Arlene Dickinson recently made a compelling case for Canada to become the agrifood superpower it ought to be. I read it with interest. . . And then the wheels started turning. “Hang on a second,” I said to myself. . .

I’ve linked to the post below so you can read it for yourself. If you’re not a Facebook person, allow me to sum up — Arlene, a venture capitalist investor sort of human, is making the argument that Canada is an agricultural powerhouse but that we’re not maximizing our value because our focus has always been on exporting raw commodities (like canola, soy beans etc) rather than processing them here. Dickinson wants to see Canada invest heavily in domestic, value-added processing, infrastructure and agrifood businesses and turning Canadian ingredients into Canadian products (a concept often called “reshoring”) which can then be sold domestically and exported internationally.

Basically, grow it here, process it here, brand it here, sell it to Canada and the world!!!

(Is it just me or do any of my fellow Gen X hear the crowing cries of one demented lab rat in all this?? “What’s the plan today, Brain????” O. Just me. Right. Carry on.)

Her argument is straightforward — Canada is very good at growing things. We rank fifth globally in commodity exports, but only 11th in processed food exports. We grow the ingredients, ship them away and leave much of the value somewhere between the farm gate and the grocery shelf.

Dickinson argues that Canada needs more domestic processing capacity and you won’t get any argument from me, I think she’s right.

Hold Up There, Sparky

But.

I also think how we build that capacity matters every bit as much as whether we build it. Let’s look at some facts on-the-ground, shall we?

Canadian agriculture and agrifood are already extraordinarily consolidated. Look at meat packing, grocery retail, seed companies or farmland itself. Building enormous new processing capacity without deliberately addressing ownership means we could simply reproduce the system we already have, only bigger. Bigger and more brittle, bigger and less able to withstand global shocks.

Additionally, consolidation in the retail grocery sector — this is just one example across the agricultural sector — currently puts the big five companies in control of 75 per cent of sales. With that kind of economic control, these retailers don’t even have to do direct government lobbying, they can exert an extraordinary amount of structural power. Policy makers have to listen, even when the powers-that-be in the chain stores haven’t picked up the phone. Yet.

Consolidation has another consequence — land increasingly becomes the currency with which more land is bought. As farms grow larger and land appreciates, established operators accumulate equity they can leverage to expand again. Gobbling up vast bites of land, the effect is that land prices have skyrocketed. Put a pin in that, it’s important.

Rich On Paper

In economic systems terms, reshoring production/processing capacity makes all the sense in the world, assuming you can end-run the consolidation risks. Let’s say you do that — who is going to actually take on the day-to-day operations of new production, infrastructure and training?

Don’t look at farmers.

Canadian farmers are already unbelievably stretched. Experts at pinching their pennies, these are folks who have made thrift a way of life, it’s what has kept farm families on the farm. And a growing body of research shows that the majority can no longer meet their needs on farm revenue alone. A Government of Alberta report paints a clear snapshot — for most farming families, income from off-farm jobs is what’s keeping their collective heads above water.

What does that mean in real terms? It means that for folks who want to get into farming — the next generation — or take on some of these agricultural-adjacent opportunities Arlene is talking about, there’s no realistic way for them to do that without a hefty infusion of off-farm funds. . . or nerves of steel when it comes to soaring debt.

All of this produces one of the stranger paradoxes in Canadian agriculture — farmers can be spectacularly rich on paper (the land! The tractors! The buildings! The bins!) but still struggle to make the farm pay its own bills. Appreciating land inflates the balance sheet — and provides collateral for still more borrowing — but it doesn’t necessarily put grocery money in the bank. So what does it mean?

In real terms, often a willingness to work a full 9-to-5 and then come home to work some more in order to pay your lenders . . . Sure. That sounds like a great time.

And how about the longevity of the sector? Let’s look at that.

Dropping In Harness

There used to be an old saw about people working until they dropped. Like an old horse hitched once more to a plough they’re not able to pull, the idea was you worked until “you dropped in the harness.”

This ethic — I’m not going to call it a work ethic, you might as well call it a suicide pact — is very much still the ideal, farmers work hard – incredibly, unbeliveably hard. Farming is a seven-days-a-week, 24 hour-a-day, 365-days a year kinda gig. That’s just the way it’s been now for several generations and this kind of balls-to-the-wall, grit-your-teeth-and-get-through-it is endemic.

Farming is also incredibly dangerous. Statistics show that farming injuries and fatalities, while declining year-over-year, are still higher than in the general working population — and this is a statistic that includes children. Children.

What does that have to do with farming or value-added processing? It’s got everything to do with it.

The current crop of Canadian farmers are getting old. The median age is 58. In order for farming to remain viable in Canada, we need a new generation to take over the reins. It’s essential for any industry but in agriculture in Canada in particular, you’d be hard-pressed to find a sector that is less accommodating to new entrants in any capacity.

This isn’t as simple as saying, “They don’t want to work.” You’re right, they don’t. . . They watched their elders break down in a field (take that in every possible way you can) and they didn’t forget, they’re not idiots. They learned their lessons well.

Instead of saying they don’t want to work, I think it’s more accurate to say “They don’t want to work the way we did.” They know what can happen — they lived it as children. Who can blame them for the side-eye? Consider what we’re asking them to do — C’mon kids!! Enter a hazardous occupation, assume extraordinary financial risk, tolerate volatile income, and — in places such as Alberta — work within a sector with unusual exemptions from ordinary employment and occupational-safety rules!! It’ll be fun!

Waiting At The End Of The (Production) Line

There’s a perfectly plausible 2040 in which Canada has become the agrifood superpower Dickinson imagines with the enormous processing facilities, spectacular export numbers, huge capital investment and tremendous productivity . . .

