Evidence of meeting #12 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was organic.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
With regard to check-offs, the Ontario Cattlemen's Association and most producer groups have a check-off in use for different marketing tools. Does your group have a check-off? Is that something you're looking at doing to build the brand, to build the awareness amongst...?
General Manager, Organic Meadow Co-operative
No, and that's one of my points here. Right now the organizations that represent the organic producer—there are 4,000 of us across Canada—really have no access to any of that money that comes through the formalized check-off system.
I think we probably need some help from the governments to be able to remedy that situation. We pay into the systems, but the systems represent the mainstream, obviously. We don't have any mechanism to arrive at a check-off for our sector. It cuts across all the commodity groups, and that's the difficulty. Beef is beef, and dairy is dairy, but organic is beef, dairy, horticulture, grains--everything all rolled into one.
Conservative
Ben Lobb Conservative Huron—Bruce, ON
I have one last question.
In 1(d) of your submission, you talk about the regulatory burdens and so forth. I can think back to a couple of examples in our area. One is the Ontario Dairy Goat Cooperative, which has taken a very small industry in Ontario from maybe $1 million in sales a decade ago to $15 million in sales, and has just continued to find ways to do it. The other example, which you likely are aware of, is the Bruce-Huron food terminal that the Mennonite community has used kind of in parallel with the Elmira food terminal model. They've done it with their dollars and done it their way.
As your group looks to move forward, is there a way to do it all through cashflow, or, because it's so broad, as you say, trying to promote all the different products, is there a value there to help with the investment in terms of making facilities available?
General Manager, Organic Meadow Co-operative
Yes. As I said, there are two problems with the small-scale processing infrastructure, which we used to have; we should recognize that. In Ontario particularly, we had all that infrastructure. It gradually became centralized and dominated by very large-scale processors, so that now when we think of things like dairy goat, those are small volumes. You can't do them at a big processing facility.
One thing I would say regarding the regulatory burden, as suggested in paragraph 1(d) of my brief, is that not everything needing to be done at a huge Maple Leaf plant needs to be done at a small-scale abattoir. I take some exception to Bob's comments that the small abattoirs just didn't compete in terms of quality. I think many times they were faced with provincial regulations, and sometimes federal regulations, that were just not appropriate to the scale of operations. They didn't provide any greater food safety outcome but imposed an unmanageable level of regulation.
We need to be sensible about that. I think my colleagues here are aware of that, too, that there needs to be thoughtful regulation that's appropriate to the local, the small-scale, the medium-scale operation.
NDP
Francine Raynault NDP Joliette, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
My question is for Mr. Robert.
On your organization's website, it says that you seek to enhance efforts to encourage better business management practices for a sustainable and truly remarkable agriculture industry in Canada.
Are current practices flawed? If so, how can they be improved?
Chair, Canadian Farm Business Management Council
We strongly believe in the Canadian Council. I was lucky to be able to travel a bit around the world. I have been to New Zealand; we talked about that earlier. We have been to the U.S. We have been around a little and we have met with people all over the place.
We are going to improve sustainable practices and healthy competition between businesses by investing in farmers, knowledge, expertise, training, and easy and quick access to data.
Through our website, we are trying to provide farmers with information quickly, at a glance or just two or three clicks away. As a result, they can make informed decisions and they can find budgets and resources that will help them on a daily basis.
If you teach people how to fish, you don't need to keep feeding them. If you ask me how we can make improvements, I will tell you that more work needs to be done on prevention rather than on corrective measures. But I don't suggest we get rid of safety nets and programs.
The more we help producers become aware of their decisions and make informed decisions, the less it is going to cost the government to overcome a crisis, because they are going to be better prepared for it, whether with a fiscal reserve or something else. They might see the blow coming more in advance.
That is what we think. We have to invest in long-term training.
NDP
Francine Raynault NDP Joliette, QC
Thank you.
I now have a question for Mr. Seguin.
In your brief, you have said that the Canadian agriculture and food policy does not cater to future needs and that it requires resources to be reallocated.
How and where should resources be reallocated?
Excutive Director, George Morris Centre
It's a challenge for all of the ministers of agriculture. But given the fixed amount of money available that taxpayers and citizens are willing to provide, and realizing that it won't be an easy discussion but that it will take place over time, our proposal would be to reallocate from the business risk management programs and to increase the cost shared resources with producers, primarily on farm management, training, and improved skill sets, and to increase resources for innovation.
