IT’S CANADIAN Federation of Agriculture annual meeting week in Ottawa and something is strangely missing.
It’s the noise, the speeches, the farmer rally for a financial bailout.
To paraphrase the Rolling Stones’ anthem Street Fighting Man, recorded 39 years ago this month, what’s missing is:
“The sound of marching, charging feet, boy; cause March is here and the time is right for farmers in the street, boy.”
Almost without fail during the past decade, the CFA annual meeting has coincided with springtime agitation in the countryside for emergency aid.
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The CFA meeting often became the forum either to ratchet up the pressure or to hear ministerial announcements.
Almost always, the minister’s announcement of dollars hard won in cabinet hand-to-hand combat was met coolly, sometimes angrily, by farmers.
Remember late February 2000 when Ottawa, Manitoba and Saskatchewan announced $400 million in aid to grains, oilseeds and special crops producers in those provinces. Farmers elsewhere were outraged.
“What about the rest of our farmers?” CFA president Bob Friesen asked. “A one-time boost for a specific region cannot alleviate a national, multi-faceted crisis.”
In 2001, then-minister Lyle Vanclief had a disastrous appearance before the CFA when he brought $500 million of the billion demanded. Rarely has giving away half a billion dollars created so many enemies.
The next year, Friesen warned of an imminent cash crisis.
By 2003, government farm income projections brought a warning from the CFA president that aid would be demanded.
“It doesn’t ever seem to turn around.”
In February 2004, then-minister Bob Speller was leading the charge for more government aid, proclaiming an industry “crossroads” that should be paved with emergency dollars.
In 2005, Friesen used the CFA annual to warn Andy Mitchell that farm lobbyists soon would come knocking. “The need out there is great, farmers are desperate.”
Last year, it was new minister Chuck Strahl’s turn to see hundreds of farmers on Parliament Hill demanding help.
So here we are in 2007 and prospects for the farm economy are at best mixed. Higher grain prices are good news for grain producers but not such good news for livestock feeders.
Canadian farmers are several billion dollars deeper in debt and interest costs are higher. The business risk management program continues to under-perform and consultation on the next generation has produced little hint of radical departures.
Agriculture Canada projects dramatic declines in Quebec and Ontario farm income including a negative realized net farm income in Ontario, Canada’s largest agricultural province with one of its most aggressive farm lobbies.
Yet there are no rumblings of mass farm rallies, no hints that Strahl will come under pressure for more cash, no groundwork laid for a call to political arms.
Is it possible that farmers are tired of the negative rhetoric and are succumbing to a streak of optimism? Are they tired?
Or are they coming to believe that an annual call for government “investments” that merely get them through another year is not a sustainable strategy?
Stay tuned. It’s quiet down here.
