Agriculture Committee on May 5th, 2010

[Gillian MacDougall]

I think another thing is that, education-wise, I found that the older I got in 4-H--I was already away doing post-secondary education--I was learning more about different types of agriculture, after I'd already made the choice not to go into agriculture. I learned about different things that weren't just dairy. So now I'm looking more at agri-tourism, working with the people, educating the public about agriculture.

Learning later on about different types...changed how I looked at it. If I'd learned that earlier, I might have had a different path in life.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

That actually might provide a fairly good lead-in to my next question. It's been talked about a bit today already, the idea of educating the public so that they understand about agriculture and about where their food comes from.

I represent an area in Alberta that's quite heavily into agriculture. I do have Banff National Park, so I have tourism, and I have some other areas as well, but agriculture is quite a heavy portion of what drives the economy in my riding. Yet we border Calgary on two sides of my riding and you could probably drive about 20 minutes off the closest farm in my riding and then be in downtown Calgary. Even though you're that close to the farm, you could probably walk down the street in downtown Calgary and ask people where their food comes from. And many of them, if you ask them, would say the grocery store, or they'd make some kind of a comment like that. They don't really understand what's involved in producing that food and growing that food and then getting it from the farm and the field, from the pen, from wherever, to the grocery store shelf. That's something that probably needs to change, obviously, and you've indicated yourselves that you think people need to have a better understanding of that.

I've had different suggestions on how that might be done. I'd be interested in hearing both of our young witnesses here today comment on this.

Also, I would be interested in your opinion and thoughts on that, Mr. Lancastle, as a communications and marketing person.

I'll just throw out one specific thing--and I'm certainly open to other ideas and I'd like to hear them. I had a suggestion made to me once that I thought was not a bad idea. I don't know how it would be structured and who would do something like this and who would set it up, but it was the idea of a marketing campaign, be it a TV commercial or whatever it might be, that shows a product on the grocery store shelf and then just flashes through the different points in production to show how it got there. I'd be curious on your thoughts and your opinions on that and whether you have other suggestions and ideas.

As I said, this is to the two young witnesses and Mr. Lancastle as well.

[Ashley Knapton]

As we mentioned, the classroom would be one of the easiest ways, because then you're hitting as many kids as possible. As you just said, there's television, and there's using the new electronic means through Facebook, through Twitter, e-mail, that kind of thing.

The other thing that I've really experienced myself is this. Each year we take our 4-H projects to the SuperEx in downtown Ottawa. It's a bit of a hike, but it's a completely different group of kids you're seeing. In a lot of cases, I've had kids come up and ask me what the animals were. It blows my mind that they don't even know what a cow is.

That's a really easy way to educate kids. That's the whole point of those days--they're called the dairy days--when you bring in your dairy calves and show them. The announcer talks a bit about the industry.

I think that would be an interesting and hands-on kind of way to do it.

[Gillian MacDougall]

A bit outside of 4-H, I worked at the Agriculture Museum last summer and this year. I think that's a great way to get city kids to learn about it. It's in downtown Ottawa. It's so easy to bring the kids. We have maybe not all the different animals but the general basic animals. The kids get to go around and see. You get to talk about the chickens. You ask why we have these animals in the barn.

So it would be stuff like that, where the kids can go and see stuff. I know we can't put up a farm downtown in every city, but I think having that in Ottawa is a great bonus for everyone, for all the kids who live here.

[Ken Lancastle]

There are a couple of things we ourselves are working on. One of our main sponsors has graciously offered some advertising time at the Calgary Stampede this coming summer, and they're working on an advertisement right now showing the linkages between 4-H and where it leads to in terms of leadership. One of the commercials involves a young boy showing his steer at a competition and--flash--the next thing you know he has a motorcycle, because he sold his steer and bought the motorcycle. As far as 4-H is concerned, that's a way to get kids interested in the 4-H program and show them what it can give to them.

Certainly from a marketing perspective, we've talked about going into the schools. We've talked about the importance of going into the urban areas, and I think there is a thirst for knowledge there, to find out more about production, to find out more about where food is coming from. We've talked about the “eat local” movement, and I have never seen kids not get excited the first time they see a cow. I remember making a presentation to a group of kids up in Sandy Hill last summer, and they were a little disappointed when I didn't have a trailer with horses and cows with me.

Bringing the farm to the city is something we really believe is a huge step in terms of promoting agriculture and how close it really is. You talk about Calgary, but Ottawa is the same way. Go twenty minutes and you're in the valley, surrounded by farms.

I think fundamentally the interest is there. It's just how to bring it to them. That's what we need to find out. It might involve closing off a couple of city blocks and setting up a farm for a day. That might be a fantastic way to encourage people to go out and learn more about agriculture and the role that they can play, and also about where their food is coming from.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you very much. I appreciate your comments, and I appreciate the fact that you're working hard to try to educate the public about agriculture.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Eyking for five minutes.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank the witnesses for coming today. As a former 4-H leader, I know a lot about the program. In the last couple of weeks we've heard a lot from young people, potentially young farmers, about why they're not going into farming. It's mostly because, as many of you mentioned, of the high capital investment and low returns.

