Canada’s mainline farm organizations are struggling for your support. They deserve another shot.
That’s not based on past performance. We all have questions about one policy or another or about one political connection or another. Instead, it’s because of the scale of the challenges ahead, and because the past decade has done so much to prove how productive and how efficient agriculture can be when farm decisions are left in farm hands.
What’s crucial is that we’re at a juncture where today’s strong, vigorously-managed farms can drive us into a future with a higher performing and more sustainable agriculture than anyone has ever been able to imagine. Or we can lose the gains our farmers have already made by standing in their way.
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It will take leadership.
Will this leadership come from our farm organizations? It doesn’t come easily for me to say this, or to jump on any bandwagon, for that matter. I expect you’re the same. But how can we say anything other than that our farm organizations must be pivotal players in what’s to come if it’s to come at all.
Theirs mustn’t be the only voice, but, on the one hand, how else will the farm voice be heard in so many corridors of power, and on the other even more crucial hand, how else will agriculture know what it wants to say in those corridors if farm organizations don’t do and publicize critical research and if they don’t foster vital discussions and debates among farmers in order to formulate policy.
This is, admittedly, a shortcoming for many farm groups. They’ll say, “If you want to hear debate, you should come to one of our directors’ meetings.” To which most of us would say, “Not good enough.”
Or they might say, “We can’t even get farmers to come to our regional meetings let alone engage in anything that amounts to useful debate.” To which we also say “Not good enough.”
And you can guess what I will say if the farm group says, “We send out newsletter after newsletter. We do everything we can to keep our farmers informed.” Again, it’s “Not good enough.”
Farm organizations should be as productive, as innovative, as efficient and as committed to improvement at two-way communications as farmers are at producing crops and livestock and at protecting their soil.
Are they today? No, I don’t think so either.
In multiple stories in this issue, you’ll see references to the tremendous progress farmers have made at improving communications related to transition and succession planning.
You’ll also find multiple references to the surprises you’ve encountered in your own on-farm discussions, and how valuable those have been in developing your go-forward strategies.
Take the first step. Make a plan to get more involved with farm groups this winter. Choose which groups to focus on, and which issues, whether on government policies, infrastructure, new markets or more.
Besides, imagine who you’ll meet.
Are we getting it right? Let me know. I’m at tom.button@fbcpublishing.
