Media Clipping — Saturday August.16th, 2008, The Moncton Times and Transcript

Imported foods hurt farmers: study

A recent study shows farm incomes in Atlantic Canada are dropping like cow patties and that should serve as a wakeup call for consumers to buy locally-grown food, the study's author said yesterday.

"If we don't support local farmers, the economy will pay for it in other ways," Ron Colman, executive-director of GPI Atlantic said yesterday. GPI Atlantic is a Nova Scotia-based non-profit research and education organization that specializes in quality of life issues. GPI yesterday released a study showing that farm incomes in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have declined by more than 90 per cent since 1971 and "hit rock bottom" in 2007.

It's an issue that New Brunswick farmers have been fighting for a long time.

"Cheap food comes at a high price," said Jeff Everett, a Moncton strawberry farmer who has been working for years to make ends meet. He recently opened a winery at Magnetic Hill as a second business but is still moving toward a smaller operation to help minimize costs.

"Farmers in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are now earning less than at any time in the last four decades, so little in fact that rural communities in both provinces are at serious risk," the report says. The report's findings were based on interviews with farmers and analysis of data from various sources.

"No society should allow its farmers -- the economic and social foundation of many rural communities -- to experience such severe economic hardship," said Jennifer Scott, author of the report. "When we examined this issue for Nova Scotia farms in 2001, we reported the situation was bad. Now, seven years later, it is worse -- much worse."

Although the study did not include figures from New Brunswick, Colman said farmers in this province are also feeling the pinch as the prices farmers get for their products do not cover the rise in prices they pay for feed, supplies, fuel, taxes and other overhead.

"Grocery prices have gone up but they do not reflect the prices that are paid to farmers."

Colman said one of the biggest problems is that food producers in Atlantic Canada are competing with foods that are produced far cheaper in foreign countries. And even though they are shipped here from far away, they are still priced lower than local products on our grocery store shelves. He said most consumers will grab lower-priced items without considering the consequences.

Ironically, Everett said one of the main factors is big business and the stock market. He said companies that produce equipment, chemicals, fertilizers, fuel and other supplies that farmers need are owned by large public companies that are under pressure from their stockholders to make more money. Higher costs for farmers mean they have to charge more money for their products to break even, but that presents a real challenge when imported food products are priced lower.

"I've been farming for over 20 years and it keeps getting more expensive. The expenses are out of control." Another problem is availability of labour. Everett said it is very difficult for farmers to recruit workers and compete with the wages offered by the construction and call centre industries. Another challenge is trying to sell products to grocery chains that want big volume of products from a minimum number of producers.

"We're competing with the Americans and the European farmers who receive big subsidies from government. They bring in all this food and we can't begin to compete with them because they are subsidized."

Everett said some consumers buy many of their products directly from producers through farmer's markets like those in Moncton and Dieppe. But it's not enough to turn the tide.

"It might be more expensive, but it's worth it."

New Brunswick Agriculture Minister Ronald Ouellette recently embarked on a promotional campaign to encourage consumers to buy local where possible. The province this year committed $210,000 to the Agri-Food Market Development Program, which helps small producers develop and market their products.

Copyright © 2008, The Moncton Times and Transcript