proposed by Dale Williams
Particpants: post grad student, retired farmers (dairy and beef), insurance business person, Kinsgton city councillor )also on library and health board), active organic dairy farmer, free-range urban pork producer - direct marketer, retiree - lives in the city, organic farm supply business person, active dairy farmer.
excessive government regulations affect property liberties and land use choices to be profitable. Loose access to land, ability to sell (water source protection, species at risk, wetlands)
- Cannot regulate farming like other industries because one-size fits all cannot apply: the impact varied greatly from farm to farm and farmers cannot pass on the cost of doing business to their markets.
- Need to apply reasonable regulation and provide compensation for those hardest hit.
- govt expectations such as clean water without compensation.
- An unofficial or official cheap food policy drives down commodity prices and farm margins.
- Farming is being driven to large industrial farms; hampers ability for small farms to compete.
- Closing the border to cheap imports also has the effect of preventing exports for Canadian farmers.
- Need to ensure that food imported respects similar environmental and other rules as Canada.
- Need to promote local markets. Consumers need to ask retailers for local food, then retailers will source local products.
- Consumer need to pay more because we cannot produce as cheaply as Mexico or China.
- Need to re-build the processing sector, such as vegetable canning, to consume and develop local production. Canadian canneries have to respect high standards that are not respected by other countries.
- The economist who helped Roosevelt get out of the depression, focussed on the local economy and the family farm. Milton Friedman advocated the global economy and econmies of scale, but that is now discreditted.
- Take a look at Mennonite farms for examples of family farms and viable rural communities.
- Too much consolidation in the processing and marketing gives them price control at the expense of the farmers. Need to keep borders open for price and market options, to keep the large processors honest.
- Need more abattoirs for local processing, local markets, market freedom, more sales options.
- Need more abattoirs and processing to open the market for local farmers.
- Food labelling is misleading. The Canada grade label gives the erroneous impression that it is a product of Canada.
- Need reasonable and responsible regulations that manage reality and allow business (children working farm, water protection).
- Farm commodity prices have not kept up with inflation. The price of a cow used to buy a tank of gas, but now it will not.
- A 50 cow beef herd, a good herd size for a family operation, at $500 per cow, will merely generate $25,000, which is below the poverty level, and is still only gross income before expenses.
- A mainstream farm conference hosts 100 farmers of high average age, mostly men, and grim about the prospects of farming. An organic farm conference hosts 300 people of much lower average age, both genders, lots of young people, and very optimistic about their outlook on farming. This is because the second group earns high prices, direct markets for better margins, have markets that surpass their supply.
Solutions:
How about paying farmers to provide environmental goods as well as food for example the ALUS projecthttp://www.deltawaterfowl.org/alus/?