By that I don't mean simply giving money to universities to do R and D. Any other sector of the economy would be focusing on what actually gets into the marketplace. Look at what the Government of Canada, through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, stipulates as innovation. It's R and D. Most sectors don't see that as the only way to do innovation. How to get the right processes and the right product, how to look at the right market opportunities, how to have the right scale to go from a small local processor selling to next door neighbours and the local community, how to get into the restaurant business, and how to get into public sector business to sell your product, all that takes time, improved management, and improved reallocation of resources. To my colleague, Mr. Robert, it probably would reduce the need over time for business risk management resources.
NDP
Francine Raynault NDP Joliette, QC
My question is for Ms. Van Rossum.
In your presentation, you said that too few farmers are using your services.
What must be done to reverse course? Are we to expect an increase in the number of farmers who might declare bankruptcy if they don't do a good job as managers?
President, Fédération des groupes conseils agricoles du Québec
I think so. In response to your second question, yes, we can expect to see an increase in the number of bankruptcies if farmers are not good managers.
What can we do? I think Richard talked about this but, in my view, it is important to encourage follow-up and education in order to be more competitive.
Would you like to add anything?
Management Agronomist, Réseau d'expertise en gestion agricole, Fédération des groupes conseils agricoles du Québec
You are asking whether businesses need management. I have a short passage before me from the brief prepared by the Centre d'expertise en gestion agricole on September 2, 2011, for the work of the Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries, Energy and Natural Resources. The topic is Quebec's future policy on bio-food.
The brief says that strengthening the competitive position of the agricultural and agri-food sectors relies on making each business more competitive on the domestic market.
But only 15% of businesses use the services of the management council. With that in mind, how can we improve or encourage businesses? There are a number of possibilities. One is government training for farmers. Producers would be encouraged to go to management councils. Training is key here.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
And welcome to the position of chair. It's always good to see my colleagues getting promoted once in a while.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Again, I'd like to welcome all the witnesses here today, too.
One of the things I'm trying to do in this study is to really start to identify the issues we need to look at in the next suite of programs as we move forward, because the issues today are not the same ones we had when we were developing the last set of programs. I think the marketplace is totally different.
Mr. Seguin, you said that one of the issues before was having too much supply, too much product, in the marketplace so that the prices were depressed. Now we look at the situation, for example, in the grain sector, where we're being pushed all the time to produce more to feed the world. As the population continues to grow, those pressures are going to keep coming on and on.
When we start talking about different regions of the country, there are conflicting issues. Canada is a big country, and buying locally has a really good part to play in certain parts of the country, while in other parts it doesn't work due to lack of population. But in the same breath, it doesn't mean you don't have a policy for buying local. I think it's important that we do.
I look outside of Saskatoon, for example. There's a lady and her husband who were the outstanding young farmers a few years back, and they have a whole system of buying local. Whether it's beef, chickens, or poultry and that kind of thing, they're doing it through buy-local ends. They're not selling organic, but just selling the fact that you know where your food was grown.
I'm wondering what barriers there are right now that are not allowing farmers to do this buy-local system. Maybe you can give me some advice.
Mr. Zettel, I'll start with you. Maybe you can just quickly answer that. Then I'm going to go to my colleagues from Quebec and just talk a little bit about expansion issues and some of the things that could possibly be going on there.
General Manager, Organic Meadow Co-operative
We have noted that for some individuals, the buy-local system works very well on an individual level, straight from the farm to the consumer. The best example of that is what we call CSAs, community-supported agriculture.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
What barriers to setting up a buy-local system would you face?
General Manager, Organic Meadow Co-operative
The barrier to many of those is that it takes a very highly skilled individual, with marketing and production expertise--a jack of all trades. Most farmers, in our experience, need to have someone act on their behalf to get into the market. That's where the Dairy Goat Co-operative, which Ben mentioned, is so important. We need to have an organizational level representing the farmer in the marketplace.
So a big barrier, first of all, is that if you can't do it on your own, and if you don't have an organization of fellow producers to assist you, then you just don't have the methodology, the skills, or anything to actually do the marketing directly to the local public.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I guess my question on that, then, is why you would go to a third party. If you're not going to do it yourself or do it with a small group, why wouldn't you just use the existing infrastructure that's there?
