Think NEP For The Dinner Table

When the value of exports went up 23% the commodity prices were up that much or more. Lets see what it is in 2010-11.....

What was that drivel?

"no wars or famine have threatened the domestic food chain."

Umm...if there is a war, we would simply pay more for our food and the farmer would sell it to us.

If there is a famine, it won't matter that our food supply is not nationalized...because the nationalized food supply won't be supplying enough...

Idiots.

The one argument in the piece that strikes a chord concerns the loss of productive agricultural land to subdivisions, shopping malls, and the roads that connect them. A relatively small percentage of Canada's land can sustain agriculture, and a case can be made for protection of agricultural land, particularly in smaller provinces.

Let me see - we export dairy and eggs? Who would buy them, given that our milk and egg marketing boards keep those prices artificially high. When my wife makes shopping trips to Buffalo, she always buys butter and eggs - she claims they're half the price they are in Canada. And previous posts here complain the Wheat Board pays less than US prices for wheat, but she brings back 25 lb bags of flour, which she also said is significantly less expensive than Canadian prices. How does that work?

Hmmm. Something smells of another manmade non emergency.

I know! Let's get the government to intervene!

KevinB right on! The tender fruit lands of the Niagara Region have been changed from growing Grape juice and Grape jam types of grapes (labrusca) to hybrid grapes (vinis vinisfera) over the last four decades or so. This is good as it changes the $ yield from hundreds of $ per acre to five figure thousand $ per acre. the difficulty being faced is the pressure from developers to convert the land to residential development. This is mainly to meet a demand from retiring Toronto baby boomers converting their excessively priced Toronto properties into a "wonderful" retreat in one of Canada's historical area. Niagara-on-the-Lake. Cheers;

More government regulation. what could possibly be wrong with that?

While no one will ever mistake me for an expert on the ins and outs of import and export, as a family we are blessed to know a thing or two about food production thanks to a rural upbringing. This currently includes a garden, a backyard chicken flock, hunting and finding as many of our food items locally as possible.

Ironically the three food products the writer names; dairy, eggs and honey are products that are produced locally in most jurisdictions in Canada excepting the far North or the most extremely urban settings.

The only one of the three that is actually illegal to purchase directly from a local producer is milk or dairy products.

Does agriculture face some significant challenges as a way of life and as an industry in Canada? Absolutely.

Unfortunately one of the largest challenges to agriculture and food production is the gap of understanding that has grown between the urban and the rural across our nation.

"A local food movement" should be just that... A movement. While the writer may be well meaning the agricultural community will roll their eyes and get ready for yet another wave of inefficient paperwork and bureaucratic nightmares that serve to further separate the urban and rural from the reality that human beings should be as close to the origin of their food supply as possible.

Anytime human beings are distanced from their own ability to be involved in their producing of food the decline of their society is well underway.

I personally have never seen any corporation owning any land in my life. What I have seen is some farmers who have sold their businesses to try a more profitable one. To be fair to them, there was a lot of good reasons to get out of it but in some cases a couple courses in business would have made a difference to stay in.

On the other side of this, I have a lot of very well to do friends who are farmers and some have increased their operations by up to 400%. They ate up the otherwise failing businesses and gave them a way out. I wouldn't say it's crude, but I would say it is crude to believe that these guys are the ones considered to be corporations.

Any how, the food still comes from these same barns and fields like they ever did. The only difference is that the operations are less likely to go into receivership, and no bit of land sits unploughed and no barn sits empty.

Mike W:

Anytime human beings are distanced from their own ability to be involved in their producing of food the decline of their society is well underway.

Huh? Back in the 19th century, about 80% of Canadians worked in some form of agriculture. Now, it's just a shade over 2%. There are many aspects of current Canadian society I find troubling, but I think our country is a better place to live now than it was at the time of Confederation.

KevinB.... Your statement...."our country is a better place to live now than it was at the time of Confederation." is true in large measure.

