Agriculture Committee on May 13th, 2010

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I know Mr. Gallant doesn't have time, but if he has something he could give us afterwards in terms of succession, that would be appreciated.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

If you have a comment on that, I'll allow it, Mathieu.

[Mathieu Gallant]

I'll just go for it.

There are two things. First, on the succession planning, one thing is you have to realize we're leading busy lives, and succession planning is a little taboo in every farming business. You're working with family, and it's touchy. But having somebody come in, whether it be federally or provincially, and just help us to work together, not do the bulk of the work but guide us in the right direction.... I know how my dad got the farm: it was a phone call in university saying they were putting the pipeline in, and if he wasn't coming, they were quitting dairy. That was the succession plan. So I was waiting for that call at college myself.

Another thing I'd like to note is in the recent economic crisis the Government of Canada put in a home renovation tax credit. I found the idea was great, and we could do the same thing for agriculture to encourage buying local. We need to get together with the Department of Education and put together a food sovereignty program. Consumers don't know where their food comes from, obviously, and there is a big market for retail, processing, commercialization, which are all jobs people can live off, but when you're graduating from high school you're either going into administration, plumbing, welding, or the basic jobs. If we could do something Canada-wide, something like the home renovation, which would be tax-related, so if I'm in P.E.I. and I saved all my bar codes from all the P.E.I. products, I might be eligible for $500 in tax rebates or something like that to encourage home agriculture and to see it does make a difference to support it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mathieu.

We'll move to Mr. Hoback, for five minutes.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Even though we're in P.E.I. and I'm from Saskatchewan, the issues are much the same. When we look at young farmers and trying to get young farmers into agriculture, a lot of them would say the same things, maybe about different commodities or different products, but much the same.

The one thing that was consistent, and I'm going to start off with this, was the 30-month-and-over cattle going to the U.S. That is a big problem, not just here but out west too, because if we want a packing industry, all of a sudden they're at $30 or $40 a head disadvantage to buy that cow, and more than likely that's heading back into Canada after it's been slaughtered and processed. So that's something we really need to look at addressing, especially considering the cow numbers in the U.S. are at all-time lows. I don't know if this problem is going to get any better. It can get worse. It might be good for the farmer over the short term, but long term I have some concerns.

That's one of the concerns I have with your processing plant you are talking about here. We tried to do that in Saskatchewan. We had a farmer-owned processing plant. When BSE hit, everybody was gung-ho to support it--yes, they needed it. We got it up and running, and as soon as things faded out and they could get a nickel higher somewhere else, guess what? They went somewhere else. And guess what? That plant closed.

What have you put in place to keep your plant viable through something like that?

[Brian Morrison]

At the plant in Borden we have a hook-owners' cooperative, in which every animal that goes into the plant, basically the farmers have bought in shares type of deal. The plant to this point has not been buying up to its capacity, so as of now supply has not been a problem, but that could happen in the future. As cattle producers, we're promoting quite heavily to get into a branded product, so that we start from a cow-calf producer and produce right up to the point that it does go to the plant. We're trying to implement a bonus system to advocate that, and to really build loyalty between our cow-calf producers, our feedlot and our plant. So that's what we're working on at the association to make sure the supply is there for the plant.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

My next question kind of goes to where you're at, Matthew, I think, the cluster system and looking at clusters. We looked at one in Lanigan, Saskatchewan, where we have a feedlot and an ethanol plant. Again, there was a group of farmers who got together and said they didn't like the price of barley any more, so they started out with a feedlot. That was their way to process their barley, then they moved on from the feedlot and said, “You know, if we made ethanol, we could extract more value.” The ethanol would go to the gas market and the dried distillers grain could actually go right back to the feedlot as a protein.

That's one thing I think we sell ourselves short on as farmers: that we don't necessarily grow wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes any more. We grow starch, we grow protein, we grow a whole pile of other things that are used in all non-food applications. In the same breath, I don't apologize for that, because if they want the food, the price will go up and they'll buy the food. If they don't want the food.... If you're going to pay me to grow protein or starch, well, that's what I'll grow.

Have you identified any of those clusters for P.E.I.?

