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A New Year Begins
By Bob Mitchell, IFA President
Farmers are ordering their seeds and looking forward to a new year. Hope springs eternal in the farmer’s heart. Also heartening is that the local food economy is slowly changing. Some of our larger local institutions have decided to adopt a buy local strategy, so the public demand for buying local is having an effect. The attempt by the Province to raise farm taxes has been rolled back. The changes to the Federal health and safety regulations were finally implemented and had the predicted effect. They are lowering the safety of products delivered by multinational agribusiness and the public seems to have acquired some awareness of that situation, which further improves the demand for local produce.
Whether the Province brings the regulation of fruit and vegetables in line with those governing meat as it has promised remains an open issue. The changes to the meat regulations took several years longer than expected and earned no politicians any brownie points. If we keep up the pressure, the Province may decide the game is not worth the candle and back off. There is an increasing desire on the part of municipalities to see more food grown in their areas. As a result of the economic studies done in the Abbotsford area, it was demonstrated that the decades of propaganda slagging farmers for being subsidized by the municipal tax payer was wrong-headed and that Abbotsford was actually collecting more money from farmers in taxes than was being paid out in delivering services. The famous tax subsidy touted by the real estate industry turned out to be an urban legend.
Agricultural planning is in vogue. Presently, it is still regional, but once most all the regions have some kind of a plan in being, we can expect to see them drawn into some kind of an island-wide master plan to integrate the operations of producers, suppliers, distributors, and consumers so as to enhance the present abysmal state of our food security. The IFA will continue providing input from farmers to decision-makers so as to jolly this whole process along. Have a good year!