The Scientific Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab with Dalhousie University says the Canadian government needs to recognise the importance of agriculture to viability of Canada's economy and other segments of that economy as it responds to the challenges created by COVID-19. Disruptions in food processing and distribution due to efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in a crash in agricultural commodity prices and forced farmers to dump food products while consumers experience shortages in the grocery store and increasing prices.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, the Scientific Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab with Dalhousie University, says there's a lot of support coming from Ottawa for everyone except farmers and he believes a lot more can be done to mitigate the risks faced by farmers as the result of these disruptions.
Clip-Dr. Sylvain Charlebois-Dalhousie University:
The problem with a value chain, when it is disrupted, at the end of the day the people ending up paying for the effects of disruptions are the farmers. In the United States we did recognise that farmers needed help and help came, in the billions of dollars.
Just this weekend the Trump administration offered five billion dollars to the cattle industry alone and still, in Canada, we're waiting. That's one example of how I think the agri-food sector may be misunderstood by Ottawa. It is willing to provide help for pet shops but not for farmers.
Ottawa has claimed several times that it was trying to deal with a burning house and it did not want to spare any water in order to deal with the fire. The foundation of that house is agriculture but I fail to see any evidence that Ottawa sees agriculture as the house's foundation, zero.
Source : Farmscape