Politicians are going to let us down. Exactly when and exactly how hard isn’t yet clear, but our hopes are dimming more each day. Maybe we’re wrong. We don’t like forecasting doom, but at the very least it seems prudent to invest a bit of time imagining the potential impacts ahead.
It now seems unlikely that world agriculture will survive the planting season without at least a handful of significant threats to the system. It’s even harder to believe that it will survive weather scares this summer.
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Already, the OECD and the Food and Agriculture Organization among others are warning that commodity prices are unsustainable. With such sources to quote, at least a handful of politicians around the globe have got to be dreaming of getting elected on export controls and worse.
In other words, with today’s food world so inter-connected, a Greece or Libya is around the corner. The fallout for moderate governments facing a new round of instability could be fatal.
It’s easy to forget how political the world of agriculture already is. A quick review is alarming. Skirmishes over phytosanitary standards should alert us to the dangers ahead. Those skirmishes confirm that politicians around the world are as ready as ever to bend every rule for their own benefit, and that they’ll have support at home to do so. They also confirm that ag disputes have a record of ramping up to irrational levels seemingly overnight, and often on the thinnest of pretexts.
At home here, Canada’s politicians inspire little confidence. The Harper government has provided solid management but it needs urban votes. Meanwhile, Michael Ignatieff is so busy telling every audience exactly what he thinks it wants to hear that he hasn’t got his feet planted firmly anywhere.
In fact, Canada’s history is a history of price control, whether that was with Britain’s corn laws in our earliest days or with the two-price wheat system and similar policies more recently.
Policies as blatant as price control are hardly needed, however. Agriculture has much to fear too because it has built much of its prosperity on its faith in politicians. Ethanol, as just one example, is hardly an economic option. It is taking 40 per cent of the continent’s corn crop because of government subsidies and tax breaks, and because of a web of regulations forcing consumers to fill their tanks with ethanol blends.
The question for farmers is how to prepare for the fallout from the political fracas. You know and I know that high commodity prices are the solution that the world needs. Only profitability can drive production where it needs to go. But being right may not be much help.
Will we be reading bad news in the days ahead? We hope not, but it’s impossible to say. Which means the best recommendation is to prepare yourself so the news, if it arrives, won’t be as bad as it might have been.
Are we getting it right? You can reach me at [email protected], or you can call me at 519-674-1449. Let me know what you think.