[Matthew Ramsay]

I guess to briefly speak to that, I think that reinforces why we need to have these clusters. It's very adaptive and forward-thinking. I have a little bit of a background in industrial ecology, and a little bit with integrated biosystems. On a very high level we're beginning to identify some possibilities for clustering around here. If you have a dairy farm up the road, a potato farm will cull potatoes, and there are a lot of opportunities for anaerobic digestion. Even the thought of heating a warehouse with your own rotten potatoes that would normally go to waste.... Well, they don't go to waste in so many ways, but it would be so much more efficient a way of putting those things to use. The digestate from that is actually the best fertilizer you can get, I've been told. It gets into the ground at a tenfold rate compared with traditional fertilizers.

Again, this comes back to the critical mass necessary to make these things happen. One farmer cannot do it, but ten can.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Wouldn't it be wiser, instead of an ad hoc payment or so much a head that's going to get basically eaten up in the marketplace or given away, for the government to look at bridge funding to get projects like that up and going?

[Matthew Ramsay]

Absolutely, yes. I think that's what we're advocating here. It is to not look at this as throwing money at something and hoping it will work for itself, but to let us as farmers and citizens do the ground work and discuss among ourselves what we want to see happen. In my mind, that's how democracy works. We cannot stand back and expect you guys to answer things for us. This is our country too, and we need to be doing this. Through our approach, I would like to see us identify and analyze the situation and then be able to come to you guys and be specific and tell you exactly what we want to do, where the money's going to go and why it's going to actually create excess value when it does go there. The last thing we want to do is see this money, as you say, sort of dissipate. We want it to actually create value and create momentum.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

That's exactly what we saw in Lanigan in that situation. We also saw it in Saskatchewan in inland terminals. It doesn't only have to go to ethanol. It can go to, you know, maybe timothy straw or hay.

[Trent Cousins]

It may need some initial funding from government at some level, and then you'd not have to need it any more after you get up and running, once it's viable and using the waste products from wherever.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We just have a couple of minutes. As always, it seems like we never have enough time.

Just one thing. Matthew, you talked earlier about machinery co-ops, or sharing of equipment. That's something I can use in my instance. Twenty-five or thirty years ago I had my own harvest equipment for making silage, whether it be haylage or corn silage. I was growing about 150 acres of barley at the time, and I was thinking I should buy a combine. But I had a neighbour down the road with a brand-new one, so I made a deal with him. I did all his silage work for him and he did all my combining.

I don't think it's a new idea. I guess the reason I brought it up is to me it's something that is common sense and something that producers should do. The trouble is we're all so damn independent—I am, as a farmer—and we think we've got to own something. That's actually to our detriment.

I see you nodding your head in agreement.

[Matthew Ramsay]

We have really tried to introduce a layer of autonomy into this. We can't take things from farmers; we need to let them do their thing. We don't in any way deny that. It is something we are completely in agreement with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay. Thank you.

Just one last thing to Rinnie and Brian.

We talk about programs and what have you. I don't think we'll ever come up with programs that are perfect, but we've heard a lot of testimony across the country in the beef and pork industry. I did milk cows in the eighties, as well as my beef operation, but I've always been a beef farmer, so I know about BSE and what we're going through right now.

But a number of guys tell me in the riding, and we've heard testimony in different provinces, that the numbers are too high. The dollar is an issue that of course government can't do anything about. We could always manage when it was in that 65¢ to 75¢ range. But today we don't have that advantage, so we have to cope, and the only way to do that is to get our numbers in pork and beef down where they sell.

My point in bringing this up is that more than one person in my riding and at these committee meetings has said if you keep handing out money to a sector where there's an oversupply, all you're doing is making it worse. The guys who have said that are guys who are going through the same dang thing as your beef producers and as my younger brother who's farming my land.

It's kind of a catch-22. We want to do something, but if you throw away your farmer's and politician's hat and be a taxpayer, there's no way we should be, in my opinion anyway, subsidizing food that somebody in Hong Kong or California or any other place is eating. So we have to somehow come up with an idea or a way to protect our domestic food supply, because I think everybody's in favour of that, but not in any way contribute to oversupply. Oversupply, or I guess in reverse, exports, is overproduction, and I just am not a believer in supporting, basically, overproduction. And I see Rinnie shaking her head to that. It's very complex.

Anyway, we do have to close out. We have to leave beautiful P.E.I. later today. We are going to Cavendish Farms, and I believe to a beef plant.

Thanks very much to all of you for taking the time out of your busy days to be here. It's very important. Again, we know it's a busy time of the year, but it always is for farmers. That's my experience.

Thanks again, and best of luck to all of you in your endeavours.

The meeting is adjourned.