I do not disagree with you in that I personally believe in the benefits that have come with time and technology... Nowhere did I suggest that we haven't made progress but one does not have to look at much of history to realize that progress without perspective such as I mention comes with a price tag.

My point still stands in that we are still only as strong as a society as our ability to provide for our households and our communities in the face of all eventualities.

KevinB @ 10:04am "Huh? Back in the 19th century, about 80% of Canadians worked in some form of agriculture. Now, it's just a shade over 2%. There are many aspects of current Canadian society I find troubling, but I think our country is a better place to live now than it was at the time of Confederation."

Mike W still has a point though, and that is that a lot of people almost believe animals are raised sandwiched between shrink wrap and styrofoam.

I'm not sure if the "better off" you speak of is entirely accurate. Living in a society where we have a contraption doing almost everything for us and a very small percentage of people who actually know the inner workings of a great deal of endeavors, doesn't exactly play well if there ever was a huge catastrophe.

On a more simpler note, we as a society have gotten really lazy but at least we have the brain candy to forget about it.

...and I am a hypocrite to some extent. I enjoy a lot of that brain candy too.

Here's a national food policy: stay away from the farmers.

I lived in the Niagara Region for the better part of 15 years. I got so that I knew what the peach crop would be like by the weather.

and I saw the bizarreness that gov't regulation had on farmers. free trade started, devastated the wine industry, thousands of acres of long standing vinyards were ripped out of the ground due to no doubt, a loophole in gov't regulation, but the farmers were stopped from selling anything to developers 'to protect the vital agricultural assets'.

rock and a hard place central right in the heart of the best farm land in the province.

it was an age old dilemma though, for instance St Catharines evolved below the escarpment where all the really good ground is but tiny Thorold was above the cliff where the dirt wasn't nearly as good. the logic seemed to be 'lets live right on top of the best stuff and ruin it, and leave the marginal parts undeveloped'.

all ass backwards, just like all that gov't regulation regulation regulation.

Once a farm reaches a certain size it makes sense to incorporate. Your family can be the Board. Just because an operation is Corporate does not mean it isn't a family farm.

So lets see. You work your whole life on the farm and your kids see the government controlling more and more of your operation, and decide not to get into the family business. Exactly what is the farmer supposed to do? When the time comes when you just get too tired and worn out to get up everyday before dawn to work your a$$ off every single day without days off, totally dependent on the weather, and then have the government tell you that you can't sell your product to anyone but them, you just pack it in and sell to someone who will give you a decent price for your farm. If you happen to live near enough to a city, maybe a developer will buy to build a subdivision. Or better yet develop it yourself, to sell to all the folks who want to live the dream of having their own house. And some actual land with it. Instead of having to live in a tower above (hopefully) all the pollution in the city. Stop the government interference in all our lives, be it the marketing boards, NEP type programs and get back to doing what you are supposed to do which is provide us the opportunity to prosper with peace and order. Good government is a pipe dream so forget about that.
Oh and by the way happy Boxing Day...

"Once a farm reaches a certain size it makes sense to incorporate. Your family can be the Board. Just because an operation is Corporate does not mean it isn't a family farm."

I have never met a farmer other than a hobby farmer who hasn't incorporated, it makes sense tax wise. I was imagining this article was referring to companies like Kelloggs and General Mills actually owning farms.

Knacker - think Cargill.

I share Roseberry's concern about paving over farmland. Our cities grew from villages and towns that took root originally because of nearby arable land. Their continued expansion gobbles up more and more of that land. Most of Canada is non-arable which is why we should protect our agricultural land unless we are content to rely on other countries for our food.

A national food policy should contain measures to preserve this vital resource. There would have to be some mechanism to compensate farmers if they could no longer fund their retirements by selling their land to developers.

"Knacker - think Cargill."

I thought they just processed and sold product, I wasn't aware that they actually farmed land and raised livestock all the way through the cycle.

