Now that the Alberta Tories have finished giving themselves raises, they’re raining money down on their supporters, with the livestock industry being the latest (but surely not the last) beneficiary.
Last Thursday, George Groeneveld, Alberta Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, announced a $356 million package for the livestock industry, which employs just over 30,000 people in this province on a little over 20,000 farms. “Farmers will receive $150,000,000 now and another $150 million after they register herd data with a new livestock information database,” the ministry says. With no strings attached.
Financial support for our agricultural industries seems logical, considering their massively subsidized competitors in other countries and our increasing desire to keep food production local and high-quality. But even on these terms, what the Alberta government announced last Thursday sounds like more money down the drain.
The Alberta beef industry and other livestock producers have already been the beneficiaries of literally tens of billions of dollars in government “investment” in recent years in response to BSE and consequent bans by other countries, avian flu, hog viruses, wildly fluctuating prices,and other maladies. As for the new Alberta money just announced, ranchers say that most of it will end up in the hands of packing plants, auction markets, and various creditors.
Alberta farmers are still abandoning livestock production, and the number of farms overall continues to decline. The 2006 census counted just 49,431 farms in Alberta, a 7.9 per cent decline in just five years, on top of an almost 10 per cent drop over the previous five years. Cattle and hog inventories are down almost 10 per cent as of spring 2008 over the same time last year.
Of the 71,660 Alberta farm operators recorded in the 2006 census, fewer than half spend more than 40 hours per week working on their farm, and the majority had a job off the farm. These trends are consistent with what is happening across Canada. Yet both senior levels of government continue to throw money at an industry that employs a declining number of people for decreasing amounts of time.
And Alberta’s move pressures other provinces to do the same thing. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, whose government is even more dependent on rural voters, is offering $90 million in loans to his province’s livestock producers. But he acknowledged that he and his agriculture minister are watching the impact of Alberta’s program and may have to follow suit.
Also, some producers worry that the new Alberta government funding may arouse the wrath of American livestock producers, who could seek to overturn what they see as an infraction of international trade agreements.
It is time to end what amounts to Canada’s largest welfare program. Rabidly free enterprise ranchers and farmers hate it when city people talk this way, but it’s true. They work, and therefore they claim agricultural subsidies are not the same thing as social assistance. Well, the market has decided—repeatedly—that their work isn’t worth enough to sustain them, and the way most of them run their operations isn’t economically viable. There are economically successful farms, to be sure, but most agricultural producers today would not be around were it not for the monstrous edifice of government intervention that all of us support, whether we like it or not. And since most farmers already work off the farm, it’s time more of them got used to doing it on a permanent basis. The same Conservative governments that panic about our large labour shortage should be encouraging farmers whose businesses don’t succeed to do what the rest of us have to do when times are tough: go where the work is.
The declining number of farmers has not meant a decrease in food production in this country, and it would be alarmist to contend that my suggestions would lead to food shortages here or abroad. Global shortages have less to do with the amount of food produced in the world and more to do with transportation and politics. And this also does not spell the end of the family farm. Family farmers such as Saskatchewan activist Nettie Wiebe have argued for years that Canadian agricultural subsidies have had a negative impact on this historic institution.
Unfortunately, the symbolism of farming goes far beyond the number of people it employs (a minority even within Canada’s rural population) and its economic value in general. Failing to lavishly support the farming industry is the kiss of death with rural voters, who are still disproportionately represented in Parliament and our provincial legislatures. How does the Alberta government, for example, justify a situation where 60,515 voters in Calgary Northwest elect just one MLA, the same as 31,380 in Cardston-Taber-Warner or 31,435 in Bonnyville-Cold Lake?
Throwing more money—especially no-strings-attached money—at an industry in dire need of reform and renewal benefits very few people, and generally not the ones the government claims to be helping. In this most free-enterprise of provinces (at least on paper), isn’t it time we led by example?
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