Government Inaction ̴ Farmer Action*
In the absence of a Government focus on food, farmers are taking action on their own.
*Government Inaction [is directly proportional to] Farmer Action.
I’ve written extensively here about my dismay at how our Federal Government treats our farmers and other food producers.
It’s as if they assume the grocery store is the source of all their food: something that is always there, rain or shine.
I’d argue that it’s partly a reflection of the more urban nature of our country. The number of seats in Parliament and provincial legislatures is based on population. Ergo, the more population, the more seats. Rural areas, where most farms typically are, not so many seats. As a result, no so many people in those houses of government that know, first hand, what farmers are going through. That being said, every Minister of Agriculture over the past few decades has come from rural Canada, or been a farmer, or both.
This has led Canada to the enviable position of not having a food policy — or a modern agricultural policy — worth speaking about, as compared to their world peers. Further, the financial support awarded farmers, and the priority food production has in the government, is a reflection of that electoral reality: very little is provided to farmers to assist them through a climate-ravaged landscape to become more resilient so that farms continue to produce the food we need. As far as government priorities go, well, it’s very low in the pecking order. So low as to be virtually invisible.
But farmers know. They live with the consequences of what the planet is throwing at them. So, they adapt. They have no choice.
This adaptation process is happening all across the country, and has given rise to a considerable coming together of farmers to share knowledge, make their farms more resilient and be in a position to still be producing 20, 30 and 40 years from now.
There are at least three major avenues that are driving this adaptive change: associations, younger farmers and technological innovation.
Associations like Farmers for Climate Solutions, Regeneration Canada and Young Agrarians are farmer-led organizations with a clear focus on knowledge transfer of regenerative farming methods, sharing of experiences by other farmers to help the next generation avoid some of the pitfalls faced by the pioneers, outreach to the general public to publicize their farms and to answer concerns on the source of food and lastly, to drive policy change at the Provincial and Federal Levels.
Young Agrarians holds workshops by farmers, for farmers, with the explicit purpose of knowledge transfer. But of more importance for them is the issue of land. Specifically, how land can be transferred from one generation to another, or how land can be acquired for a newer generation of farmers, particularly in Alberta and British Columbia but has since expanded to be present in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Regeneration Canada is a pan-Canadian organization dedicated to soil health. They hold an annual Living Soils Symposium annually in Montreal, and have generated an ever-expanding map of farms that adhere to regenerative farming practices in Canada. This map is open to the public and permits enterprising individuals to seek out sustainable farms near where they live to acquire food from a source they know something about, rather than anonymously in a grocery store.
Farmers for Climate Solutions (FCS) is geared toward providing policy advice to government on how to change agricultural practices in the country.
For example, the Federal Government is in the process of updating the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a Federal-Provincial-Territorial 5-year commitment to fund and grow Canada’s Agricultural sector. FCS contributed a farmer-informed, completely costed series of propositions in five areas: Nitrogen Management; Manure Storage & Handling; Livestock Management; Soil Management; and Wetland and Tree Management. The goal of this blueprint is to completely change how farming is done in this country, and it comes with a price tag of about $650 M annually, with the result that it would drive down total GHG emissions in the Agricultural sector by 14%, make farms more resilient and provide greater food security for Canada.
These associations are led by individual farmers, and their individual stories are inspiring and provide a ray of light in the non-stop feed of bad climate news.
Take Woodleigh Farms in the township of Cavan Monaghan in Ontario. This I would describe as a mixed use farm at 500 acres that is pulling income in from several sources: cereal crops such as soy, wheat and oats, a 3-acre market garden with a passive greenhouse for more climate-sensitive crops and a maple sugar bush. Throughout their farm operations, their over-arching goal is to improve the soil, year over year, through crop rotation, the conversion of yard and leaf waste into a natural fertilizer, the use of a solar radiator to offset total energy use, and they are also thinking of converting some of their crops into biofuel to power their farm machinery.
Another example is Amara Farm in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island. Started in 2012, this 26 acre fruit and vegetable farm obtained its certified organic status three years later. Since then, it has had to deal with less than ideal climate conditions that have hurt their crops: they lost an entire crop of onions in 2015, representing about 40% of their entire output that year, due to a drought that, as the owners stated, ‘sucked the moisture right out of the soil’. Again, Amara Farm has used non-traditional farming methods to survive, including minimal to no tilling of the soil (relying mostly on hand labour), solar panels on the roof of their house to offload their energy consumption from the grid and the use of electric vehicles on the farm instead of petrol-powered ones. Most innovatively was the addition of a on-farm water reservoir to help them survive lean, dry years.
Through it all, technology has become an ally to farmers in their efforts to be more efficient, to save fuel, to reduce their chemical fertilizer use and to farm differently than past generations.
The owners of Woodleigh Farm use a combination of drone and satellite data about their farm, targeted soil sampling, variable application of fertilizer and GPS to guide their farm machinery in a more precise manner around their acreage. A lot of other farmers across the Prairies with large acreages do the same thing. Amara Farm uses solar panels and has come up with an innovative way to store water on the farm, a method that they’ve successfully made a main policy objective, funded by the BC Government, to be available for other farmers in the province.
Regeneration Canada’s farm map lists over 100 farms (and growing) practicing regenerative farming methods.
The list of organizations that have joined FCS under a common banner are from across the country, from Western Canada, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada (including Young Agrarians and Regeneration Canada). It’s one of the rare national movements that includes every region of the country, regardless of language, population or circumstance.
Young Agrarians is growing, expanding across the Prairies, finding a niche its mission of connecting land with the farmers of tomorrow.
Individual farmers are responding to this growing movement with their capital, labour and limited financial resources to make their farms and livelihood productive over the long haul.
In other words, the more government does nothing, the more farmers do something.
But, as Arzeena Hamir of Amara Farms has said, many of these mitigating techniques or technologies take money, money that a lot of farmers just don’t have.
And that’s where government can make a difference. The techniques to make our farms more resilient and to draw down carbon are known. Farmers are practicing them today. And more of them want to. The plan outlined by FCS is a clear-eyed blueprint for the government to adopt and fund to meet the needs of farmers today, and tomorrow.
Government just needs to get moving, before farmers lose their ability to farm at all.