One of the bigger threats, in western Canada, is the high percentage of land owned by Hutterites. In some counties, in Alberta, they own more than 50% of the farmland. This is actually more of a threat than corporate farms. At least corporate farms have employees, who pay income tax. We are in danger of creating an agricultural monopoly, in western Canada.

I used to be married to a farm girl, and I've heard the whole story. It's darn near impossible to transfer a farm to your children. Her family ended up losing most of their land, and one of her brothers worked for almost 20 years to build it back to a profitable business, mostly by working off the farm.

It doesn't make sense for traditional farm families to be destroyed by taxes, while the commune down the road keeps swallowing up more land, and skirting the tax laws.

The word 'Corporation' (and by implication 'Corporate farms') is being tossed around with a decidedly naive concept of the term.

Today, many of what formerly were primarily small, sole-proprietor operations, for a whole host of reasons, have "incorporated". The nature of their enterprise hasn't really changed, it's still being run largely in the same way, by the same people.

With the compexity of the business today though, considering regulations, programs, tax laws, etc., and with the requisite involvement of accountants, lawyers, consultants, and what have you, incorporating has become very popular.

Many family run operations see it as the only equitable way to bring the next generation into the venture. Used to be that young beginning farmers started out on their own, or took over from the parents- not that complicated. Starting from scratch now is impossible, unless 6/49 comes through for you (and then, why would you want to?).

These farms will tend to be larger, for scale of economy, and they may have swallowed up some smaller farms, but they provided an exit stategy for those wanting out for reason of retiring, unprofitability, change of career/lifestyle, whatever. But don't forget, this new corporate farm may have 3, 6, 12 or more 'farmers' under one name when one considers several siblings with their sons in the enterprise. But the statistics will show this as one farm of vast holdings.

And the leftists will always see the boogeyman in the evil corporation.

Many Canadians don't care where their food comes from. Even if a central government body was to monitor everything, I don't see how that would change.
I don't have a problem with locally grown produce but I do have a problem with being told what to buy. Pear trees in the Niagara region are uprooted in favour of Chinese produce and I'll be damned if I eat anything from there. Milk can be exported from the US to Canada, made into ice cream and then exported back. What the hell?

John Pinette and the no carb diet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7-keInFnFE&feature=related

I think your going to win the trip to Washington this year.

Absolutely right. Except that all of the large family farms in Canada have incorporated for taxation purposes so this article is hogwash on this issue. Corporations are not taking over farms - farmers are becoming incorporated! Our family farm has been incorporated (actually 2 corporations due to a split in land on my mom's side and land on my dad's side) for 15 years and my uncle just made a corporation this year. Our neighbours all have 1 or even multiple corporations but it is all the same families farming.

"without a national food policy, there is no guarantee that the goals of the company will mesh with those of the country."

Let's reword that a bit:

without a national journalism policy, there is no guarantee that drivel like this will continue to be printed.

Knacker, Cargill is the largest feedlot operator in Canada.

What gene has gone so completely wrong in the leftist mind that enables them to come up with such utterly insane ideas?

I used to read the Star Trek books (most of them are damn good btw, just as stories) and one of my favourite parts of "Dreadnaught" is when the hero's Vulcan buddy (no, not those two) is in awe that in Earth's past, people used to ask for more government involvement instead of insisting on less.

Smart folks them Vulcans

I went through the farming phase.....