. . . And there are fewer farmers, larger farms, inaccessible land, concentrated processors and retailers, and hollowed-out rural communities with even less economic agency.

That’s not resilience. That’s a system under enormous, lop-sided strain. That’s a pressure cooker.

Pigeons, that’s a political consequence in the making.

A Stool With More Legs Is Less Likely To Tip Over

My my Tara. That sounds like a threat.

Yes. Doesn’t it.

Canada needs more farmers, not merely more agricultural production. More processors, not merely greater processing capacity. More routes to market. More regional ownership. More crops grown for Canadians alongside the canola, barley, corn and soybeans we grow so successfully for export. We need all the legs on that there stool.

I can hear you saying, “But Tara!! If we build more processing capacities, that’ll mean more jobs!! Isn’t that a good thing? Won’t that help with some of the issues you’ve already pointed out?”

Maybe. Maybe not. The Canadian public is used to paying a rock-bottom price for most of their food. In order to keep food prices low, some of the big international processors — let’s consider meat packing as an example — import workers from overseas to do jobs most Canadians find unpalatable at wages most Canadians wouldn’t accept.

Additionally, with only large multinational corporations with deep enough pockets and the specialization required to run these facilities, you’re looking increasingly at foreign or at least out-of-province ownership. That means rural communities (where slaughter plants are most often operating) increasingly at the whim of a come-from-away ownership group who doesn’t live with the day-to-day consequences of operating decisions.

And that kind of thing works so well in Alberta. Ahem.

We need local decision-making capacity as well as local production. With our rural communities already facing a decline in population — and all the attendant services that go along with it (think of schools, medical clinics, social spaces like retail businesses, recreational facilities etc) — the ability to provide good jobs for our communities as well as the agency to maintain those jobs into the future is essential for more than economic growth. . . It is foundation for Canada’s political stability.

O yes. I went there.

From The Fenceline

So let’s put all of this together.

Farmers are facing dangerous work. Long hours. Enormous capital requirements. Unpredictable weather. Volatile markets. Increasing land values. Consolidated buyers. Social isolation. Little ability to simply leave the job at the end of the day. As a result, mental health is suffering and with the current state of affairs, fewer new farmers are on the horizon.

We have rural communities with fewer amenities to hold families, reduced employment opportunities, no or low local capacity and policy support, and a growing resentment about a fate that feels increasingly out of their hands.

Add to that calls for expanded processing capacity and higher levels of value-added goods. So far though, we’re not seeing anyone address the missing legs on our stool . . . Before we go out into the international market guns blazing, it seems to me that we should at least entertain the possibility that our greatest investment might be in the people who are already doing their damnedest to make it work. The ones looking around, watching their kids leave for lucrative careers in the city with humane working conditions and more reasonable hours and wondering what they’re doing it for.

For generations we’ve lionized the farmer who works seven days a week, carries enormous debt, misses holidays, works through injury and somehow keeps going. I love these guys and there is so much about our farming culture that’s worth admiring.

But there is also something profoundly wrong with designing an essential industry around the expectation that the people doing the essential work will sacrifice themselves to do it.

If we want young Canadians to farm, perhaps we shouldn’t spend so much time wondering how to persuade them to accept a bad bargain. Maybe building greater processing capacity is an opportunity to build them a better one.

What could it look like? Maybe long-term agricultural leases rather than requiring ownership of million-dollar land. Or how about cooperative machinery rather than every farmer financing their own?

Let’s make it easy for producer-owned abattoirs and processing facilities to get established in the communities where the producers live. Let’s resource and build regional food and fibre hubs, explore agricultural land trusts, facilitate shared infrastructure and design policies deliberately to make smaller, locally-focused farms economically viable instead of forever urging them to scale up.

Let’s fix the problems we already have before we build a system on a faulty foundation.

And Canadians will have to participate too.

Domestic processing using Canadian labour will cost money. I know it’s deeply unpopular to say so right now with so many struggling. Believe me, I’m not out of touch. But these are the realities. . . Local food produced by people earning decent livelihoods costs what it costs. We can’t simultaneously demand Canadian food sovereignty, Canadian wages, high animal-welfare and environmental standards with the kinds of supermarket prices that have been made possible by cheap labour and externalized costs.

We need to relearn what food costs — and to support consumers, perhaps basic skills for cooking, preserving and eliminating food waste. Bring back Home Ec!!!

And yes, that includes things Canadians (let’s be clear, white Canadians most often) have decided are worthless. Wool. Hides. Offal. Manure. Secondary crops. Imperfect vegetables.

A resilient agricultural economy should be remarkably reluctant to call something waste.

Dickinson is right that this is an extraordinary opportunity but perhaps our ambition shouldn’t simply be to climb the existing value chain. Maybe it’s time we looked at this opportunity in the light of building something truly resilient, truly robust and truly Canadian.

Afterall, the doctrines of efficiency, consolidation and “get big or get out” helped create the vulnerabilities we’re now trying to solve. Using those same ideas unquestioningly to build food sovereignty risks giving us a larger version of the same brittle system.

We should aim for something very different. Let’s leave room for redundancy, diversity, smaller players and — for God’s sake — human beings who occasionally get to go home.

And just maybe the great Canadian agrifood project shouldn’t be about producing the maximum possible amount with the minimum possible number of people.

Maybe it should be about figuring out what is enough.

Enough food. Enough income. Enough farmers. Enough processors. Enough redundancy. Enough land left healthy for whoever comes next.

And enough life left over to live.

— ❦ —

Let’s talk about what makes a farm “real”. In this post, I return to a familiar literary friend. . .
“What Makes A Farm Real?”

This is a Living post, a post to share my thought processes, my experience and the philosophy that underpins our activities here at the homestead. It is not a how-to, “expert advice” or meant to reflect a wider experience than just my own, on my farm, here with my sheep.