The more programs governments develop, the more farmers depend on them, and becomes inherently more important for the powers that be, governments, stakeholders, farmers, and those who develop those policies to get it right.

Years ago, when the first European farmers first came to Canada, many came because they were tired of farming paper. Those same farmers now say farming in Canada has now reached that same point.

This article isn’t about the do’s and don’ts about farming today, just about the realities farmers face today. Dr. Al Mussell, the Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems says the influence of non-traditional stakeholders will complicate discussions aimed at developing Canada’s next Agricultural Policy Framework.

An Agri-Food Economic Systems Agri-Food Policy Note released earlier this month, challenges governments and the agri-food sector to broaden discussions on the successor to Growing Forward-2, which expires in 2018.

Dr. Mussell says the influence of non-traditional stakeholders, those who may not be part of the agri-food value chain but who have an interest in how others produce their food, will make this round of discussions more challenging.

“Just in the last couple of years we’ve developed this term that has come into our language which is called social acceptance or social license of what we do in agriculture,” he said. “Some of what we do in food marketing targets some of these concerns and issues directly but we’re going to have to find a way to engage that and that’s a little bit of a different flavour than the past three of these types of five year agreements have had to deal with.”

Dr. Mussell says in a way it’s already on the agenda because the federal minister has a mandate to develop a national food policy and, by nature, that’s going to bring in a range of considerations, some from the traditional agricultural community but also opinions and ideas from others.

“This is going to have such a strong impact in ag and food marketing, the understanding of agricultural technologies, and acceptance of different types of agricultural technologies,” said Dr. Mussell. “There is a role for policy to work collectively to figure out how it is we can do this and get a social understanding of how food is produced and now is the time to be working on that.”

Dr. Mussell says getting the kind of dialogue that’s seen as credible by farmers and these new stakeholders will be a challenge but it’s one that needs taking on.

The next discussion will also need to include trade says Dr. Mussell in light of Canada signing the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the EU and the 12 nation Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

While the former Conservative government signed those deals, it really has received ratification by the current Liberal government, or at least very little movement according to former minister of Ag Gerry Ritz.

“Thinking about western Canada somewhat specifically and the pork and grain industries, we’re looking at these trade agreements to provide growth for our industries,” he said. “On one hand, if these roll out as planned, as hoped for, one of our challenges will be building capacity to appropriately respond and make full use of the kind of market access that we obtained. We haven’t seen indication that, in the five year agreement that’s being negotiated to come in 2018, that that’s really been given a whole lot of attention.”

Dr. Mussell says conversely, if these trade agreements end up not coming to fruition and looking at the rough ride the TPP is getting in the U.S. presidential election and similarly, with the Brexit vote in the UK, the uncertainty that creates around whether or not the CETA agreement with the EU will ever come into place, then Canada needs to be thinking about what sort of policies to put in place to facilitate growth in Canada’s ag and food industries if it can’t come from those expansions through trade.

Dr. Mussell says we have a year and a half to address these challenges and, while time is limited, a lot can be accomplished over that period. •

— By Harry Siemens