Chair, and all honourable members, thank you very much for inviting me to speak today.
My name is Brent Preston. My wife Gillian and I run the New Farm, a certified organic family farm near the village of Creemore, about an hour and a half northwest of Toronto. We grow vegetables for the restaurant and specialty retail market in southern Ontario.
I must confess that your invitation to testify today came as a bit of a surprise. I'm glad that you're hearing from a diversity of voices when considering Bill C-18, because when I look at the kinds of farms represented by many of the others testifying today, our farm is very different.
Ten years ago my wife and I left our jobs in Toronto and headed to Creemore to start a farm. Gillian grew up on a farm in Vermont, but I was raised in suburban Toronto and had no agricultural experience at all. As newcomers to farming we took a hard, objective look at the agriculture industry and it was pretty clear to us back then that the industry in Canada was broken. We realized quickly that our farm would have to be different if we wanted to create a successful business.
We saw an agricultural system dominated by commodity production for the export market where Canadian farmers were forced to compete with growers in countries with better climates, lower labour and environmental standards, and bigger government subsidies, so we decided to focus on the local market.
We saw farmers at the mercy of buyers, either at the elevator or at the food terminal, where price was set far beyond our borders and price was the only way to distinguish a product, so we set our prices based on actual cost of production and competed on quality, freshness, and taste. If we couldn't sell a product at a fair price, we would and often still do turn it under in the field.
We saw a seed market that was increasingly dominated by huge multinational corporations focused on producing fewer and fewer varieties bred for ease of handling or pesticide tolerance, so we sought out old open-source varieties that were bred for taste and adaptability.
We saw an agriculture industry where everyone except farmers seemed to be making money, where the cost of land, inputs, and machinery made entering the farming business almost impossible, and where average net farm incomes were actually negative. We started small, used low-input organic methods, did almost everything by hand, and focused on profitability rather than growing our gross sales.
We saw a farm community that was shrinking rapidly, where fewer and fewer farmers were managing larger and larger farms, so we joined the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training, or CRAFT, a completely farmer-run alliance of small organic farms that provides full-season apprenticeships for aspiring farmers. We have so far trained over 20 young people on our farm, none of whom came from a farm background.
The first few years were a struggle. We lost money. We had to work off-farm to pay the bills. The physical toil of the work was brutal. But now, 10 years later, I think our decision to be different has paid off. Our business is profitable. My wife Gillian and I both work full-time year round on the farm. We employ six full-time seasonal staff, and we can't meet the demand for our products.
At the same time, the problems with Canadian agriculture that we identified 10 years ago have only gotten worse. We now have fewer farmers in greater debt, struggling to compete on a global stage dominated by gigantic corporations.
That brings us back to Bill C-18. It seems to me that when our agricultural system isn't working for most farmers we should be looking for something different to fix it, but Bill C-18 is more of the same. It increases the power of large corporations in relation to family farms. It increasingly ties Canadian agriculture into a globalized, price-based commodity market. It encourages the long-term trend toward bigger farms and fewer farmers.
I don't think the sky will fall if Bill C-18 is passed, but it will be one more incremental step in a policy march that I think is failing Canadian agriculture.
What is the alternative? Bill C-18 is called the agricultural growth act. Imagine for a minute if each of you, as a member of this committee, sat down in your constituency with a group of farmers and people interested in food policy and said to them, “The government wants to write an agricultural growth act. What do you think should be in it?” Do you honestly think that anyone would speak up and say to bring Canadian law into conformity with UPOV 91? Would someone put up their hand and say, “Why don't we make it easier for foreign corporations to access farm credit programs underwritten by Canadian taxpayers?” It seems unlikely.
I can think of many things the Canadian government could do to promote agricultural growth, none of which are in Bill C-18. Why not look at ways to grow the number of farmers? We could give tax credits to farms that offer apprenticeship programs, support agricultural incubators like the one run by FarmStart,just outside Toronto, or work with marketing boards to reduce barriers to entry for new producers of supply-managed commodities.
Why not adopt policies that grow demand for local food? We could create buy local policies for federal departments and publicly funded institutions. Imagine if military bases, prisons, research agencies, and universities were all building relationships with local food producers and distributors pumping food dollars back into the local economy.
We could consider labour and environmental standards when negotiating international trade deals so that Canadian farmers are no longer put at a competitive disadvantage when they pay their workers fairly, or act as responsible stewards of the land.
Growth should be measured in more than just gross dollar output. Canadian farmers should be seen as more than just consumers of inputs and suppliers of cheap raw materials for the food industry.
We need profitable family farms to keep rural communities vibrant and alive, to safeguard our precious agricultural and environmental resources, and to meet the exploding demand for local food that we're seeing all across Canada.
Bill C-18 is simply the status quo, in my opinion. We need something different.
Thank you very much.
