Local large farmers attacked the preliminary results of the commission set up to study the future of agriculture on PEI.
They do not accept that if you are a small place that you cannot compete in a commodity market.
They say that moving to a local food system is ridiculous - they claim that it will take only 7 farms to feed all of PEI.
They demand immediate help for their real and pressing financial problems
They claim that only they know how to farm and that if they go - we will lose everything.
I want to address their claims. But first of all I want to acknowledge their fear. Like every sector of the economy that has relied on having a large capital plant to be successful - they cannot make ends meet. They cannot get paid enough to pay for their plant. In the newspaper world the plant is the press, the paper and the distribution system, in TV and Radio it is the studios, the towers etc, in Autos it is the plants and the labor agreements of the past. For our potato farmer it is their tractors, equipment, storage and inputs.
It must be soul destroying to wake up at 2am and worry about how you are going to make ends meet - to worry about losing the farm that might have been in your family for generations.
So I acknowledge that this is more than hard. It is brutal. Who would not have sympathy? But now let's look at what is the reality and then at the end of the post - let's rethink.
- In a commodity business scale is the only issue. If you don't have it - you have to get out. This is not a theory it's a reality. There are farms in Idaho that have the acreage of all of PEI. There are pork operations that on their own in South Carolina have a multiple of all our pigs. Even in beer, Bud gets bought - even Bud is too small.
- So lets get real here. We are talking about developing a softer landing or exit for our commodity producers. All discussion about how they can stay in the long term as commodity producers has to stop.
- It gets worse - the entire commodity food system is based on cheap oil. There will be no cheap oil. All inputs and all the industrial system that supports commodity farming is based on cheap oil. Not the least the distribution system and the just in time food system. All of this will come to a end in the next 5 years. There is no future in commodity farming.
- So the idea that 7 farms will feed PEI is nonsense - it is based on the idea that 7 highly mechanized farms with a mass of oil inputs will provide the food. On Cuba, they have had to shift to a highly localized organic system - no oil = a high labour - local system. There will be masses of new jobs that are derived from this system. Big fields, big farms, big equipment will not work. It will mean a return to small. In some cases to micro units.
- The one thing we can be sure about is that the future will not look like the present. The End of Cheap Oil means the end of nearly every art of how we live today. Food, being most dependent on cheap oil will change the most
- There is also another powerful trend - people want real food. The only possible export will be food that has been raised in a healthy way. Industrially raised and killed animals will be like SUV's.
- Our large farmers need a lifeboat not a bailout. We have been bailing out a dying resource for a decade. The lifeboat takes them to shore where they have to start a new life. Committing public funds to a way of working that has no future is bad policy. Helping Islanders out of the stormy water is part of the Island way. So there should be help. Help now but it too must come with a price - the help must been seen as an exit strategy.
- We have done this in Tobacco - we have done this with the closing of the base in Summerside. No help without an exit intention and plan and timetable
- Finally the big farmers claim to be the only expertise. This is simply not true. They know how to manage large scale industrial processes. But are they the ony people who know how to grow food? Surely not. I have met many many people who know who to grow food. Growing food is the key issue not knowing how to grow 800 acres of potatoes. So many of us are stuck on the idea of a viable farm is 1,000 acre operation. This will not be the farm of the future. The farm of the future will be small and part of a network
News in 2010 will not rely on Newspapers or Network TV. GM and maybe many car makers will not be in business. Most of the large airlines will not be in business. Large supermarkets will be on their heels. Trucking and shipping firms will be on their heels. The entire idea of making stuff cheap far away will be over. Our financial system will still be barely capable of lending.
So why should commodity farming be the same or any better than it is now?
Any business that depends on cheap oil and a lot of capital equipment will be dying.
This is the reality.
So let's grieve with our large farmers - let's have a wake - but let's bury the body and get on with life.
