THE Easter Report, a 38-page analysis and prescription prepared last year by Liberal MP Wayne Easter calling on government to adopt policies that give farmers more market power to offset corporate concentration, has rarely been more popular.
Last week, a Liberal party task force report said a Liberal government should promise to “support and promote” the Easter Report “and commit to implementing its recommendations.”
Major national farm groups including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union have embraced the report as at least part of the solution for both its analysis of market imbalance and its prescriptions for government policies that will reduce input costs, challenge corporate power and create new tools for farmer use.
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Last week, even New Democratic Party agriculture critic Alex Atamanenko said in an interview he sees elements of the Easter Report as part of a better, more comprehensive agriculture policy.
So with all this political flattery, it is start-ling to hear the author himself suggest his report is outdated and that he has moved beyond the Easter Report in his own analysis of what is needed.
“Things have changed since then,” Easter said in an interview last week. “I think government has to be much more aggressive than I suggested if we are to have an agriculture industry.”
The main thing that has changed is a stalemate in World Trade Organization talks, which ends any early prospect of a deal that will lower price and trade-distorting foreign subsidies and trade barriers.
“With no WTO deal in sight, I really believe the government must step up and match dollar for dollar the subsidies that the American government pays its producers or our farmers simply will not be able to compete,” said the MP. “With new circumstances, I believe the need has gone beyond what I recommended last year.”
The 2005 report, prepared when Easter was parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Andy Mitchell and after meetings across the country, had at its core the conclusion that the root cause of low commodity prices and low farm incomes is market imbalance and not farmer inefficiency.
“While I have outlined many recommendations that can have some impact on the primary producer’s bottom line, the real issue remains a lack of balance and a lack of market power both nationally and internationally,” he wrote in his cover letter to Mitchell.
Preserving supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board will help domestically and trade deals should be used to do it internationally, he said.
As well, an array of policy proposals warmed the hearts of believers in activist governments and drew barbs from conservative farm groups and agri-business – a stronger Competition Bureau to investigate the impact of corporate market concentration, creation of a farmer-controlled food export marketing corporation patterned after the failed Canagrex in the 1980s, a reduction in government user fees and funding for community land banks.
Now, says Easter, enhancing farmer market power is not enough.
Government must be prepared to dish out much more strategic support in what the CFA calls a “competitive farm policy” – competitive with the United States.
Easter’s fans and supporters may have to update their analysis.