But let's assume that maybe we can get that turned around over the next few years. Ideally, if we have better programs maybe, or even some of the pricings.... Maybe we should have a floor price for certain products, or maybe there should be a marketing board, as Alex said, for some of the tree fruits.

That being said, Mike, you mentioned the U.S. and how their 4-H group was reaching out to the non-farm young people. My fear is that in the next few years there will be so many young people not interested, it's going to be hard to bring them back. But that being said, there might be a lot of young people in urban or suburban areas who want to get into food production or farming.

Now, some of the tax laws we have here, specifically capital gains, are mostly geared to inter-family transfers. Do you think maybe--and you can allude a little bit to what is happening in the United States--we should be making it easier, besides the training, for these young people who are off the farm to get in there? You mentioned mentoring, but I mean more like providing help if they want to get into partnerships.

Should there be a kind of overall program where you'd have tax laws, maybe, or incentives, partnerships, mentoring? How do you see that going in? Could you also talk a little bit about what you were saying about what they're doing in the United States?

[Mike Nowosad]

I certainly see merit in what you're describing in respect to the fact that somehow there has to be a connection made. We can go into urban centres and we can educate and teach young people more about agriculture. But that's just one point. The next step is to make that connection between how they're going to get out of downtown Toronto, downtown Quebec City, downtown Calgary and actually make it into agricultural production. So we definitely see that there has to be that connection made somehow.

I'm not sure how you do it, quite frankly. Certainly Agriculture Canada has a database of farmers, and as they're getting older.... As one committee member mentioned, if he has three or four kids who aren't going into agriculture, where's the farm going to go? So perhaps a database could be developed to make that connection. As Ashley mentioned, there was the young fellow in her area who actually partnered with a family that was going to pass on their farm to that individual.

In terms of the U.S., I think some of the stuff they are doing really relates to partnering with different organizations in creating that education. When they did the science initiative, they partnered with a lot of companies, so there was money in the system to actually educate young people about agriculture and science. I think that's something we have to do.

One of the things about the program in the U.S., though, is that they really are, to a great extent, losing their rural roots, but right now the U.S. 4-H program is the largest youth-serving organization in the United States of America. It's hard to believe that the Scouts and Guides aren't bigger than 4-H. But 4-H is bigger.

Interestingly enough, when you were a 4-H member you probably did your club work...and I don't know whether it took place over the full course of a year, but in the U.S., the way they're counting their numbers is that it's almost anecdotal, where you're going to have a 4-H club that is going to be in a very specific timeframe, and it's a very short timeframe.

One of the problems that we and other youth organizations in Canada are experiencing is the shortage of 4-H leaders. I'll give you an example. When we realized that our numbers were going down by about 2% a year, we introduced a program called “Make your Escape!” to encourage young people to get into 4-H. This was all done through print, and a little bit of radio, advertising. In the space of less than a month, we had 5,000 hits on our website for kids in the greater Toronto area to go into 4-H. There were 5,000 hits, but guess how many youth we put into 4-H? Zero. There weren't any leaders for them in--

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

I don't want to cut you off, but I'd just like to follow up your thought about the Toronto area. Most of the immigrants we have coming into our country are from rural areas—

[Mike Nowosad]

Exactly.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

—in Pakistan and India. So they have a love for or a concept of farming. It seems that when they come to urban centres, I don't know if they see a wall up and can't see themselves farming or the opportunity is not there, but shouldn't 4-H play a bigger role in reaching out to the ethnic groups, to those young people or their children? I'm sure the parents would like to see their children somehow involved with agricultural and food production, but it seems that they see a wall and can't do that as soon as they get into these urban centres. Shouldn't there be more of a bridging with these ethnic groups who are from agricultural backgrounds?

[Mike Nowosad]

Let me tell you my vision of 4-H in urban centres. We're moving forward pretty quickly on developing strategies for entrants to 4-H in urban centres, but my vision is to see the Canadian 4-H Council advertising for 4-H on our website, any which way you want to do it, in social media in Hindi and Mandarin and all sorts of languages, because I agree totally with you that there is a connection to be made.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

It's a good idea.

[Mike Nowosad]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Following up on what Mark was saying, in a lot of the countries he was referring to, 75% or more of their disposable income--and that is the case in many developing countries--goes to purchase food. In Canada that figure is hovering around 10%, and it's shrunk from about 16% not that many years ago.

Do you think that's a factor in...? I guess compared to our wages here and what have you, when they're only spending 10% on the food, they say, “Why would I go out and farm when I come to Canada? I only have to spend 10% of my total disposable income on food.”

Do you think that has any effect?

[Mike Nowosad]

I think that might have some effect on it. I suspect that when immigrants come to urban centres, they basically stay in their own communities. That's a difficulty in terms of not really getting out into other traditional Canadian programs.