I came home to the family farm (incorporated 1960) and swiftly discovered the motive was to de-enfranchise my parents and other involved siblings.
After that was resolved, a new corporation was formed (excluding the offender....who kept the original corporation).
Incorporation is no gaurantee against sibling rivalry---and exploitation.
Over the course of things the acreage expanded by purchasing at least 4 smaller farms.
Estate planing is in many cases the primary motive for incorporating. Enlarging is simply exploiting advantages of scale making larger more productive machines economically pheasable....lowering labour costs.
Funny thing is that according to the tax regime a farmer after incorporating ceases to be a farmer and becomes a "farm worker".
This journalist just proves that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

curious_george @ 11:19 has it right. I have two brother-in-law farming (one retired recently)there and the peach industry is all but destroyed for various reasons, lack of workers being one. There were about a dozen canning factories there in the 1960s and now none. Nothing but fresh fruit stand marketing peaches, cherries etc. left and a large number of wineries growing grapes on prime fresh fruit.

speedy @ 11:26 that is what we did north of Saskatoon (grain & equipment, not the land) in order to facilitate our retirement. Farmed 800 acres and rented 240. Our neighbour rents our land and that of two other retired farmers. Economy of scale.

knacker @ 11:57 I am not aware that Cargill owns any land, but they are involved in extensive livestock production.

Snagglepuss @ 12:01 has it right

This Sun guy sugar coats the problem of corporate agriculture. Corp-Ag is aggressive, remorseless and destroying the once large base of independent private operators the markets need to keep competition and supply diversity alive.

Monsanto with its patented proprietary GMO crop seed program is one of the worst offenders. Contrary to the monopolistic spin from marketing boards, we would all be a whole lot healthier and secure in our food supply without modern aggressive corporate-Agribiz.

Couldn't we just expand the WCB to cover,say,Morontario and Queerbec???? Bet it wouldn't be around long!

Or we could up a real sustainbles national food policiy by returning these idiots who write this commie crap to the soil.Natural fertilizer,afterall.

"Knacker, Cargill is the largest feedlot operator in Canada"

I am aware of this. I just assumed most cattle went to the feedlot before slaughter. They me be the inevitable corporation that cattle must pass through to get to our table. Still though, before fattening them up for slaughter the raising of beef still falls in the lap of small business operators, right?

Unless the farmer has a lot of farmable land these days, the main income will still be from working off-farm.

The government could explore certain benefits given to specific regions, and provinces, if they really want to make for fair play.

It would also bring the production closer to local if Quebec, for example, did not have monopoly on certain dairy and egg products across the country.

Somehow I cannot see this tackled, can you?

The same goes for that dratted Canadian Wheat Board that stiffles Western farmers from creating local business ventures.

There is something about a true farmer that will have them not giving up easily. Imagine what they could do, if they had real freedom to do business.

Bill @ 1:41pm

That is an issue, if only one chooses to use their seed. There are other seed companies as well who have very controlling contracts.

The saddest part of Canadian agriculture is the return of the 'tenant farmer' - at least in grain production.

An area that, 40 years ago, may have had sixty farmers, today may be farmed by just six. A factor of 'ten'.

Coincidentally, the size of farm machinery has increased by about the same factor, 40 hp to 400 hp.

No problem with that - it is what mankind does in the pursuit of efficiency.

At the same time, food consumers have seen the percentage of their disposable income spent on food, drop drastically. Roughly, from 17% to 9%.

No problem with that - societies have always advanced dramatically once there was a surplus of food production/producers. Everybody no longer had to be involved in food production. Money can then be spent on other desirable products - we could have auto production workers, artists and (yahoo !) hot-holiday pilots.

But something that our fore-fathers tried to prevent a hundred and fifty years ago is happening after all.

When the settlers began arriving in North America, gov'ts had policies to prevent what had happened to agriculture in Europe - the landless tenant farmer. To encourage farmer land ownership, gov'ts granted newcomers a 160 acres of land for free - if they farmed it for a minimum specified time frame.

Today, in order to remain productively competitive, farmers have to have the most productive machinery - hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth.

It also means they has to have a lot of land. Another $million. Or two. Or three ...

The easiest and quickest way to accumulate the acres necessary, is to rent, not buy. Full circle, tenant farmer.

Complete the 'farmer being depend' on others with; ag industry credit production contracts and field scouts and forward pricing contracts and leased machinery, and they are simply 'working for da man'.

