Agriculture Committee on April 26th, 2007

[Len Troup]

The only thing that's going to save the land is if the farms are profitable. At the end of the day, if the farms are profitable, they will be farmed. If you have a bunch of farmers who own most of the land--and let's face it, farmers own most of the land--and they're not making any money, what is the encouragement for them to stay? What is the encouragement for their children to try to stay in the game? How can you afford to keep your children in the game? You're forcing these farms to be sold by not having policies that allow profit in the farming community.

There are other ways to try to solve it. I don't want to take too much time....

I'm in the greenbelt. I'm in Niagara. Our farms have all been greenbelted and zoned so that we can only sell them for agriculture. They're still worth $20,000 or $25,000 an acre, which is ridiculous considering the return from the farm, but that's because of this potential that the greenbelt might break. There is speculative value. You can't do anything about that, but--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Robertson wants to get on.

[Len Troup]

--if the farms are profitable, they will be farmed. Right now they're not profitable.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Go ahead, Mr. Robertson.

[Grant Robertson]

Income is clearly a key, but we also have to look at the big picture. We have a demographic crisis looming in primary food production. One of the major impacts is just the cost of starting to farm. Even if you inherit the farm, you're probably looking at half a million dollars in start-up. If you're buying, you're probably looking at a million dollars in start-up. There's nobody now who is a young person who can look at purchasing a farm and say, “yeah, I can make enough money to pay for the mortgage and the equipment and any livestock I need to buy” or whatever it might be from the farm. You just can't do it. You cannot pencil it.

I've tried. And I'm in that age group where we bought our farm not that long ago--although it's probably getting more than I'd like to say--and we've been working off the farm for a number of years to pay the mortgage.

The actual business part of the farm, if you take out the land value, the part that we run year to year on our farm is profitable. It's quite profitable. But it's that paying for the land; it's the initial payment. It has to come out of some other income source, and for us it's off-farm income. It won't come. It's not that we're bad managers, or that we're just financially stupid or anything. I go back right to Scotland. Money is a pretty big deal in our family. It's about those land values.

Larry, Paul, and I all live in the same area. That competition from people coming up to buy their little piece of heaven and then demanding city services and all that has a huge impact on our community.

Right now, for most of rural Canada, and particularly in southwestern Ontario, our greatest commodity is not soybeans. It's not livestock. It's our youth. We're exporting our youth because they just can't do anything else.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Barry.

Mr. Steckle.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I'm going to be very succinct in my questions. They're going to be pointed, but one thing I want to put in focus first.

We talk about the $100 million that you're asking for, Mr. Gilroy. To put that in perspective, $170 million of a $500-million program on the farm options program is allocated to accountants. So just keep that in your mind.

On the issue of the cruelty to animals bill, Bill S-213, Ian, you know the bill. You know what it's about. You talked about the treatment of animals earlier. Do you support that bill?

[Ian McKillop]

Yes, we do.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Anyone else who doesn't? What about you, Mr. Robertson? I'm going to ask you a question. Do you support the bill?

[Grant Robertson]

Yes, I do.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay. On the issue of a crop being planted, is Honeycrisp a tree that you're planting in the replant program, Mr. Gilroy?

[Brian Gilroy]

Yes.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

And it's a good product? Because we heard about it in the east. We know that it has been mentioned time and time again as an apple that has some tremendous value in the marketplace. Anyhow, that sort of answers that question.

Ian, do you support the concept of buying Canadian?

[Ian McKillop]

Buying Canadian, like--

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

In terms of using that slogan and using that advertising tool and promoting your product.

[Ian McKillop]

Yes, we would.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Does the cattle industry support that?

[Ian McKillop]

I can't recall any real great discussion at our national level on that, but certainly the more we can do to be promoting our own product within Canada, the better for all of us.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

The reason I ask that is because we have to start standing together, whether it's selling soybeans, in the case of Jim, who I know is a soybean producer.... We know that there are some tremendous products we have. And we also buy products, but we need to make sure that we sell our products and sell Canadians on our products.

[Ian McKillop]

We have taken great steps to increase the amount of Canadian beef that is sold to Canadian consumers since BSE. It's at an all-time high right now.

[Paul Steckle, Liberal, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Also, we talked about whole farm concept. We know that's a wonderful concept, but some concepts just don't work.

If we relate the whole farm concept, as the performance of CAIS has shown us, it really doesn't work. It just doesn't work in every situation. One size doesn't fit all.

Is there a devisable plan that can be found that will deliver on whole farm without the encumbrances and without the difficulties that we have with CAIS? Does someone have a model that they can show us? Because we're talking about business risk management. This is because we have a diverse group of people just at this table. We have those every day, but it's a very diverse group this morning. So is there a way we can find to do that?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Robertson.

[Grant Robertson]

I don't know that I have the answer to what you should do, but part of the problem is that if you continue with a margin-based program, which is what CAIS is, in a declining income situation, the margin is always smaller. So every year, the next year is worse. And when you get into whole farm, and you look at a situation like our operation, which is incredibly diversified over a number of commodities, we never qualify. Our accountant tells us to not even bother with CAIS.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Gilroy.

[Brian Gilroy]

This is a personal opinion. We've heard the term “entitlement program”. If someone is farming, in Ontario anyway, they get 75% rebate on their property taxes because we know that farming isn't a very profitable thing and is facing many challenges. The NISA program was a good program in the sense that it allowed producers to gain equity and draw on that equity when times were tough. I personally wouldn't be farming right now if I hadn't been able to build up some equity somehow, because of what happened in 1999 and 2002 and so on.

We got paid less for our apples last year and the year before than we had in 25 years. Because of the dumping of Washington State apples, it took us in Ontario a year longer to recover from that, but that's a whole other story.