Every rumble of a farm engine now signals higher costs. As of April 1, the federal government added 11 cents/litre for gasoline and diesel, with no exemption for Canadian farmers producing food. It’s a carbon tax that will be ratcheting up by $15/tonne every year until 2030.
“It’s a source of frustration,” says Ken Wall, Sandy Shore Farms, Port Burwell, Ontario. “The real question is whether carbon taxes change the way we as consumers live our lives. The concept of a tax is to change behaviour. The problem for agriculture is that there is no viable alternative to diesel fuel.”
The reality is that the carbon tax stresses margins for everyone up and down the food chain. As Wall points out, that makes Canadian farmers less competitive against imports. His asparagus competes against Mexican product that had lower input costs before implementation of the tax. And an unwanted perverse outcome quite possibly could be that Canadian farmers decide to downsize or quit operations altogether. The unintended result would be a higher carbon output from more imports being hauled into Canada by boat, plane and truck.
“It’s a non-winning formula,” says Wall. “It’s a tough conversation to have with elected officials and the public. The moment that you say that carbon taxes are hurting agriculture, you are pegged as being anti-environment. And of course, that’s not the case. Farmers are all in for the environment with their care of the soil and water. My fear is that Canada will lose production capacity in horticulture, the ability to grow local food. But it’s a tough argument with the political class and the media commentariat.”
The vast majority of elected officials, both federally and provincially, are urbanites. So, there’s no quick sound bite to explain the farm to plate story of globally interconnected networks. Carbon taxes alone won’t sink agriculture but when layered on top of other, ever-increasing farming costs, they are inarguably detrimental to the spirit of growing food.
Pictures can often paint a thousand bites in telling this story, though. Look no further than the aerial shots of flooding in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley in November 2021.
As Jason Smith, chair of the BC Blueberry Council explains, it may take years to replant and regain the 750 to 1,000 acres of blueberries affected by flooding. Adding carbon taxes to a sector already stretched by recovery, strikes most BC growers as counter-intuitive.
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