OFA Commentary #0505
Ontario farmers are running out of alternatives to keep their farms in production. They have called on their organizations to lobby government, but government ignores them. They have conducted tractor rallies and highway blockades, but government ignores them. They have staged orderly demonstrations, but government ignores them.
Ontario farmers are at a T intersection in their farming career, trying to decide what to do next with their businesses. They can’t continue producing food for less than it costs, and if they stay in business, they will be buried under an avalanche of restrictive legislation and regulation based more on political agendas than solid science.
Economists tell us that agriculture and the auto industry are the two engines that drive Ontario’s economy. Engines require fuel to run, and for any business, that fuel is profit. Maintenance is also vital to keep an engine running smoothly, and for agriculture that’s a regulatory framework that creates opportunities. Instead, Ontario farmers increasingly find barriers and obstacles placed in their path.
Agriculture’s engine is being starved of fuel and choked by ill-conceived regulations, and will soon sputter and die on the side of the economic highway – unless our governments show some understanding of the problems and decide to take action.
I could run through each of the 264 commodities produced in Ontario and for each one either pull Agriculture Canada’s number that show there is no profit, or list the regulatory barriers either in place now or in the works. In any case, we are all being pushed to the edge of a very dark and deep abyse.
One of the easiest examples to understand that reinforces this is my own farm. I am a corn producer. My cost to produce a tonne of corn is 143 dollars per tonne. This is not based on inflated input values or the more expensive land west of me, but on what are real and reasonable costs.
The market price for corn, as I write this, is 94 dollars per tonne. Using my yield average, I am subsidizing the consumer, the Ontario economy at over 150 dollars per acre, or on my small farm I will subsidize the Ontario economy to the tune of 75,000 dollars on corn alone. It’s both too discouraging and depressing to run through the other commodities we produce, but the outcome is the same – this is not sustainable.
We are at the T intersection and must turn. In very simple terms, one path will lead to a new reality in Ontario, which is the disappearance of the people and the industry that built this province and made it the world leader that it is. The other path, the one we need to take, will guarantee Ontarians a safe, affordable, and nutritious supply of food produced locally and an industry that, through profits, is both willing and able to pay its share of rising environmental standards that are based on solid science.
The only way for us to accomplish this is for all farmers to work together. It is time for us to set aside the petty differences that divide us and all of us, together, put our shoulder to the wheel and push. We can do it. Rural Ontario and the 30 or so rural ridings cost the federal Liberals a majority government in the last federal election. It is now up to us to insist on the legislative changes that we need in Ontario.
As I drive the roads, I read Ontario licence plates that say either ‘Keep It Beautiful’, or ‘Yours to Discover’. If we don’t pull together and work together through the winter, the next generation of licence plates may read ‘First to Kill Farming.’
~Geri Kamenz~
Vice-President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture