First of all, it's a pleasure to be here today.
My name is Ray Orb. I am the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, known as SARM. We have been the voice of rural Saskatchewan for over 100 years and we represent all of the 296 rural municipalities in our province. As an association, we are mandated to work in agriculture, which is an important sector and a way of life in this province.
Going back to 1911, we reported that there were 95,000 farms in Saskatchewan, and the crop area going to wheat was 5.3 million acres. In 2016 we counted 34,500 Saskatchewan farms and 11.8 million acres of wheat planted, more than double the area that was reported in 1911. The landscape has changed over the course of the last one hundred years. There are larger farms yielding more production while at the same time there are fewer farms and fewer farmers, and this has all had a hand in creating additional stress for producers.
Farming and ranching have unique occupational hazards and stresses, with strong traditions of being independent occupations. The Agricultural Health and Safety Network was founded in 1988 in Saskatchewan by the Canadian Centre for Health and Safety in Agriculture along with SARM and originally with six rural municipalities in the province. It actually provides support to improve health and safety on the farm. According to the Agricultural Health and Safety Network, farmers are exposed to a great deal of physical health risks, along with long strenuous labour and poor working conditions inhibited by weather and time of day. Due to the nature of farming, farmers and their families are susceptible to high levels of stress, depression, anxiety and suicide.
Long hours in the field, unpredictable weather and often low commodity prices are all common concerns for producers in Saskatchewan. If you mix those things, for example, with a prairie fire that destroys homes, crops and livestock, you have the perfect recipe for stress coupled with disaster. That's exactly what happened last year in the southern half of our province, in the fall of 2017, as we saw hundreds of livestock perish and close to 35,000 hectares of pasture land lost in a fire that swept through the Burstall and Tompkins, Saskatchewan, area last October.
I had the opportunity to hear first-hand from farmers and ranchers as we toured the area to witness that devastation. We met with several ranching families who have been devastated by the grass fires. Many of them have lost a good part of their livestock herds, their pasture and their livelihood. When I asked how they would recover, they said they had faced adversity before and pulled through then, and they'd pull through now.
As an association, we hear producer frustrations about land prices, taxation policies and the lack of safety net programs with regard to their operations. As a retired farmer myself, I realize it's impossible to alleviate all the stresses of farming and ranching, but it's imperative that we have mechanisms in place to support our producers in times of need.
According to a 2016 study from the University of Guelph, Canadian farmers are more stressed than those living and working elsewhere. The survey found that 45% of respondents had high stress; 58% of them were classified with varied levels of anxiety, and 35% had depression. As well, 40% of the respondents agreed that they would be uneasy about getting professional help. This demonstrates that there still is a stigma associated with mental health treatment, especially in the agriculture industry.
If you look at a report on how to feed the world by 2050, it indicates that by that time the world's population will reach 9.1 billion. Food production must increase by 70%. Annual cereal production needs to reach three billion tonnes, and annual meat production will need to increase by over 200 million tonnes.
To ensure a sustainable food system, we need to ensure we have healthy producers, and we need to look at the ag industry holistically. We need to equip our producers with all the tools they require to be healthy, productive and successful. This should include safety net programs that address disasters, such as prairie fires as a result of extremely dry conditions.
We need to have forage and pasture insurance available to farmers that is affordable, timely enough and adequate to protect farmers from disasters. Sometimes it's also necessary that programs be modified, such as the livestock tax deferral program that permits livestock producers to spread income over a longer period of time when they are forced to sell part or all of their herds.
On behalf of Saskatchewan's rural municipalities, we thank the standing committee for the opportunity to lend our voice to this important conversation.
Thank you.