I'd like to thank the committee for inviting us to appear. We take the view that if we can meet with people from Ottawa and different committees and different parties, it helps both of us to understand each other and it maybe also helps in program development.
I'd like to do a little introduction. I'm a third-generation farmer from Enchant. In fact, I think next year our farm is coming up for its century plaque. My grandfather homesteaded in the area. There are a lot of farms that are coming up to that century mark. We've been around for a while, but some of us are a bit fearful of the future of our family farms.
The Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission has been actively involved in a lot of the policy discussions and consultation processes through the years. In fact, it's about 23 years that this organization has been in existence. One of the things we would really like to say, as the Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission, is that we recognize ,and we hope you will also, that good agriculture policies that help primary producers to be self-sufficient, environmentally sustainable, and competitive in an international market are very important to us. If we want to sustain or encourage growth in our rural communities, we need a vibrant agriculture industry that provides opportunities and encourages young people to enter agriculture. That is our mission statement.
In program development, we've been involved in the APF 1 discussions. We went through that consultation process, and I think there were two rounds of discussions with producers. We attended both those meetings. It's very similar to what we're doing with APF 2. In the consultations with the producers in the APF 1, we somehow got the impression that the policies and program details had already been decided between the federal and provincial governments and that any inputs or program suggestions producers had were not really considered, or at least they were given very little consideration at the time.
In the consultation processes through this last winter with APF 2, producers have asked--and they've asked this publicly at the meetings--whether government is really listening this time around. Are suggestions on policy development and programs being taken into account? Are the programs and policies already decided? Is it once again a futile process that we are going through, as producers?
You may be wondering why producers are asking those questions. I'd like to share what some members of our organization, and also other organizations, have told us across this country. In the national programs that are in place there are really three parties. There's the federal government, provincial government, and the producers. From our experience, as producers, policy development in the past has taken place with two levels of government negotiating on the policies and programs while only consulting with producers.
One thing that raised this issue with producer groups, and us, was when the federal government disbanded the National Safety Nets Advisory Committee. It was a committee that was comprised of all the major farm organizations in Canada. Despite government's assurances when they cancelled the program, once again it raised the issue of how well the federal and provincial governments are listening to producers.
One of the first recommendations we would like to make to this Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food would be to reinstate the National Safety Nets Advisory Committee, or some similar committee comprising all the national farm organizations, to work closely with the federal agriculture minister on farm policy development and programs.
I'd like to get to the business risk management. We know we have been asked to talk about APF 2 and some of the things that are important to us. We're not going to touch on every one of the pillars of the APF, but we will touch on some of the more important ones to us.
As you can realize, the business risk management portion of the APF 2 is of great interest to producers. The safety net programs and ad hoc government programs under this pillar in APF 1 have provided financial support to the producers. It is fair to say that many producers would have been in far greater financial difficulty if those payments had not been made.
However, there are problems with how the safety net program works, and I think we all recognize that. They have decreased production margins....
I'd like to go through some of the things that we see need to be fixed in the business risk management part.
Decreased producer margins that many grain and oilseeds producers have experienced through low commodity prices for crop loss is another problem that we recognize in the program. Timeliness of payments is also problematic. The program lacks the ability to recognize that input costs are rising and that as a consequence, results to producers' production margins are declining even further. A disaster component is not there to address issues such as drought or BSE in this program. There is a bit of a disaster thing, but we would suggest that there is a program outside that would handle those extraordinary measures that arise now and then. These reasons and many more are all factors that we need to address in any new safety net program.
We would like to say that if the APF 2 does not address these problems, the need for ad hoc payments to cover shortfalls will continue, and they will be demanded by producers in the future. As has been said before, we don't want as producers to have to rely on safety net programs for our living. We would like to be able to have sustainable agriculture whereby we can actually extract our living from the marketplace and from what we do.
I'd like to go on to science and innovation. The focus of Agriculture Canada has changed from what was once crop development research to value-added research. The Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission believes that concentrating more of the public dollars allocated to research into value-added programs does not translate into the best value for primary producers.
We would say that leaving the bulk of primary crop research to private companies for new varieties encourages companies to change those varieties every few years to maximize their returns, not farmers'. Reducing the government role in primary production research leaves producers and the general public vulnerable to uncontrollable costs and control of seed stocks by multinational companies.
Value-added research is important, but primary crop production research is equally as valuable as value-added research to agriculture. Without both components there and having equal weight, we have a disproportioning of where the returns are going to come, leaving us open as producers to basically being held up, or.... I'll go into that later, maybe.
Environmental issues are also one of the top concerns for urban Canadians. Agricultural producers are expected by the general public to be good stewards of the land, and we all recognize that. Most producers are willing to accept that responsibility, but the economic costs can be significant to an individual producer. The Alberta Soft Wheat Producers Commission believes there needs to be financial support from the general public for to protect the environment. I would like to go into that in more detail.
There has been a reluctance on the part of the government to fund projects that enhance the environment, especially programs such as ALUS and others. I know they've taken a look at it, and there have also been lots of other programs suggested. We would claim that governments give assistance to private companies and cities to reduce their greenhouse emissions or pollution. One of the questions we're asking ourselves in agriculture is what the difference is between funding a project for a producer who protects and enhances the environment and funding a project that cuts pollution and enhances the environment for a city or a company. I think the results are basically the same, and we're looking to where we want to be on that end of it.
Now I'd like to get into another thing that very much concerns us as an older generation of farmers. I think most of us realize that in Saskatchewan the average of farmers is probably between 59 and 62 years. In Alberta, we're not much behind. I think our average age is about 53 or 54 years old, so I'm sitting right in the range of where everybody else is.
Anyway, it is usual that farmers hope that a son or daughter would want to take over the operation of their farm. The majority of family farms in Canada have passed down from generation to generation, but that is not the scenario that is occurring recently.
In many rural communities in western Canada we have already lost one generation of farmers, and that generation I'm talking about is the 30- to 40-year-old generation. Those of the next generation, the 20- to 29-year-old farmers, the upper age group of those younger people, have already left the farm. The 20-year-olds, who are still going to school or are just finishing school, are now leaving in search of greater economic opportunities. In Alberta, we see that there is a lot more economic activity and more opportunities for young people outside of agriculture than there is within.
We would say the increase in the size of farms is not only caused by poor economic conditions on the farm, and the need to get bigger is not only the result of reducing your cost of production or unit cost of production, as Leroy has said. But another reason, part of that increase in the size of farms, is also the lack of new entrants into our agriculture industry. If you don't have your sons and daughters wanting to get into the industry, my major concern in the next 10 years, if my kids do not want to farm, is who am I going to sell out to? That's what a lot of farmers in our area are facing at this point in time.
The renewal pillar of the APF mentions succession planning as one of its categories, along with skills training, value-added opportunities, and farm action plans. We would agree that skills training and taking advantage of value-added opportunities will benefit producers in the future. Succession planning is also necessary, but as I said before, there's something missing in the equation, and that missing part of the equation is the lack of new entrants who want to come into our industry.
If we are serious about getting young people to choose a career in agriculture, they need to see that there is opportunity to grow financially and to succeed in this industry.
We'd like to make some recommendations to the committee on some of the stuff we did. Should I hurry through...?