Commission urges long-term strategies; Island farmers want short-term help

The provincial Commission on Agriculture and Agri-Food wants farmers to look at long-term strategies for the sector, but Prince Edward Island farmers insist short-term help is what they really need.

The commission presented its first-stage report at a news conference in Charlottetown Tuesday (July 22).

Entitled State of Agriculture Report, the glossy document is filled with coloured graphs and pie charts showing economic trends and statistics, impacts and factors affecting the industry.

But one look at the numerous bar graphs and arrows pointing steadily downward and its easy to see why many PEI farmers have been lobbying government for immediate assistance.

I see it every dayIm in the hog business and I see hog farmers going out of business left and right and were losing farmers everywhere, said Ed LeClair, one of about a dozen farmers who attended the news conference.

If the immediate concern is not addressed, pretty soon well have no farmers left.

The commission was struck a few months ago by Premier Robert Ghiz and Agriculture Minister Neil LeClair in response to calls from the industry for government help.

The commission was asked to come up with a long-term vision for agriculture in the province and to recommend steps to achieve it. This vision for the future of agriculture has not yet been fully developed, as the commission still has a few months left before its deadline.

But in the interim, commission co-chairs Ed Tyrchniewicz and Rory Francis released their statistical look at the current state of the industry.

Theres good years and bad years but you can see whats happening, Francis said pointing to one of his downward trending charts.

The realized net income per dollars of gross revenue keeps declining.

Part of the problem is PEI producers are unsuccessfully trying to compete in large-scale commodity markets, Tyrchniewicz said.

Were really constrained in terms of the volumes we can produce here, he said. The volumes of the commodities being produced here are too small to access large markets.

So the commission is looking for feedback from producers and farm organizations to discover new markets or directions for the future of the sector.

We want to hear some of those new directions and what kind of infrastructure are we going to require to be able to aggressively move in those new directions over the next five to 10 years, Francis said.

They got their wish.

Farmers at the news conference unabashedly gave their perspectives of the commissions ideas. Many of them did not take favourably to the idea of getting out of commodity markets.

If some people, especially the smaller farms, want to do the specialty things, thats fine, Gordon Lank told commission members.

But this idea, I can just see it nowits going to be all about new markets and were going to be smarter than everybody else in North Americabullshit.

Lank and other producers present said they believe the solution lies in trying to focus on being more competitive.

And short-term assistance is what farmers need to achieve this, said Mike Nabuurs of the PEI Federation of Agriculture.

There are more policies that farmers have in our neighbouring provinces there are investment programs in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Quebec that give farmers greater advantages than we have on PEI, Nabuurs said.

It gives them the level of stabilization to be able to planit gives them the ability to look longer term.

Francis was sympathetic to the farmers calls for more short-term assistance, but said the short-term crisis is what has traditionally driven policy and the industrys direction.

My point is, this is the opportunity for the industry to think about the long term.

Many of the producers didnt want to hear this.

I think the mindset of most of the farmers is this commission is a bit of a stalling tactic, said Ed LeClair. It makes the government look like theyre doing something for farmers, but in the end if they let this run its course and this is the only avenue they follow, well have no producers left.

(This article was originally published in The Guardian.)