative of the next generation of Canadian farmers, the sector is in for a shake-up.
He is not a big fan of an industry that needs government handouts to survive.
“Governments should spend more time on the policy and market development side and less on the short-term Band-Aid side of business risk management programs.”
He said those programs are not aimed at young farmers.
“From a young farmer point of view, those programs are too slow and too reactive,” the young east coast farmer said in an interview this summer.
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“Income support programs based on the past do not meet our needs.”
Nor is he a fan of an older generation of farmers who stress the hard times and the need for help.
“I think as an industry we have to quit concentrating on the negatives because it is hard to attract young people when all they hear is how bad things are.”
He also sees the growing imposition of environmental requirements as an opportunity for operations such as the 700-sow hog and cash crop family farm he hopes to own someday.
He is now a hired hand on a nearby farm and spends his spare time managing the crop side of the home farm.
“If we can find a way to create a closed energy loop on the farm using the methane from the hog barns to reduce our pollution and energy costs, what a benefit that would be.”
More than half a continent west in Southey, Sask., 31-year-old Daryl Frank is also considering different models for the survival of agriculture.
Since buying into the family farm in 2001, he has followed a traditional path of expanding the base from 2,000 acres to more than 6,000, looking for diversification and economies of scale.
However, he is less interested in owning the asset if renting makes more sense and he does not like today’s patchwork quilt of farm support programs.
“If crop insurance was set up properly, you wouldn’t need other programs,” he said.
“It would be based on risk and insurance rather than the expectation of payouts when things go bad.”
An effective crop insurance program would include expanded coverage and a premium break for young producers trying to get started, he said.
Last spring, as the House of Commons agriculture committee toured Canada looking for ideas about how to attract more young people to the industry, MPs heard from 28-year-old organic farmer Cammie Harbottle from Tatamagouche, N.S., who insisted the bigger-is-better model is not the answer. She is making a living on a small farm with four acres of vegetables and five acres of green manure.
She said the key is finding a way to eliminate high land costs.
“Unlike many new farmers, I have access to land without a mortgage,” she said.
“I live on a 100 acre farm that is a community land trust. Community land trusts are a mechanism that removes land from the private property market, guaranteeing its afford-ability in perpetuity.”
While the idea of a modern version of a land bank may not appeal to everyone, these are the types of ideas politicians and farm leaders say they are looking for as they try to figure out how to attract the next generation of farmers to the industry.
The new-farmer issue has become the flavour of the year, and the reason is in the numbers. Statistics Canada’s census of agriculture data show the number of farmers younger than 35 dropped from 20 percent in 1991 to 9.1 percent in 2006. Meanwhile, the average age of farmers increased to 52 from 47.5.
However, the statistics also indicate that the percentage of farmers older than 55 increased from 32 percent in 1991 to almost 41 percent in 2006.
Is it that older farmers cannot afford to leave or that younger people are not interested in entering the industry?
Governments are looking for ways to entice new entrants into an industry populated with greying participants.
Quebec has a generous young farm incentive program, Saskatchewan is looking for advice from a young farm committee and the federal government announced this summer that young farmers will be part of planning the next generation of farm programs.
“We are not giving you five million or 10 million dollars,” minister of state for agriculture Jean-Pierre Blackburn told young people gathered on the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa.
“We are giving you the key to the door.”
Farm groups are also getting into the young farmer act.
The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association has announced a leadership mentors’ program.
Dairy marketing boards have taken steps to attract new entrants through quota loan programs.
The National Farmers Union last year launched a campaign to attract new farmers.
The Union des Producteurs Agricoles, Quebec’s provincially legislated sole voice of farmers, has a young-farmer union in its membership.
And the Canadian Federation of Agriculture has the Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum as an affiliate.
“There has been a real attempt to get younger farmers and their new ideas to the table,” CFA president Ron Bonnett said.
“There is a group worried about the cost and another anxious to push the barriers aside. I do agree with the criticism that my generation perhaps has dwelt too much on the obstacles and not enough on the opportunities.”
And for all the disdain for traditional programs, young farmers are still arguing for better program support as a major part of the solution.
When the Commons committee visited Crossfield, Alta., in late May, 30-year-old grain, oilseed and pulse grower Alan Brecka from Picture Butte said the programs are not working for his 1,800-acre farm. He may have to move back to working off the farm.
“I’m not here today asking to become a millionaire with programs and payments, just enough to pay my bills and eke out an honest living,” he told MPs.
“I love what I do but at today’s prices they don’t pay the bills.”
The key to making agriculture attractive to young people is a reasonable expectation of profitability and stability, said Peter Enright, farm management and technology director at Quebec’s Macdonald College.
“That is why Quebec has the largest number of young farmers in the country. We provide that stability.”
