A recently released report for the Quebec Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has painted a grim picture of an agricultural sector controlled by a cabal of industrial farmers, bureaucrats and union leaders insulated by a self-serving supply management regimen that has made it increasingly difficult and sometimes impossible for new farmers to enter the business of farming or even change the way farming is done in Quebec.
“Young agricultural entrepreneurs are asking for a business environment similar to that experienced by other sectors. They especially ask no favors. They just want to be given the freedom to do business under normal conditions of success,” concluded Jean Pronovost in his report, “À l'écoute de la relève agricole - Le vécu et les attentes des jeunes agriculteurs Québécois”. Mr. Pronovost chaired the Commission on the future of agriculture and agri-food in Quebec from 2006 to 2008.
“I am tired of these reports by has-beens,” commented Bruno Letendre, President of the Quebec Milk Producers Association, to La Terre de Chez Nous.
Indeed, this is the second such report to come through the Ministry of Agriculture with recommendations for the elimination of quotas in Quebec agriculture. Last February, the Ministry released the Gagné report on maple syrup that contained 21 recommendations that would effectively dismantle the current cartel of producers and embrace international trade marketing.
The report is also fanning the flames that burn at the centre of Quebec’s farm policy: Who speaks for the farmers? The Pronovost report highlights the dissatisfaction young farmers have with the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), the province’s only legally chartered union for farmers. This is a touchy subject in Quebec because there are two other splinter unions — l’Union paysanne and the Conseil des entrepreneurs agricoles (CEA) — and the UPA revealed recently that the Quebec Minister of Agriculture Pierre Paradis has been supporting these splinter unions with financial support. It should be mentioned that Pronovost has publicly supported the l’Union paysanne and its program of reforms to Quebec agriculture.
"(The Minister) has started a war," commented Marcel Groleau, president of the UPA, in an interview with La Terre, adding that the bond of trust between Minister and the food world is "broken for months." The use of public funds in this context is even seen as a "total lack of ethics."
The report does have its supporters, among them Quebec’s largest agri-food business, La Coop fédérée. "Already in 2007 in the hearings of the Commission on the future of agriculture and agri-food in Quebec, La Coop stressed the plurality of agricultural models and the need to adapt our agricultural policy to this reality" said the president of La Coop, Ghislain Gervais, on the coop’s web site. Founded in 1922, La Coop fédérée ranks amongst the top 100 largest cooperatives and mutual societies in the world, across all sectors.
Pronovost had been asked last year by Minister Pierre Paradis to find out if there was a problem with the process of farm ownership succession in Quebec. "The future of Quebec agriculture requires that we ensure a quality succession (of new farmers), sufficient in number, skilled and motivated," underlined the Minister in his request for the study.
What Pronovost found was an industry at odds with itself: there were numerous barriers to entry as well as obstacles to success that seemed designed to keep power concentrated in the hands of a few industrial farmers. If you are not “in the family” so to speak, your chances of entering the business and doing well are extremely limited.
- Stuart Logie