Bethanee Jensen, a director for the
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, wrote an opinion piece this week in
which she says “Southwestern Ontario contains arguably the best farmland in the
country.
“We are situated in the most ideal
place to withstand climate change, due to its latitude and its proximity to the
Great Lakes.
“We are in close proximity to a lot
of the people we are trying to feed . . .”
If this is all indeed true, then I
wonder why our poultry industry needs supply management protection from
competitors.
I can understand – to a point –
supply management for the dairy industry because the competitors all enjoy
substantial government support.
That the dairy marketing boards have gone too
far is obvious, yet the need for some degree of government-sanctioned
protection is defensible.
To be fair, Jensen was not writing
about the competitive position of the Ontario poultry industry. She was
lamenting the loss of prime farming land to urban expansion.
The CFFO deserves credit for being the first farmer
organization to call for a halt on lot severances to build houses in rural
areas. That preserved a lot of prime farming land and freed livestock and
poultry farmers from neighbours’ complaints about farming’s noises, dusts and
odours.
But when it comes to preserving farmland today, cash
croppers are at a distinct disadvantage in bidding for land against poultry and
dairy farmers.
This is a made-in-rural-Ontario situation that the CFFO, the
Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union would be well
advised to ponder.
