Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne has set a goal of doubling the growth rate of Ontario agriculture.
I can identify quite a few opportunities for her.
One is the chicken industry where Ontario ought to shoot for enough production to satisfy every processor, especially the more entrepreneurial small-volume processors developing niche markets.
If the national agency objects, she ought to pull Ontario out of the national agency.
The same marketing board ought to increase the exemption for small-flock owners from 300 birds per year now to at least 2,000. In Saskatchewan it's 4,000 and where the son of a friend of mine is raising chickens on pasture, moving their caged housing every day. He is able to sell them for $25 per whole bird, $40 if they're cut up. Imagine the potential in more populous Ontario.
In the same vein, Wynne should order the milk board to scrap its cap on quota prices so the most aggressive farmers can expand to their desired size. If she agrees that quota prices would rise too high, then she should force the milk board to lower prices. That would probably increase sales and the industry's near-stagnant growth rate.
Wynne should also order the milk board to supply all the milk that processors want, including Chobani to build a plant near Kingston to make Greek yogourt. Again, if the national agency objects, she ought to pull Ontario out.
There are growth opportunities for eggs and turkeys, but the main challenge there is too few middlemen who don't really compete, but aggressively mimic each other.
And Wynne ought to invest in improved transportation infrastructure, especially to move food in and out of the Greater Toronto area, and to move it around within the Greater Toronto area. The time wasted in traffic jams is a huge added cost and a drag on growth.
The cuts made to research and extension ought to be reversed and more use made of internet communications. Many farmers are eager to improve; top-notch information gathered by knowledgeable researchers and extension people, and posted on the internet or provided by e-mail listserves, ought to be explored.
The rapidly-rising price of farm land has become a barrier to entry by bright, young, entrepreneurial people, not all of them sons and daughters of farmers. One way to help lower the price of farm land would be to abolish the provincial tax break on municipal taxes. Another would be to abolish the farm registration program and fee because the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Christian Farmers Federation aren't contributing much any more.
In short, if Wynne wants to double growth, she needs to look within her government.
