Norman Storch, a lamb and cattle producer from Hanna, Alta., agreed to chat over coffee about the implications of Canada’s growing farm debt.
But his definition of the farm debt is far broader than dollars owed and the annual cost of servicing that debt.
There’s a broader debt, he says, made worse by the financial crunch but not confined to the farm bottom line.
“What I think is just as damaging but receives little attention is the environmental deficit we are creating, the social deficit, the next generation deficit, the national food security deficit. These are the hidden deficits.”
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It is an interesting way of looking at farm policy and income debates, a way that tries to imagine what footprint actions today will have on the agricultural sector and the Canada of the future.
Some of Storch’s “deficits” have in fact been recognized and debated as policy issues for years but he injects some interesting perspectives.
What he calls the “environmental deficit” is another way of worrying about whether the resource base this generation of farmers will pass on to the next generation is being degraded. Typically, that debate revolves around efforts to stop erosion, soil depletion, nutrient run-off and the like.
But Storch’s concern is the number of farm acres being purchased by investors who then rent the land to farmers.
“If you don’t own it, you don’t take as good care of it and I don’t think we have the luxury of having people in charge of the food producing resource who do not have its long-term best interests at heart.”
His “social deficit” is the impact the trend to fewer and larger farms has on rural communities, a trend encouraged by governments and economists. Once a rural community is decimated, it cannot be recreated.
The “next generation deficit” is Storch’s angst about the fact that few young people find a return to the farm attractive in a world in which they have many other employment options. And if they do return, will the financial problems faced by most farmers, including equity erosion and aging equipment, mean the next generation starts off with a stifling debt load?
Perhaps the most thought provoking of Storch’s “deficits” is the national food security question. He worries that urban and industrial expansion onto some of Canada’s most productive farmland steadily and silently erodes Canada’s ability to feed itself, or at the very least to produce enough food to maintain a food trade surplus.
It is more an issue in urbanized Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia but there are echoes of it in all regions.
Statistics Canada reports that the rate of urban intrusion into some of the most productive land in the country is escalating.
“Towns and cities more than doubled the area of good agricultural land they occupied between 1971 and 2001, consuming a further 7,400 sq. kilometres,” says a study released this week. That’s a lot of land now occupied by food consumers that once was occupied by food producers.
The day-to-day agriculture debate properly focuses on the problems farmers are facing now as they try to survive and prosper but it is important to remember that decisions and conditions created now affect not just next year’s crop and farm income but the prospects for Canada’s next generation of producers and consumers.
