Agriculture Committee on Feb. 26th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Welcome everyone to the agriculture committee today.

Today is a bit of a unique day. I consider it a privilege for the committee to have the people with us who we do.

Before we get to the participants of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum, I do want to acknowledge the folks from the Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan. These people are representatives who wanted to come in, I think, to see how they're going to transition their farms to their younger people, as that is all part of it.

I do welcome our guests and visitors who are with us today.

Colleagues, as I mentioned, today is unique, but if it isn't, it's certainly a special day. Just so that our friends from the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum know, it came up a little while ago that you were coming to town as part of your conference. It was suggested that there might be an opportunity to get hold of you to see if you'd be interested in coming in and talking to us as a committee.

We say thank you for taking that initiative and taking the time out of your schedules to appear in front of us.

I've told you not to be nervous. I want this to be as informal as possible, even though we will go to rounds of questions. We're here to learn. It's great to have young people who are getting into agriculture, and who are into it, which is one of the most significant industries in this great country of Canada. It really is. From that, as committee people, we look at legislation and we look at where agriculture has taken us. We talk to a lot of witnesses, and we talk to a lot of people who come in from different organizations. Not often do we get the opportunity to specifically address young farmers who are in it as innovators and as leaders in your community and in your organizations, who specifically come and talk to us. We look forward to that very much.

As I mentioned, there is a bit of a formal time.

I'm going to ask Mr. Froese to start. He will have opening statements. I think he was told seven minutes, but it's seven or ten. Colleagues, I'm not going to cut off the time as I usually try to do. I will try to keep it more informal during our time.

We do have two hours today. If we run out of questions, we'll quit early, but I doubt that will happen.

With that, Mr. Froese, I'll turn it over to you for an opening statement. Welcome.

[Kerry Froese, Chair, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We've very, very pleased about having the opportunity to be here. We're excited to be here. We're young farmers who are excited about agriculture, and we're excited about being part of a vibrant and profitable agricultural industry in Canada.

I'd like to introduce us and touch on what we do and who we are.

First off, my name is Kerry Froese. I am the chair of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. I'm a broiler chicken farmer from Abbotsford, British Columbia, so I'm here all the way from the west coast. I'm also involved there as one of two farmers elected to the British Columbia Chicken Marketing Board, so I'm involved with our production in Canada.

Danielle Lee is here from Calgary, Alberta. She's our Yukon-B.C.-Alberta representative to the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum. She is a cow-calf and sheep producer. Next to her, we have Larry Spratt. He, along with his cousin, farms over 5,000 acres of grain and has a 200-head cow-calf operation in Melfort, Saskatchewan. He is our Saskatchewan-Manitoba representative to the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum.

Next to Larry is Guenette Bautz. Even though she's our general manager, she also is involved in farming as well and has a 125-head cow-calf operation, with 600 acres of hay and pasture and 1,400 acres of grain. Next to Guenette is my vice-chair, Paul Glenn. He farms in Keene, Ontario. He is a cash crop farmer and a seed producer. Beside me is Pierre-Luc Lacoste. He's a cash crop farmer and seed producer from Mercier, just southwest of Montreal, Quebec. He serves on our board as our member at large.

Last, we have Kimberly Stokdijk, who is a greenhouse producer from Beaver Brook, Nova Scotia, and the first vice-president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture. She isn't on our board of directors, but she has attended our event in the past and she's here this weekend for our event as well.

That is who we are, but what is the Canadian Younger Farmers' Forum?

I'd like to start with a little story, based on the fact that one time I was at an event, and a woman at the event asked what I did for a living. When I replied to her, I said, “Well, I'm just a farmer.” I was scolded. She got mad at me and said, “You are not just a farmer. You feed the world.” I took that to heart, because it's something that I need to convey to people: how proud we are of what we do, and we're feeding the world.

From that point on, I've known that I'm never just a farmer. I do everything and I feed the world. That's something we want to convey to people through our organization to make agriculture more profitable and more fun. Agriculture is just a great thing, and we're proud to be part of it.

The CYFF is a national non-profit organization solely focused on the age group of 18 to 40. As for where we fit, there are other national organizations, such as 4-H, where kids start at the age of six. 4-H raises people through agriculture all the way to the age of 18, or even to 21 for their young leaders. We fit in just after that in helping young farm leaders in the 18-to-40 age group to become even better. The 4-H starts the young farmers, we polish them, and then there's another program called Outstanding Young Farmers, which celebrates young farmers' successes. I'm actually the current B.C. Outstanding Young Farmer for 2015.

