Media Clipping — Monday August.18th, 2008, The Advertiser

The old indicators aren't working

By Wendy Elliott

We are not unique here in Kings County. The unimaginable thought that Canada is running out of prime agricultural land is causing municipal authorities elsewhere to make decisions like county council did earlier this month against development. In Northumberland County, ON, councillors just voted narrowly against turning 152 acres of farmland into housing after the Save Our Farmland lobby got active.

Trent Hills Mayor Hector Macmillan admitted, “we’re hearing from some people about protection of agricultural land. It's becoming a real problem for this municipality.” Of course, he must know that only 11 per cent of Canadian land can even be farmed and half of it is in Ontario. According to a University of Guelph study, less than half-a-per cent of that land is really ‘prime agricultural land.’

In British Columbia, where the lush earth around Vancouver has been covered in asphalt, the Farmland Protection Movement is marking the 35th anniversary of that province’s Agricultural Land Reserve and the revival of the Farmland Defense League. The US has a national nonprofit organization called the American Farmland Trust, trying to protect the best land for agriculture. It’s backed by national legislation dating back to 1994.

In Nova Scotia, folks are just beginning to lobby and to ponder the future of agriculture. The facts are becoming evident. Stats Canada has pointed out that producers faced an 8.2 per cent jump in farm operating expenses last year as feed and fertilizer prices soared. Meanwhile the stellar work of GPI Atlantic cited farm income in Nova Scotia and PEI hitting rock bottom.

Earning less

The latest GPI study, released last week, said farmers are 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 on farm economic viability says every key indicator is in sharp decline.

Net farm income has dropped by an average of 91 per cent in Nova Scotia since 1971 and in 2007 reached the lowest levels ever recorded in both provinces. Nova Scotia farms have recorded negative net farm income -- where income no longer covers expenses -- in four of the last six years.

Report author Jen Scott found that prices paid to producers for their products are inadequate relative to rising input costs, and are not keeping pace with farm expenses. Total farm debt increased by 146 per cent in Nova Scotia between 1971 and 2006. There is an indication that our farms are becoming much less sustainable, with the rate of farm debt increase rapidly outstripping any appreciation in the capital value of farms.

Scott said she was shocked by the results. “No society should allow its farmers — the economic and social foundation of many rural communities—to experience such severe economic hardship. 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.”

Scott fears that the significant economic benefits generated by farms both for their rural communities and for the provincial economy — $460 million in business spending in Nova Scotia — will be seriously endangered as farms fail. And jobs will be lost. Annual farm expenditures in Nova Scotia currently generate 6,600 full-time equivalent jobs in agriculture, and nearly 3,700 additional indirect and induced jobs.

Depressed prices

According to the research, a key cause of declining farm viability is depressed farm product prices. In

Nova Scotia, farm input and grocery food prices have gone up much faster than farm product prices, so it is costing farmers considerably more to farm without a commensurate gain in income. Yet, remarkably, depressed farm product prices are not reflected in cheaper food prices for consumers, indicating that profits are being made in other parts of the food supply chain rather than at the farm gate.

Various reasons for depressed farm product prices, Scott’s report noted, include global commodity pricing and trade issues, consumer demand for the cheapest price for food regardless of its origin or actual cost of production, and continued consolidation among retailers and processors.

Recommendations include: market diversification, regulations to prevent excessive mergers of companies in the food system, greater supply management, stimulation of increased demand for local products, and payments to farmers for conserving wetlands and protecting freshwater quality.

Scott said she is encouraged by a new openness to shifting away from reliance on food imports and toward the development of a healthy local food system. This will require the collaboration of all economic, government, and social sectors and a public more discerning and determined to buy and eat local food and to support Maritime farmers.

Losing farmland

GPI pointed out last month that Nova Scotia can potentially feed its own population, but it can’t afford to lose any more of its best agricultural land. The report on land capacity pointed to an ongoing decline in this province’s farmland area. The land area in farms dropped by nearly 80 per cent between 1921 and 2006. While most of that decline occurred before the 70s, there has been a further 18 per cent decrease since then. “We simply can’t afford to lose any more good farm land,” Scott said.

The highest class of agricultural land in Nova Scotia, used for growing high value crops, is in very short supply,

particularly in the Annapolis Valley, where increased competition with housing and commercial developments threatens to shrink rather than expand available farmland. Scott pointed out that conversion of farmland for purposes other than farming is of particular concern in Kings County, where most of the best farmland in the province is located.

According to the non-profit research group's report, buying development rights — or the purchase of Working Land Conservation Easements — would guarantee the land’s continued use for farming while compensating farmers for potential losses incurred by being unable to sell it for other uses. Hopefully, the government is getting onto this notion.

The third GPI report, this time on the social capital invested in agriculture, will be coming out in September. We can count ourselves lucky that GPI is constructing new measures of progress for this province because the old indicators - profit and development - aren't really working.

Copyright © 2008, The Advertiser