Census shows rural Canada is taking a beating – Opinion

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Published: May 23, 2002

THE release last week of 2001 census of agriculture results produced

the usual debate about how agriculture is faring.

The split was between those who argued that it showed farmers are in

crisis and those who believe it shows agriculture is shedding the

too-small and inefficient producers in favour of the real business

people who can make a living on higher volumes and smaller margins.

But forget agriculture for a moment.

The results of this census of agriculture should worry Andy Mitchell,

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secretary of state for rural affairs, as much as it worries agriculture

minister Lyle Vanclief.

There is little doubt about what the census says about rural Canada.

It is taking a beating. It is bleeding.

For all the bureaucratic talk from hard-working junior minister

Mitchell about community capacity building, facilitation and rural

lenses, small communities are losing the critical mass they need to

survive.

The debate about whether government policy should be geared to support

agri-business and large farms rather than be a social policy propping

up small farmers is one thing.

The debate about whether rural areas suffer when farmers, big or small,

pack it in and move, is quite another. This census shows that in the

past five years, 30,000 farmers and probably farm families left the

business and probably the area.

The number likely is larger, since Statistics Canada says 80,000

farmers who were counted in 1996 were not there in 2001, but 50,000 new

operators were counted. That “new entrant” number surely includes a lot

of hobby or acreage farmers who shop in and gravitate to the nearest

large city.

There can be no doubt that one large grain farm replacing 10 or one

industrial pig barn replacing 20 small operators strips nearby towns of

lifeblood.

It takes away families who buy at local stores, adults who volunteer

for local charities and fill church pews, kids who play hockey and

baseball.

Mega-farms, whatever their cash flow virtues to academics, economists

and bureaucratic planners, do not sustain rural communities.

In a census reaction mainly aimed at renewing the call for more federal

farm support, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture made a telling

point.

“Look beyond the numbers,” CFA president Bob Friesen says in the

federation’s reaction. “This isn’t just about an industry. This is

about our entire rural economy and society. As go the farms, so go the

communities.”

All of which focuses attention on Liberal rural policy.

In early May, Canadian Alliance and Saskatchewan MP Garry Breitkreuz

focused House of Commons attention on Liberal rural policies, or lack

of them.

Liberal defenders talked about national rural dialogues and a love of

rural Canadians and the effectiveness of the Liberal rural caucus and a

rural lens and the need to save those great spaces between the cities

and, and, and.

But in the end, it is clear the Liberals (and to be fair, governments

before them) have had policies and strategies that affect rural Canada

but precious few policies for rural Canada.

Census of agriculture numbers about the exodus of small farmers offer

proof of the cost of that strategic neglect.

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