The problem with public farm protests is they always happen in the winter when the weather is miserable and nobody wants to be outside. You’d think that when the National Farmers Union joins forces with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture on any issue, it would be a pretty big story. But it was freezing cold at the beginning of March when the tractors started to circle around Queen’s Park in downtown Toronto. I’d guess about 1,000 farmers were milling about trying to stay warm. There were buses from near London and others from the Windsor area. Others were from east of town near Kingston and the Ottawa valley.
The farmers were united in protesting a lack of government support for family farms, but divided in the specific issues each wanted to pursue. One Middlesex farmer had just sold three cows into the market and netted $20 each. The Essex County farmers were on about the new Ethanol plants being built with Canadian government support near the US border. They were located there so they could access cheap corn subsidized by the US government. Another farmer was protesting the new green belt legislation. He had borrowed money to buy a neighbouring farm and now the bank was after him because the farm could not be developed for housing and its value had dropped.
I was most struck by a mixed farmer from the Peterborough area. His grandparents had settled the farm of 200 acres in 1872. He was now 68 and the only reason he could live comfortably is because he had a pension from the giant paper company Domtar. He had worked for Domtar for 39 years. His family farm was not sustainable and hadn’t been for over 40 years. He was out in the cold, trying to support the family farm he had been subsidizing with off farm work his whole life.
All these farmers wanted provincial government action to preserve family farms. Yet it’s been clear for many years that Ontario’s rural strategy has been to treat farm land as subdivisions in waiting. The only other interest the government seems to have is in farms that can be players in the industrialized world market. One of the ironies is that the provincial government is accused by farmers of placing urban needs before rural needs. They don’t. One of the growing needs of urban Torontonians is for food they feel confident eating. Increasingly, urban dwellers want to know where their food is coming from and who is growing it. Are their farming practices safe and sustainable? Urban dwellers don’t get that answer from the world market. This year I bought a leg of Ontario lamb for my Easter dinner. I didn’t have a choice between Saskatchewan lamb and Ontario lamb. I did have a choice between Ontario and the world market, mostly New Zealand. I even paid a premium for local production. New Zealand farmers are not bad people. It is just that I can exercise no control over the food system there. I don’t have the necessary information nor the political influence.
If the provincial government really wanted to serve the interests of urban dwellers, they would introduce policies that supported sustainable agriculture within local sustainable agricultural communities. That way rural and urban people would both feel more safe and secure.
First published in April 2005
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