[Applause]

Thank you. It's actually for B.C. and Yukon.

That's where we fit as far as the young farmer organizations go. Also, mainly, we're the leader that supports the 11 young farmer organizations throughout our country. Each province has a young farmer organization, from British Columbia and the BCYF, all the way to Newfoundland. We connect those young farmer organizations in such a way that we can have a national network.

Another story I'd like to share about that, too, is that being part of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum has helped young farmers in different facets and different commodities become better in their operations. A young dairy farmer from New Brunswick was a new entrant into chicken farming in New Brunswick. From British Columbia, I was able to help this individual with his farming operation. Having that national connection is huge for young farmers, so that we can take advantage of our successes, and even of the bad things that have happened on our farms, because it's cheaper for us to learn from other people's mistakes rather than make them ourselves.

We are also the voice of young farmers at many industry board tables. Through my being the chair of the Canadian Young Farmers' Forum, we have a seat at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. Paul is on the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. Danielle sits on the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association board. Larry sits on the Grain Growers of Canada board. Pierre-Luc is also on the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council. Kim is a strong leader, too, in being part of her federation of agriculture. Connecting those groups and providing the young farmer's voice at those organizations is something we do to help bring up the young agriculture voice there.

As for what our group does, in the next couple of days we're going to be here in Ottawa providing young farmer business training and creating stronger farm leaders through offering training in things like succession planning. The age of our farmers is rising, and we want to make sure the transition can be easier for each farm. It's never an easy process, but talking with your peers and learning from them how they did or didn't do it is something we try to promote.

Business management practices, or how you deal with things on your farm, include making sure that you have a good business plan, that you know your costs of production, and that you're making more money than you're putting into your farm; otherwise, you're doing it for free. Farming isn't a charity. It is a business. Even though we love it, we need to make money at it, so we teach that to our producers.

We also take part in other organizations. We went down south to take part in the young farmers and ranchers group in the United States, a group that's under their farm bureau. Connecting with them helps us to grow as an organization, because they are just so massive in the United States compared to us, but we can learn from their successes and how they've done things. We also took part in an event with Agriculture Canada on relations with Mexico. We talked with a young farmer group from Mexico and tried to make some connections there. That's still in progress.

What else? We've passed out our AGM booklet. If you look at our conference agenda on page 5, you'll see that on Saturday we have some serious things going on. I will be giving my Outstanding Young Farmer Award presentation on my farming background and my farming operation. It's a virtual farm tour. If we can't bring people to our farms because of things like biosecurity and such—not to mention that you don't end up having smelly shoes when you get back to your hotel—we give virtual farm tours of what we do in our operations to help to teach people what we do on each other's farms. We will also be receiving a farm tour from the Young Farmers & Ranchers of America, so we'll get an inside look on an American farm.

Also, of course, we'll be learning about the political landscape. Becoming young farm leaders also involves talking to you people here. Our organization builds up the young farmers and leaders of our farms, but we're also building up the young farmers as leaders of our communities, who may even one day sit in your seats. As well, we're trying to raise the level of professionalism in our industry.

We're funded by the government, of course, and are in Growing Forward 2. We're in the current funding proposal year right now. We have our application in, and we have some exciting things in it too.

Something we're putting in there that's new and innovative is that in young agriculture a lot of people are looking at how they can take advantage of government programs, if not the resources of other commodities and commodity groups and what they provide. We want to make an app for that. While everybody is doing apps—it seems like a clichéd thing—with young agriculture, everybody is mobile. Everybody wants to move towards just going to your cellphone, pushing a button, and finding the right programs for you, so that you can take advantage of what you can do on your farm and farm smarter.

Getting all those resources into one central location so that they can be accessed at any point in time and whenever needed on our farms is something that I think will really help us as young farmers. We're really looking forward to creating this app. Also, that hopefully will take us.... There is possibly a three-year deal that we're looking to continue with.

Guenette, is that correct?

Guenette is our general manager, so she knows about the nuts and bolts of our organization.

Is there anything you want to add to that, Guenette?

[Guenette Bautz, General Manager, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you, Kerry.

Thank you for having us here this afternoon. We appreciate the opportunity.

With regard to our funding, Kerry is correct. We did receive a two-year agreement. We are very thankful for the support we receive from AAFC, as we believe in the team and we do want to build our relationships with government. Currently, we have our application in process and we are looking for support from April 1, 2015, through to March 31, 2018, to where the GF3 would then come into effect.

