SUDDENLY, it doesn’t seem as grand an opportunity as it did at first.
Last September, rookie agriculture minister Andy Mitchell took the bold political step of announcing the decades-long decline in farm income is not acceptable. Causes and solutions must be identified.
Heavens to Betsy, a politician was staking his reputation on an admission that past policies had not worked and future Band-Aids were not the solution.
Heavens to Betsy II: Mitchell appointed Wayne Easter to get to the bottom of it.
Easter is a politician and former farm leader who always has worn his farmer advocacy role and his distrust of bureaucracy and ‘trust us’ bureaucratic solutions on his sleeve.
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Before Christmas, Easter mused about the core problem being a lack of farmer power in the marketplace. He said there was no single “silver bullet” but surely there were answers.
The story about his plan to hold nation-wide hearings was buried deep within the pre-Christmas newspaper and yet the phone lines in Easter’s Ottawa office lit up.
Hundreds of farmers called to say they wanted to take part. One vowed to drive six hours to get to the Jan. 20 meeting in Saskatoon.
Hopes were raised.
After all, in past ages when politics was a tool and not the problem, there were solutions to some farm income problems.
The 1960s dairy industry was awash in low prices, overproduction and hopelessness. A system of production disciplines, import controls and cost-based pricing has made it one of Canada’s most profitable and stable sectors.
Prairie-bound grain farmers who were captive to the freight-rate setting powers of the railways were given almost a century of welcome reprieve by the politically imposed Crow rate.
Quebec farmers, disorganized and weak, were given strength and political and market power in 1973 by a provincial government that legislated one bargaining unit for farmers.
The result has been the most farmer-friendly policy regime in Canada.
So despite Easter’s attempts to lower expectations about a quick fix, expectations were raised. If the government didn’t imagine there was a solution, would it have promised to try to find it?
Yet after the first week of Easter’s cross-country consultation on the issue, the clear message is that the best that can be hoped for is a laundry list of small changes that various departments and agencies could do to make things slightly better Ñ a tax exemption here, a “smart regulation” there. Easter says he might be able to draw up this “action plan” by July.
It seems underwhelming, proposals that may help on the margins but not change farmers’ fundamental income and market weakness. Expectations have been properly lowered.
Perhaps the final report should say something like this:
“Listen up, farmers. You are not a food chain link strong enough to extract a profit if the stronger links don’t want to humour you.
“You are the creator of the wealth but you are economically and politically weak.
“Rather than an independent business sector able to demand to get paid for what you do, you are a cog.
“Find your most advantageous perch in cogdom and do the best you can.
“There are no fundamental answers to the farm income problem that more powerful players Ñ input providers, lenders, buyers, processors, retailers, consumers Ñ cannot trump.
“Sorry about that.”