This column is moronic fom stem to stern.

Quoting the socialist OFA is predictable as is the condemning of corporatism - the same business model that makes the iPhone I am typing on and 99.99% of everything else that you and I and the author consume. Wishing that the agricultural sector be condemned to a pre-industrial style of business management is bizarre.

Bill in the comments above attempts to promulgate the myth but forgets that there are lots of competitors for monsanto. And as for the loss of land in some areas there are millions upon millions of acres of far better land that is going underutilized elsewhere in the world.

The less people and capital required to feed us the better as it means we will have more of both to do other, more meaningful things. That supplying ourselves with food is not all encompassing is what separates us from all other species on this planet - we should celebrate that we become better and more efficient at it every passing day - not look to regulate it.

I read a good line yesterday:

If there was a Federal Agency looking after the Sahara Desert, it would run out of sand.

Hey...dp (is that DP in the TRADITIONAL sense??) at 11:58 am.
Get off the Hutterites case. When they first came to Canada the best land was already taken by the immigrant homesteaders who preceded them. They settled for the most part on the very marginal land that was left and proceeded to improve it to the point where it surpassed the prime agricultural soil. Latterly of course they have been buying up prime agricultural land as it becomes available. Wouldn't you do the same if you were as successful and as motivated as they are????

I do not share Roseberry's concern about the "paving over" of farmland. This is a silly worry, worthy only of rich ageing folkies like Joni Mitchell.
The free market, if left free, will prevent this non-problem from occurring.

BC, as you know, has a agricultural land reserve, a monstrous intervention, prone to unimaginable political corruption. Where did politicians get the idea that they could know what the optimum allotment of land should be? Do they not understand the role of prices in deciding these allotments.

I'll spare you my random rant about the alleged saintliness of the farmer except to say: cut it on your own or get into another line of work.

And NO we don't have to be self-sufficient in ANYTHING if we can get it cheaper elsewhere. And if you want to really help the world's poor, that's how: give up the bogus idea of self-sufficiency.

Dp: please cite the counties where the Hutterites own the majority of the land.

The sahara quote above is (if memory serves) from none other than Milton Friedman.

Where I live, in Richmond Hill, there used to be two large farms about 1 mile away from my house. I loved the fact that I could get really fresh corn from them in season.

Both are gone now, sold to developers who put in row after row of houses. I don't blame the farmers - they work very hard, and when they get a chance to make millions of dollars (literally!) overnight, they take it. I would too.

But the developments have caused problems. The city didn't build new arterial roads, or widen existing ones, and put in a bunch of new traffic lights so that traffic from the subdivisions could get on the major roads. (The subdivisions use curvy streets and cul-de-sacs so that there is no way they can be used as an alternate route; you have to use the major roads.) It used to be quick to get around, but now the 1 mile trip to the grocery store takes about 15 minutes and 5 stop lights. When you sit at stop lights, you're getting zero miles per gallon, which isn't exactly environmentally friendly, and it's expensive as well. And none of the lights are timed - in fact, it seems that you pull away from one light, and the next one turns red just before you get to it. For a guy with serious road rage issues, I find driving to be a real pain.

But the town planners and politicians love all the extra property taxes, so they're just going to keep on approving new developments. And every time they do, they increase the density. The street where I live had large lots. Developers bought one house, and then had the lot rezoned; now there are four houses. Another development took four existing homes, demolished them, and built 17 homes on 32 feet wide lots. They build practically up to the lot line, and there's so little space between houses that I don't think you could wheel the Weber to the backyard.

As a person of only Mennonite and Hutterite(non-colonized) heritage, I can only agree with Arnold Ziffell on this one.

Being forced from our homes and estates in various parts of Europe, we ventured west for new opportunities. A lot of very hard work was done to turn what was once unusable into something sustaining. You couldn't get me to live on a colony for any reason and I do despise the lifestyle, but the efforts to attain what they have now is more than commendable.