In addition to the innovative app that we want to execute and deliver to our young farmers of Canada, we're also going to continue to deliver our national conference, as we see young farmers coming from coast to coast with a really strong representation from each province. This year we will host 145 people, and over 90% of the participants are truly young farmers coming in for our conference.

We're going to continue to work on leadership training and building our organization and our collaborative partnerships with other organizations that are also funded through government dollars. We're looking forward to building those bridges moving forward.

[Kerry Froese]

To close our introduction, I will reiterate that we bring together young farmers from all commodities and all provinces, and we share a lot of information. We share so many synergies. We're young farmers from different places, but we still share the same passion for agriculture. Our motto at the CYFF is to energize, empower, and educate our young farmers: the three Es. It's something that builds young farm leaders.

Once again, I thank you for this time. We're open for your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much. That was interesting. I suspect that at the end of this day, with the application in, as you mentioned, this will actually put in real-life experience in support of that application.

In terms of your logo, I was looking at the 2014 convention program, Mr. Froese, and I see the motto, “Kiss Me. I'm a Farmer.”

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I didn't know if that was something that was going to be a promotional aspect in terms of a logo or a motto. I think it's a great one, because it shows friendship and compassion.

[Kerry Froese]

That's actually a great part of Farm Credit Canada's “Agriculture More Than Ever” campaign. It's about getting out there to tell your story about agriculture. We're talking about the social licence of farmers and how we need to maintain that and about telling people why we do what we do. We farm for the reasons of being more efficient and the fact that we provide food for the world. That's a great campaign. Even those signs they're holding that are shown there help to promote agriculture too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I meant to say earlier how pleased I am, as I know all of us are and will be, to see that you have men and women as part of your panel and your organization. Agriculture, the agriculture industry, is strong because of its complexities, but it's also strong because of the diversity we have and the integration of strong partnerships that develop within the family and within family and business. I would pass that on to you.

In fact, you talked about the marketing, and on Saturday you will have a friend of mine there, Andrew Campbell. I was just out at his place. He will likely be talking a bit about exposing and using social media and some of those things to help market to those folks who are not much in touch with agriculture on the ground, in order to give them some real-life experience through social media.

With that, thank you for your intervention and your opening statement.

I'm now going to you, Madam Raynault, for five minutes, please.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I am really happy to have the witnesses with us today.

I'm really glad someone corrected you when you said you were just a farmer. People who feed the world play an important role in society. I know something about that because I was a farmer myself. I raised animals and was involved in market gardening. Of course, that was before local products became popular. Things would be different today. I was also a member of the comité provisoire du Syndicat des agricultrices de Lanaudière. Agriculture is still in my blood. You can take the woman out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the woman. She works on the Earth today, but not on the land. Anyway, I am happy to have the witnesses with us today.

Here is my question, each of you could answer it. Five minutes is really not a lot of time.

How do you see your current life, your involvement in agriculture, and your children's, 10 or 15 years from now?

I am somewhat familiar with the obstacles faced by young people who want to pursue farming. What do you think are the obstacles faced by Quebec or Manitoba farmers?

[Pierre-Luc Lacoste, Member, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you for the question, Ms. Raynault.

I can talk about Quebec, or talk about what I know, so to speak.

The most restrictive barrier to becoming involved in agriculture really is access to land, mainly because of the soaring land prices. It's therefore becoming more and more difficult for young people who aren't from farming families to go into agriculture.

High land prices have made the intergenerational transfer of farms increasingly complicated. It's not easy to expand, acquire land or buy it from our parents. The market value is very high, and there are tax problems. Land access involves a number of issues. So it's no easy feat. The situation is difficult to resolve, but we are constantly trying to promote agriculture.

You talked about local products, which don't really require large tracts of land. Farmers can do well enough with smaller acreages. I think it's crucial to promote local products and Canadian products. I took some notes earlier. Although environmental standards are very strict, we are managing to do wonders with what we have.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

That's definitely the experience of farmers in Lanaudière or the riding of Joliette, which I represent. In fact, land prices have risen so much that people can no longer buy land, even to expand their farms.

The witness from Manitoba could perhaps also answer the next question.

I think the problem is that parents want to give their children an opportunity to take over the farm, but they also want to be able to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, and that's not easy.

[Pierre-Luc Lacoste]

Exactly.

The gross margins are really narrow. It's difficult to save. We have lately had some solid years in agriculture, given that product prices were higher than ever.

