imager’s blog: May 2007

New Stats Show Canada’s Farm and Food Security Risks Deepen

Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 15:49:10 -0400

By Wayne Roberts

Just in time for the May 24 weekend, when food can be planted without danger of frost, Statistics Canada released three agricultural reports, all frost warnings of a food security system facing grave danger. Don't expect any response from health officials. Lack of food security radar is par for the course in a country that has no food policy, and almost no medical or agricultural power brokers who respect food's centrality as a determinant of health. There's no inkling in
official-land that the world is entering an era of scarcity and supply interruptions, which is why there needs to be a new focus on the basics of ensuring food availability in all locations. But the stats tell us that the days of food as usual and taking availability for granted are numbered.

One report, the Financial Picture of Farms in Canada, confirms the deep dysfunction of a $42 billion a year farm economy in which 44.2 per cent of farmers lost money last year - a crisis level of failure in any industry, let alone one that produces goods essential to survival. Almost ten per cent of farms went out of business between 2001 and 2006. Less than half the remaining 230,000 farms put enough food on the table to keep the farmer working fulltime on the land; they subsidize their farm by working 40 hours a week or more off the farm.

The trend to family farm extinction comes through loud and clear in a second report, Snapshot of Canadian Agriculture. The average farmer is 52 years old, five years older than the average age in 1991, not exactly a time of life designed for backbreaking labor. Anyone young enough to try something else is getting out while the getting's good. Fewer than 30,000 farmers are under 35, a drop of 25 per cent since five years ago. Since that's the group most likely to have children, it's clear the days of the family farm, the basic institution in the ag industry across North America, are numbered. Fewer and older farmers are working more land, since the average farm grew from 273 to 295 hectares since 2001.These demographics have no future. Old farmers with bigger farms to run aren't looking for new crops that require a lot of bending and duck-walking, farm-transforming methods such as organic, or new and under-supplied market niches serving recent immigrants. Farmers that have just finished 40-hour weeks at their day job aren't looking for a chance to pick weeds and shoo-fly pests rather than apply herbicides and pesticides. And fewer farmers with fewer kids means local schools and retailers go under, as the small town infrastructure to support rural agriculture is hollowed out.

Another trend that spells food supply trouble has to do with concentration. Less than 6000 farms now account for 40 per cent of farmgate sales, a discomfortingly small number of places if 30 million people start wondering where their next local meal might come from. This is not a system designed with any regard for resilience, surge capacity, robust response to crises, or due diligence by politicians and health officials.

Alert health officials might also be alarmed by a second trend. There's little relation between what Canadian farmers grow and what Canadian health guidelines say people should eat. The government puts $4.8 billion a year into programs that fund Canadian farmers, but there's no sign that one of those dollars is attached to any directive that environmental or dietary health goals be
met.

About half the farms raise livestock of various kinds, beef cattle way out ahead, and about 40 per cent of farms raise field crops (wheat, hay, canola, feedcorn, etc), much of which go to feed livestock or, more recently, fuel cars. Only 5.5 per cent of farms produce fruit and veg, promoted by health guidelines as the cornerstones of a healthy diet, to be eaten five to ten times a day. Sweet corn, tasty but devoid of many nutrients, takes up a quarter of the land devoted to fruit and veg, and potatoes, most destined for heart-dumb French fries and potato chips, take up much of the rest. The best fruitlands are devoted to grapes for wine, said to be good for the heart but bad for cancer, and displace
apples and tender fruit, good for both.

You'd never know, in short, that Canada's food guide was drawn up by the same government and paid for by the same taxpayers that fund and support contrary products in agriculture. Two solitudes, as I think a novelist once described this Canadian trait.

Another trend is identified by the third StatsCan report, Farming in Canada's CMAs (urban areas). Canada has the good fortune to have 35,000 farms within 33 urban districts, such as the Greater Toronto Area. With luck, these farms could feed the urban population during an emergency - think avian flu or SARS, for example -- that kept California, Florida and Chicago food trucks from crossing the border. It might even be wise to partially fund diverse farms near
cities on an insurance principle. Why don't we pay food security insurance just as we insure against theft, fire and flood damage to property? Our money could go to keep farmers on near-urban lands, with an insurance fee supporting their efforts to grow diverse crops. Instead, what grows near cities is what covers the high price of near-city land. Thus, we have a big increase in near-urban
greenhouses, slightly more than half of which produce more veggies than flowers.

StatsCan views on farms includes landscaping nurseries on 69,000 acres that export irreplaceable topsoil and sod to city lawns. Horse farms account for most near-urban livestock, especially near Toronto and Calgary. Like most pets, the horses are raised for recreation rather than meat.

The value-added of alcohol (one assumes health officials weren't consulted about the ag definition of value-added) means climatically blessed areas near St Catherines and Kelowna are for wine, not tender fruit. There are almost no mixed farms and few dairy, poultry or egg farms near cities. Unless there's a big change in thinking about the food value of near-urban farms, cities are SOL in terms of a nearby food backup in case of emergency.

Canada's 3555 certified organic farms, 60 per cent new since 2001, seem like good news. The greatest portion of organic land is devoted to prairie grains destined for export to Europe. Organic is the growth segment in food retail, with a 31 per cent increase from 2005 to 2006, according to a may poll of Canadian
organic sales by Nielsen Company. Most of this, especially fruit and veg and processed goods, comes from California, so the premium prices go south.

To buck this trend, the recent Ontario budget gave $200,000 to help all Ontario organic farmers fight the California competition in their home market. To put that in perspective, $200,000 is half the estimated water irrigation subsidy for each and every large exporting farm in California, according to estimates by the Environmental Working Group. For the people in charge of ag policy, some things never add up.

(Adapted from NOW Magazine, May 24 - 30, 2007)