Sustainability is the new buzzword in agriculture and in many other fields. It’s the new green, and in the U.S. and Canada, efforts are underway by the farm sector to position itself as sustainable, and drum up support to keep it that way.
In the U.S., the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition is one group claiming to join together the voices of grassroots farm, food, conservation and rural organizations from all regions of the country. This coalition’s stated purpose is to advocate for federal policies and programs supporting the long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources and rural communities. That’s a pretty broad brush.
And north of the border, for the first time farmers across many crop- and livestock commodities and interests have united, forming the Ontario Agriculture Sustainability Coalition. Its platform is based on campaigning for what it calls bankable, predictable farm programs; those that promote stability and offer a way to manage risk.
It wants action now. The Ontario coalition says thousands of farmers are seeing their economic position deteriorate. It’s just not certain commodities that are feeling the heat – it’s universal, drawing farmers together like never before. High costs, low returns and inadequate support is smothering them. Expenses keep rising, food prices stay the same or get lower, competition increases and their share of the food dollar stagnates or drops. The story is the same everywhere, in Canada, in the U.S. and beyond.
Over the next few weeks, Ontario coalition members will visit their provincial legislature and the nation’s capital, calmly telling politicians a farm crisis has arrived, and that they’d better do something to help sustain farms or they’re going to lose a staple business sector.
They expect to be heard, because they’re complying with politicians’ insistence that they start by taking a conciliatory, one-voice approach to government relations. No more tractor cavalcades. No more animal carcasses or livestock showing up on elected officials’ doorsteps. No more blockades at food terminals. No more headline-grabbing, one-off activist stuff. That doesn’t solve anything anyway, and it doesn’t portray farmers as the business people they are.
So instead of pounding garbage can lids, blowing whistles and marching in the streets, the group is stepping to the podium with as moderate a rallying cry as you can imagine: Sustain Our Farms.
It’s not confrontational, that’s for sure. But I wonder how much the slogan, and indeed the term sustainability, will resonate with people. I think many will consider the term in its environmental light, and that’s okay for starters. But farmers know agriculture cannot be sustainable if it’s not profitable. And I’m afraid that message might get lost if it’s not underlined in public awareness campaigns that are based on what is really economic sustainability. Without profitability, sustainability is a moot point.
It’s hard to clearly fashion a 30-second elevator conversation around what an agricultural sustainability coalition stands for. And while it’s lamentable that a whole movement, a whole industry must be summarized that way, that’s just the way it is, to get decision makers’ attention.
The coalition can do it, and knows its messaging. One of its leaders, Bette Jeans Crews, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, says politicians need to realize consumers – the voters – want locally produced food from sustainable Ontario farms.
That’s the key to get governments’ attention. They’ll kick in if they consider a domestic food sector important. They know it is -- agri-food is a huge economic driver. Even if governments don’t find huge quantities of votes in farming, they find economic hope.
And right now, that’s in short supply.
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