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Farming is in crisis |
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National Farmers Union (NFU) Women's President, Joan Brady When it comes to farming, Joan Brady, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) Women knows what she's talking about. For more than 20 years, she and her family were hog farmers in Huron County. "I stayed home with three children and managed the hog operation of 700 plus pigs while my husband worked off the farm," Grady said. She was speaking at the recent forum on rural women's issues held in Owen Sound and hosted by Federal Liberal Candidate, Kimberley Love. The forum that featured a slate of speakers, such as Dr. Carolyn Bennet, Dr. Hazel Lynn and United Way Director, Francesca Dobbyn, was set up by Love to address rural women's needs. "Like other farmers, we worked 80 to 100 hours a week and made negative $35,000 in farm income annually. We cashed in our RRSPs in 1998 to survive when hog prices gave us $35/hog that cost us $135/hog to raise," she explained. "We decided at that point that we had to make a change while we were still young enough to start over." The average age of today's farmer is 55 to 59, compared to 41 for the general workforce. "We have lost 62 per cent of young farmers under 35," said Brady, "and in 2007 the farm debt was $49.8 billion, an increase of 300 per cent since 1981! It was take the average farmer 73.3 years to pay off the farm accumulated debt. Is it any wonder that there are fewer young people getting into, or staying on, the farms?" According to Brady, the loss of the family farms has had wide-spread ramifications. "Rural communities have been devastated," she points out. "Community schools have closed, there is a lack of rural infrastructure, there is a lack of control over a globalized food system, there is environmental degradation and there is a lack of farm driven policy, where farmers have input." In 2006, there were 192,190 farms in Canada. In 2007, there were $182,260. In 2006, the average farm income was negative $-12,000 and, in 2007 it was negative $-3,304. "We lost 10,000 farms," Brady pointed out, "and since then we have lost another 10,000. Profits have been taken out of the food system at the producer level. At this rate, there will be very few farms left." Today, the Brady family has turned to market gardening where farmers sell directly to the consumer through the farm gate and at farmers' markets. The National Farmers Union Women is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year and, as an organization are focusing on several aspects that affect today's farmer. Among the most notable actions being taken are:
By banding together, today's farmers promote fair trade policies for individual farmers instead of just for the multinational agribusiness sector. They also promote responsible stewardship and environmentally friendly farm practices. The Brady family, in fact, practice organic farming. "For us," she says, "it was the right thing to do and this year we will be certified as organic producers."
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Farmers make up less than two per cent of the population and, according to the NFU, farmers in Canada now face the worst farm income crisis since the Great Depression with income from the markets consistently negative every year. "Something must be done about government food policy," Brady stresses. "For instance, for every four tomatoes we ship to the United States, they ship six back to us. We have no local canning factories left for peaches and, therefore, we can't compete with countries like Italy. In addition foreign investment is now taking over Canada's resources." According to Brady, the U.K. does not have the resources that Canada does and "... now they are investing in international agriculture and, as Canadians, we need to be very aware of that." "I cannot stress strongly enough," she adds, "that Canadian food policy absolutely needs to come from the farmers and consumers and farmers need to control where their product goes. There has been a great disconnect between the consumer and the farmer." Brady explained that one of the most successful countries to grow and provide product for the populace is Cuba. "When their borders closed," she says, "the country had to become more self-sufficient and urban gardens are now everywhere as they are in Europe. We need to return to that concept and part of it is educating people to use only the products that are in season rather than depending on imported produce." Dr. Carolyn Bennett also asked, "What is local? For instance, at any time in Newfoundland, there is only three days worth of food at any given time. This idea that we, in Canada and North America buy only food that is cheap, is part of the problem. People all over the world pay much more for food than we do here." "I think one of the things we can do as a consumer and a society," said Brady, "is to continually challenge our supermarket managers to have local products on the shelves because imported products do not have to meet the same standards as those that the Canadian farmer has to adhere to. Sometimes, the only recourse the consumer has is to boycott through their purchasing power." The NFU's position is that "... urban and rural communities alike depend on the environment and must take joint responsibility for how it is treated ... a system of food production, processing and distribution that is, in all stages, economically viable, socially just and ecologically sound." |
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