It was a delicious Ottawa rumour quickly quashed.
Jack Wilkinson, firebrand former president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, was thinking of making a farm politics comeback.
Why would that be delicious? Well, through his long provincial, federal and international farm leadership career, Wilkinson was an articulate, tireless and fearless and often funny critic of government and politicians (including ministers) when he thought they weren’t delivering the goods for farmers.
Politicians these days have been blessed (none more so than agriculture minister Gerry Ritz) with a breed of farm leader that prefers public cooperation and praise and quiet lobbying to confrontation or challenges.
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Agribusiness leaders now find farmers anxious to sit with them at government-sanctioned “value chain tables” that assume all sectors of the food chain really want to share power and profits with all other links, rather than mounting soap boxes to point out the growing market power disparity between concentrated agribusiness companies and the scattered farmers with their dwindling numbers who power the machine with their produce.
Wilkinson is, shall we say, more old school. He can dish out compliments when he feels them deserved but is not afraid to bore to the core and colourfully label sugarcoated manure what it is when he hears it.
So Wilkinson’s return to the fray surely would liven up and crystallize the farm debate. But it is not going to happen, he says.
Reached at his northern Ontario farm hours after returning from work at the United Nations as one of three farmers worldwide picked to represent agriculture in UN Year of the Co-operative discussions, Wilkinson said he is not contemplating another run at farm politics.
“I’m past tense in every way,” he said. “I suppose some people may have thought that because I have spoken a couple of times at meetings and I’m pretty cranky on a number of issues that I see now and how farm organizations deal with them.”
And then he starts.
General farm organizations seem to have drifted into a sphere of being afraid to offend.
They have “divested” many of the issues on the table to often better-funded commodity organizations.
They are investing much effort on long-term policy design with less emphasis on fighting today’s policy battles.
“I’m of the view that if you don’t push your own opinions and sometimes do it forcefully, you’re not really part of the conversation,” he said. “You either have a general farm organization that represents the broad industry interest and balances needs with issues or you have broad commodity coalitions. I obviously am partial to the former model.”
Wilkinson said farmers are confronted by ever-more-powerful retail, processing and input sectors with little response.
“They can pick the winners and losers,” he said. “Among other things, I really think farmers are losing control of the traceability issue. I guess I think the leadership is looking a little tired these days and I fear the outcome if we don’t have a stronger role in the debate.”
Then you could almost see him smile over the phone.
“But I don’t want to sound like just another cranky old man.”
