Verne Clemence is a writer who grew up on a Saskatchewan farm.
Ottawa correspondent Barry Wilson leaves the impression in his July 6 column Agrifood interests must compete with outsiders that non-farmers should not be sticking their noses into food policy issues. From two examples he cites – the Council of Canadians and the Toronto Food Policy Council – one could conclude he is especially concerned over such intrusions by consumers or their advocates.
Or, perhaps he was simply wishing readers to know that federal ag minister Ralph Goodale has been worrying out loud recently about forays by non-farm interests into this area. Either way, the final comment on farm policy in Wilson’s column appears to express his own view: “Once that wall is breached, there will be few if any preserves left where farmer influence can win the day.”
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He’s not alone in bemoaning the loss of influence of hands-on producers in the agrifood world. Of course, we should not be looking back through rose-colored glasses. While expressing such concerns implies a certain nobility in thought and deed on the part of the farmers earlier in this century, it was farmers themselves who turned to chemicals and other practices that are now seriously questioned.
That they did so in the hope of becoming more profitable and/or surviving in a North American environment which put cheap and plentiful food ahead of most other concerns absolves the producers to a degree, of course. But those are old debates which serve only to underscore the point, which is that farm policy has always been a big pond where many dabbled, too often in unenlightened self-interest.
Among the big players have been politicians seeking votes, either by champion-
ing farm causes or punishing farmers, whichever served the purpose at the moment, followed closely by corporations whose powerful CEOs manipulated farm policy to render maximum dividends for shareholders.
So why not consumers? And why should consumers or their lobbies not turn to the same tactics other players use to influence food policy? Can we really depend upon governments to stand up to corporate promoters of bovine growth hormone?
The hormone issue is just one of many. In the same July 6 edition of The Western Producer, there is a report about a bank and the Western Economic Diversification Fund combining to create a $30-million pool to loan to ag biotech firms. If consumers, upon hearing that, wonder again about the wisdom of such initiatives as genetic engineering which may irrevocably change plants or animals in the food chain, can they really be faulted for wanting to at least know if it is in the public interest or simply profit driven?
At the click of a computer mouse reams of reports are available on government-promoted experiments in zero-till farming, which is to say, farming with chemicals.
But none of this material addresses the consequences of drenching the land with more herbicides and pesticides, nor is there any rationalization of the energy question, i.e how much more consumption of fossil fuels will it take to manufacture the chemicals to make zero-till work? On balance, will anything be gained for the environment, or will it just make the farm chemical industry more profitable?
Consumers have learned hard lessons. Rather than worry about their growing interest in food policy, wouldn’t it be better to welcome this development in the hope the real fallacy can finally be exposed, which is that cheap food is an oxymoron?
The real price will be paid, in environmental degradation, in public health and in rural depopulation, the force that more than any other is now redefining the very meaning of what it is to be a farmer.
