[getsmart-l] NFU Commentary:- The human face of agriculture.

[John O'Gorman]

Government, business and a number of consumers are following a food strategy for Ontario and Canada that is essentially focused on undermining and destroying the mulit-generational family farm

The human face of agriculture.

 

A commentary for the National Farmers Union-Ontario

By Grant Robertson

 

Government, business and a number of consumers are following a food strategy for Ontario and Canada that is essentially focused on undermining and destroying the mulit-generational family farm.  It might not be an explicit goal but it is the logical outcome of the policies and actions of their day to day activities.  Somewhere along the line we, as a people, lost sight of what truly matters in a society.  Community, family (whatever form it takes) and our mutual interdependence on each other and the natural environment should be at the core of our food system, yet it is not.  Instead we have put short term values that give little thought, or even understanding, that food production and nurturing the land it comes from does not run on 1,2 or even 10 year cycles.   Our food system is the hyper-extension of an economic system that was developed at a time when if you needed more land to expand to you went over the far horizon or to a new continent.  Yet the truth is that good food production land is disappearing and we are asking what remains to do more and more without replenishing its long term health. 

 

It is a foolish approach to take in regards to food production.  I am often reminded of the comments of an economist friend of mine a number of years ago.  While I was bemoaning the short-sighted damage clear cut forestry was causing, he tried to explain to me that I need not worry because if we cut down all the trees then wood would become so expensive the practices would have to change to meet market demands.  Even if this economic, bean counting approach were to prove true in the long run, it shows how short sighted the current approach really is.  See, in my friend's scenario, vast tracts of forest are destroyed, centuries of work are undone in a matter of months, watersheds suffer, and eventually local economies are destroyed.  In many ways this is the very approach we have been following in food production.  Eventually, the theory seems to be, if we put enough farm families out of business then the few really large operations will be able to feed us all in a perfectly efficient manner that reduces costs by turning out exact copies of the 'perfect' food product.  How else to explain such unnecessary and potentially dangerous actions as cloning sheep and cattle for the food system?

 

In our barn this past week I was reminded of how foolish this push to super-concentration in food production really is and how potentially damaging to the Canadian economy it could become if we as citizens do not begin to exercise our rightful control.  We are in the heart of calving at our farm.  The birth of any new living creature is a time of great vulnerability for both the new life and the mother involved.  As my wife and I struggled with a calf that was having problems being born it was hard not to think of the loss of money we might encounter whether the calf lived or died.  A horrible thought to have as we worked to clear congested lungs caused by the birthing sack not breaking.  Not a common problem, but one that occurs from time to time.  What occurred to me was that if this was not a family farm chances are this calf and others like it would perish.  No corporation would ever pay an employee overtime on the off chance a problem like this occurred.  Yet policies are making it extremely difficult for farm families to survive without having to take a job elsewhere.

 

When I attend meetings with government representatives and others I often pose a simple question.  If we lose the training ground of the multi-generational farm and no one is operating cow-calf family farms in the future, what will happen to the Canadian beef industry and all those urban jobs it creates?  It should worry you that not one person in government has ever answered that question, or provided any indication that they believe the survival of the multi-generational family farm you want providing your food is even on the priority list.

 

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Grant Robertson is a senior official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario and a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario.  The author can be contacted at grant at bmts.com

If you have been forwarded this commentary and would like to be added to the distribution list please send an email to grant at bmts.com with "subscribe" in the subject line. 

 
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