What is most sickening is that rather than the European governments learning to manage and grow the operations to what they were, it was seen to be a better choice to them to just burn the operations to the ground and push the knowledge away.

You don't have to agree with the collective lifestyle that these people live, but their innovation is something that should be text book.

Also like Gord mentioned, there was a lot of ground work done to allow the colonies to exist in North America. Also agreements that were made between colonies themselves so no ones toes were stepped on.

Land bought up by colonies has done nothing to shorten the supply of food, but only increase it. As well, it is land bought by a strong financial record.

My closest friends parents who own a massive grain operation, started in subsidized housing back in the 70's. They through everything back into the farm. Buying new equipment and the latest pick up trucks weren't a viable option, but it paid off big time. 20 something years later they had the second largest grain operation in Alberta and sold all their land to the neighboring hutterites for 3 and a half times it's worth.

With this money, they then started buying up chunks of land further out from dying operations and gave those struggling farmers the option of an early retirement. Ultimately the struggling farmers made the choice to sell, no one forced them into it.

Exactly, Knacker.

Since time began, owning the farmland has been the best option for the farmer. For both economic and security of livelihood reasons.

Which one does a retiring framer often hang on to and rent out - the machinery or the land ? Says it all.

Knacker at December 26, 2009 2:01 PM: "That is an issue, if only one chooses to use their seed. There are other seed companies as well who have very controlling contracts"

Yes, one of many an independent producer faces. In thi case it is dependency on a ologopoly's seed and sprays. Problem is heritage crop seed is no longer cultured to give excess quantities capable of supporting wide use. These corpotate intrusions alomg with government tampering in supply side controls, price fixing and taxing and regulating has doomed the family farm as a sustainable business.

I know mt 'farmer' personally I buy all my produce from 5 local independent suppliers. The bulk in-season buys have made us into a self sufficient preserves family - and the freezer holds a mix of domestic meat and wild game harvested off the same properties.

If everyone supported local producers growing heritage crops and free range meat the family farm would prosper again. Farmers have to go to coop direct marketing. Chain supermarkets are the primary customer of corporate agri-biz, take a drive to the farmer's markets - buy direct from small producers and leave the corporate farm food on the superstore shelves.

Buy Canadian buy local stay independent and self sufficient.

"Buy Canadian buy local stay independent and self sufficient."

I hunt and that is as far as I will work to be "local", unless a farmers market happens to set up shop for my convenience.

As much as "self sufficient" sounds ideal, I hope to have an acreage some day but it would be far from self sufficient. Even the Hutterites who come very close, still have a wealth of products from outside of Canada's boundaries including fruits and vegetables.

Self sufficiency is a myth, unless one decides to completely separate themselves from society.

I should add to my last post a question; how many farmers have you met that don't regularly venture to the local grocery store? I haven't met one to date that doesn't. In fact, a prosperous farmer buys just as lavishly as a prosperous business person in the city.

Idealism is nice until it hurts too much in the pocket book.

These idealists re self-sufficiency are out to lunch, as is quite common with the greenie cult! I don't deny there is a time and a place for such thinking, but some of them are stuck on stupid.
I probably could have my own herd of cows, pigs, and chickens to provide me with my needs of meat, dairy products, eggs, etc., a garden for vegetables, maybe fruit trees, beehives or fishponds as well, but at what cost?
The thing is, my business is in growing grain and oilseeds, and for that there's a narrow window for getting stuff done.
I could take time and effort to devote to these sidelines and save maybe a thousand bucks, but at a cost of loss of my main production.... worth maybe of 20 or 30G's, or perhaps a lot more, by not looking after my priority interest.
No thanks, let me do what I do best, and I'll gladly pay those who produce what I need, at a price that will make both of us happy.
That's what defines a healthy market economy- specialization.

When I think of Monsanto, I think of the Bible.

Specifically the Anti-Christ.