But yes, that definitely could be a factor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Now we move to Mr. McColeman for five minutes.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too would like to underscore our thanks for having you here and giving us the knowledge you have.

I come from a riding which is all-mixed rural and which has a very large aboriginal population, so I'm interested in going down that line. In one initiative in our community--I'm wondering if you've seen anything similar to this where 4-H has been involved--we have an educator by the name of Jean Emmott. Her husband, Bill, is chair of the milk marketing board in Ontario. She runs a program called “Bite on Brant”. She brings 800 students over the course of three days to the Burford Fairgrounds, where she has set up something that I would say is similar to a trade show: booths to show the students where their food comes from; how it's produced, to the point of having packaging there showing where all the ingredients in the pizza came from; and relating to the students this way.

It's been hugely successful over the years in educating urban children at a very young age. I'm wondering if 4-H has ever looked at that kind of model in terms of outreach education. Have you considered or done similar things?

[Mike Nowosad]

I'm going to let Ken talk about the introduction of 4-H into schools.

Ken, do you want to talk about the back-to-school promotion programs we're working on with the provinces?

[Ken Lancastle]

Again, we've identified where youth are congregating. Generally speaking, it's in the schools, and I think we've seen opportunity there for the kids. This is a place of learning, but they love the hands-on element.

Mike mentioned agriculture in the classroom as an example. It's doing a national component where we can bring 4-H into those schools and work with the school boards to bring different elements there. For us, it's what the 4-H program is about, so it includes those agricultural components as well as what they can do and what they can get involved in.

The schools are looking more and more like a natural place for us to get involved.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Yes. I'd just pass that along as a model. I can certainly give you Jean's contact information. It has grown from a very small undertaking to a three-day event. The city of Brantford has a population of just under 100,000, so there are quite a number of elementary and high schools in our area.

Bite on Brant has expanded, and it's been huge in terms of educational outreach. Instead of going into the schools, they bring the urban students out not to the farm but a display. There's a dairy there. There are egg farmers. Every sector is represented, and it's real. The kids can see how their food begins and is processed and the end products; they can connect all the dots.

In that regard, I'd like to hear more about the “buy local” initiatives in terms of the things 4-H might have done or might be doing in the future. I think there is a huge opportunity in local markets on weekends. In our community's case we have a weekend market in the urban area, which runs Friday and Saturday. It's huge in our community, and people come.

Does 4-H ever get involved in promotion at those markets to talk to consumers and do the things you were talking about in terms of buy local?

[Ashley Knapton]

In my club specifically, we have gone into the farmers market. We went to the local school and different places like that where we were hitting a different demographic and educating them, not necessarily about the whole food system but even just 4-H, trying to get more kids out and get more kids involved. Since we go to a lot of fairs with our calves, one of the things our club is really big on is teaching us how to talk to city people. As Ken said, they like to be hands-on. One of the biggest questions we always get asked at the fairs is if it's all right to touch the calves. So we teach them how to bring them in and we talk to them about where their food is coming from. Our club is really trying to get outside the box.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Excellent.

The last point I'd like you to share with us is on the aboriginal community. In my case there is a 12,500 population on Six Nations of the Grand River. There is a huge potential to cultivate new farm operations and getting people into farming. Typically, these economies have not been robust on first nations territories. What are some of the initiatives through which you see an opportunity going forward?

[Mike Nowosad]

In 2004 we did a survey of the aboriginal community. We surveyed 400 bands, individuals, chiefs, etc., and we asked whether they were interested in aboriginal 4-H. The response rate was 98% yes. It was very positive in that regard, so through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada funding we introduced a pilot program in six provinces. We were introducing 4-H to the aboriginal community. In 2008 the Saskatchewan 4-H Council experienced the only growth in 4-H across the country, and it was exclusively due to aboriginal 4-H programming.

There is a significant commitment right now from provincial governments, especially in the west, and certainly Nova Scotia is a province that is interested concerning aboriginal 4-H, but there are two problems. Of the two roadblocks we experienced in terms of aboriginal 4-H, number one is cost. Aboriginal 4-H members find it difficult to provide $50 for an annual membership fee. I find that hard to believe, but it is a fact. The second thing is there is no history of volunteerism in the aboriginal community. As a result, there is a cost element with regard to needing dedicated staff. In each province through our program, we have had one or two dedicated staff working with 4-H members, training the young adults--there are a lot of young parents in the aboriginal community--and teaching them how to be volunteer leaders. That's going to be a generational thing.

We're currently in the process of trying to reintroduce the aboriginal program through federal funding, and that would be a partnership with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. We are having some difficulties in that regard concerning sourcing the money. I really can't speak more to that, because right now it's in the hands of the department, but I know there is difficulty getting money out of INAC. That would be huge for us to continue the programming because there is a market for young people to really make an awful lot of things out of their lives. Certainly we have the youth organization contacts, Scouts, Guides, National Association of Friendship Centres. I would love to see a 4-H club in every friendship centre in urban centres in Canada because they have the infrastructure. They have the buildings etc., and there is an awful lot of opportunity there.