Evidence of meeting #53 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was farm.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Member, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum
I actually was attracted to a farmer and ended up on a farm. That's the easiest question.
Member, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum
It works well.
To expand on that, I was a military kid. I grew up in town, and I had no clue about farming, but I married a farmer. He is a third-generation farmer in Nova Scotia. His grandfather and father were Dutch immigrants. He adored farming. I was a French and Spanish teacher for a number of years. As an educator you love learning, and I loved learning about farming. I have just absorbed everything I possibly could.
The four years that I've been involved in Young Farmers has been amazing. The first year I was able to attend was in Halifax, and a lot of the programming was around succession planning and business management. What a great way to learn about operating a farm. There are a lot of skills that I can transfer from my years in education. Farming has become an integral part of our family and of our life, and our children will be the fourth generation to run the farm. They already are well on their way.
Hopefully, you all can help us with the challenges associated with the succession, with the tax implications and the other things that are challenges to bringing farms to the next generation.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Well, we might be able to do certain things, but I'm not so sure we can do things about falling in love with a farmer.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
I'm not quite sure how we write policy on that, to be truthful. Nonetheless, we may start suggesting that one ought to check out folks in rural communities and perhaps should do those sorts of things.
I hate to tell you, Kerry, but I come from Niagara, which is wine country. We could have picked ice wine grapes about five times this winter, it has been that cold. In fact, we're looking at about a 30% loss, probably, in the tender fruit crop when it comes to the vines and the trees.
Mr. Allison is in an adjacent riding to mine, just up the way, and it has been bitterly cold. It has been -20°C for a long time. In fact, it was interesting—I don't know if Mr. Allison saw it—we actually had one day since January that got close to 0°C. It was actually -0.6°C. That's as good as it got to 0°C, which is unusual in Niagara. Farmers down there will be adding those up.
There's an interesting statistic on your sheet. I want to thank you for the copy of your “Family Farm 2.0 – Preparing for 2050”. Like a few of us around here, when you start talking about “2.0”, I'm not quite sure what you really mean. The interesting stat you have in here—it's a cautionary tale as well, as we have to start thinking about how we do different things to get folks into farming—is the fact that 8.2% of farmers are 35 years of age or younger. That's not a good demographic, to be honest, in the sense that the number is low.
Notwithstanding Mr. Dreeshen's comment that farmers sometimes want to stay on for a long time, the issue is that they may want to hang around—Mr. Dreeshen's probably right—and some of us may actually use equipment we shouldn't be using anymore. In my case it's usually the chainsaw. The issue is that the replacement demographic needs to be higher than that. I think that becomes abundantly clear. Granted, farms are changing and evolving. Some are larger and some are smaller. Organic farmers are small, and can be full time and profitable depending on where they are, and they can be smaller. It's moving all the time.
Let me ask a question, and anyone should feel free to pick up on it. It's in regard to technology, whether that be the smartphone, the use of the Internet, the sharing of information, or those lovely little drones that I notice you have a picture of in your magazine. Where do you see it going? Has it worked for you? Is it overhyped? Is it under-hyped? Where do you see this going, and how effective is that for you? Some of it's not cheap. Some of it is. I'd love to hear some of the feedback around what you see in technology and where we're headed.
Chair, Canadian Young Farmers' Forum
I love technology, because I can do so much more with less. I am a broiler chicken producer. I can go to my cellphone right now and know by the second how heavy my birds are, how much they're eating, and how much they're drinking. I can adjust my fans and the lights. Anything I can do when I'm there, I can do from here.
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Why don't you do me a favour? Look it up and tell me what some of those birds.... Do you have any birds in the barn now?
NDP
Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON
Would you look it up for me and give us an example? Just give us an example at some point before we adjourn.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
One thing you'll find is that sometimes members eat up their five minutes in making their comments.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Bev Shipley
What I am going to do, though—and you may get back into some of that—is go to one of our guests who is with us today, Mr. Lunney, from B.C.
You have five minutes, please.
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
As the chair has indicated, I am not a regular member of the committee, but I am very pleased to be here for such an informal opportunity to engage with young farmers.
I'm from British Columbia, from Vancouver Island. Nanaimo—Alberni is my riding. We're where the far west meets the far east, with a little bit of water in between.
I want to throw something on the table here. First of all, we all like to eat, and yes, I see that Mr. Dreeshen is headed over there to get some watering too—
Conservative
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
I do have a question for you, but by way of a comment, I am serving on the health committee. Health is a passion for me. I was also on the environment committee. It was Mr. Dreeshen, I believe, who mentioned that farmers, duck hunters, and our recreational fisheries people and so on are the people who are really our ultimate and first conservationists, because farmers engage with the land. Also, you're growing things, so you engage with nature. You have to nurture nature to be successful.
What I want to throw out there is that with 80% of our population being urban, on the environment committee I have to tell you that we're very concerned about the disconnect, a whole generation of Canadians who aren't connected to nature, who probably think that fish comes in fillets and chicken comes in wings and drumsticks and so on. If you gave them a whole bird and they had to pluck it or something, they wouldn't know where to begin, nor would they know how to fillet a fish. That's a big concern to the Government of Canada, actually. Also, utilization of our national parks is going down.
It seems to me that the young people.... Where we are, we don't have a lot of farming. There is some dairy and we have some poultry production on the island and so on, and hay, but there's not a lot of agriculture. Increasingly, we have some vineyards developing on the island.
I know that the 4-H clubs really do help connect people. It was mentioned earlier. I think that you young farmers, your families, and the people whom you interact with have a real opportunity, let's just say, and perhaps a way to serve the community, by helping to engage with urban dwellers and tell the farm story. Maybe there is something the federal government could do to help in that process—or governments at all levels, perhaps—because there's a real need for people to engage with nature. I think your story is one that people do need to hear.
I want to see if that provokes some thought and maybe some responses from you.
I'll put one other thought out here. We do a lot of talking—at least in British Columbia—about a 100-mile diet and eating within 100 miles of home. We do import a lot of food from elsewhere, and from a long way away in many cases. With transportation costs being what they are, or if there were interruptions in travel for whatever reason, we're concerned about making sure that we can produce enough food locally. I'm wondering if you are aware of barriers to that being a reality in your communities.
I'll just throw those comments and questions out there for you.