But it's still difficult to put money aside. In many cases, the land is our parents' pension fund. In order to survive, they have no choice but to sell their land at a fairly high price. That's one of the problems we are facing. Debts are passed down from one generation to the next. We always have too much debt, and that's a problem.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Ms. Lee, is the situation the same for you in Manitoba?

[Danielle Lee, Member, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Actually, I'm from Alberta.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Désolée.

[Danielle Lee]

That's all right.

I would say there are definitely challenges, especially where our farm is. We are very close to the city of Calgary. It's very good agricultural land; however, it is more used for development and those types of things, so it is harder to continue to be able to farm there.

I'm the fourth generation on our farm. We've been there over 100 years. It's nice to see it continuing, but I see the number of farms around us dwindling. The farmland is not even being used for farming anymore. It is going into development and houses and that type of thing, which poses a huge challenge, I guess, especially for me as a young person. I want to continue to farm on our family farm, but looking forward to the future, will it be in my best interests, or will I be surrounded by the city?

Those are the challenges that we face where we are. They probably face them all across the country from coast to coast, whether it's in Ontario around Toronto, or in B.C. where Kerry is. Land is very costly there as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you, Ms. Raynault.

Now we'll go to Mr. Keddy for five minutes, please.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Welcome to our witnesses.

Kimberly, I'm from New Ross, Nova Scotia, so I'm trying to figure out exactly.... There are two Beaver Brooks that I'm aware of; I'm assuming it's the one down by Old Barns.

[Kimberly Stokdijk, Member, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

That's right. We're just outside of Truro.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Good. I've got you figured out.

Part of the discussion we're having here on land and resources, and the availability of land, will probably be critical to all of your futures. Quite a few years ago I was a young farmer; now I'm just cranky.

You really have a great career path. You have some huge opportunities. There are two things that I think are critical to what you're doing. You touched on both of them, but I'd like a little more explanation on how critical you feel it is.

The first one is accessibility to property, especially to rich agricultural land versus that land being turned into suburbia. That's number one. Ontario has a farm belt, with protection for a lot of that rich agricultural land, and Nova Scotia has protection for some of it but not all of it.

The other thing you touched on was your work with the American young farmers group. I really feel that's critical to your future success, especially in commodity groups and especially in international trade. I was in the Christmas tree business for 25 or 30 years as a medium-sized grower. We exported all of our product into the United States. I can tell you that the only way we succeeded in that was to become members of the national Christmas tree growers association in the U.S. It meant that we therefore had a seat at the proverbial table; we had a vote on everything they voted on, and we were able to have somebody there to actually counterbalance the innate protectionism that Americans are vaccinated with when they're born. On numerous occasions when we had trade wars with the States—shakes and shingles, and a number of others—we were able to keep Christmas trees out of it. It wasn't a big deal for them, because we're about 8% of the American market: they're 95% of our market. That's a huge difference, right?

Anyone can jump in, but I just want you to expand on those two thoughts.

[Paul Glenn, Vice-Chair, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum]

Thank you for your question.

I can speak on the young farmers and ranchers portion. I was lucky enough to go down to Nashville, where they held their leadership conference for young farmers and ranchers. There were approximately 1,400 participants in Nashville. It's quite an awe-inspiring event to go to. I was lucky in that it was my second year going, working with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada promoting trade with Canada. I think it's a really great initiative that they've done, because last year was the first time that Canadians hae ever gone down to work with the Americans. It was much needed. We were looking across the table at each other saying, “I can't believe we haven't done this before”. Luckily enough, they actually came up to our AGM in Calgary last year.

We are continuing to build our relationships with them. They have many great programs that we are trying to do as well. Really, it's just noticing how the American Farm Bureau young farmers and ranchers program is set up and seeing how well it does work for them to really get their messages out to government, and how agriculture really does have a strong voice. It's something that we would really like to strive for, especially to see young Canadian farmers having a really strong voice.

[Kerry Froese]

One huge benefit they have down in the States, too, is the Future Farmers of America, or the FFA, which is built into their high school system. It helps teach agriculture in their system.

We also had the opportunity to go down to their national event in Kentucky for the Future Farmers of America, where there were over 60,000 participants. They have more than 600,000 members in FFA. If they have that type of system feeding into Young Farmers & Ranchers of America, there's no doubt that it's just awe-inspiring to us as well. It was very eye-opening to go to that event. It was at a giant convention centre down in Louisville, Kentucky.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Do you have any ideas on how you keep access to rich agricultural land?

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

I think Guenette was going to follow up on the first part, if you don't mind, Mr. Keddy.