Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry
Issue 7 - Evidence - Meeting of April 22, 2004
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 22, 2004
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met this day at 8:35 a.m. to examine the issues related to the development and marketing of value-added agricultural, agri-food and forest products, on the domestic and international markets.
Senator Joyce Fairbairn (Deputy Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chairman: This committee, as you know, has been dealing with issues related to the development and marketing of value-added agricultural, agri-food and forest products both on the domestic and international markets. This morning we have invited officials from Canadian Organic Growers to provide us with an overview of the issues their industry is facing in relation to value-added product opportunities for our farmers. The Canadian Organic Growers is a national organization representing farmers, gardeners and consumers. Its mission is to be a leading information and networking resource on organic production in Canada, promoting the methods and techniques of organic growing along with the associated environmental, health and social benefits.
Appearing before us today and very welcome, are its president, Ms. Janine Gibson, Ms. Laura Telford, the executive director and Mr. Tom Manley, board member and chair of the Ottawa chapter. Each will make a presentation.
Ms. Janine Gibson, President, Canadian Organic Growers: Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here with you. I feel I have arrived in spring because in Manitoba and the Prairies the crocuses are just barely peeking their way out of the ground. As mentioned, Canadian Organic Growers is a national organization. We have a membership of over 1600 growers, gardeners and farmers from across the country. I am most familiar with those in the Prairies. As an organic inspector, I have visited over 700 farms across Western Canada and into Southern Ontario. We are committed to organic production methods and have formed 14 chapters across the country, which support each other in learning more about organic production. Although this is a traditional form of agriculture, in more recent times we have had to learn a lot of techniques from one another to reduce chemical dependency.
I will begin by giving a definition of what organic agriculture is. It is a holistic system of production designed to both optimize productivity and encourage diversity in the communities within the agro ecosystem including soil organisms, plants and people; diversity at all levels below the soil and above the soil. The principal goal is to develop productive enterprises that are sustainable and yet harmonious with the environment. This definition is taken from the draft of our organic standard that is currently being updated. This was part of the original 1999 Canadian organic standard and we continue to work with this definition.
I would like to point out that there are two streams of organic food distribution. Not too long ago, organics was primarily a niche market and people adopting it were considered to be opting out of mainstream agriculture. This image is changing. Organics is now a $23-billion global market. In Canada, although the percentage of the total market is still small, between 1 to 2 per cent, organics is growing at a rate faster than any other sector of agriculture, at around 20 per cent a year. Large multinational corporations have gotten on the bandwagon and now many of the large players in the food industry such as the Campbell Soup Company, Heinz and Cargill are developing significant organic operations.
Not so long ago organic products were only available in markets and health food stores but today Loblaws carries dozens of organic products and the majority are sold through mainstream supermarkets. Not everyone embraces this move to mainstream. Many think it is a mistake to adopt the conventional food distribution system with all its pitfalls, specifically that it does not make sense to grow large quantities of food that have to travel great distances which reduces freshness and in many cases nutritional value. Vertically integrated corporations, with their large power, exert downward pressure on prices and do not necessarily support local farmers or local communities. Much of the organic product distributed through mainstream stores does little for the Canadian economy. For this reason Canada and many parts of the world are developing a vibrant parallel food distribution system that emphasizes local production for local consumption. This increases greater community and environmental health with a greater share of the proceeds actually going to the farm families and the communities that support them.
Alternative distribution methods that embrace bioregional production and consumption, such as farmers markets and community-supported agriculture farms, are springing up across the country. This is a different breed of farmer. Many are young urbanites while others are middle-aged career changers. Both lack traditional farm backgrounds. These young people are ignoring the conventional distribution system and establishing direct relationships with consumers of their products.
The farm family in this situation gets a larger share of the revenue and the consumer is happy because she can trust her food supply and directly support the person who grows it. As a bonus she gets a higher quality product that often tastes better. We all remember how good food tasted from our grandparents' garden, yet so few people have the time today to have their own gardens. This brings us to the issue of organic certification.
I am often asked how you know if something is truly organic. I say the best way is to grow it yourself, the next is to know the farmer, and the last is ensure it is certified organic. For mainstream organics, where the consumer generally does not have a trust relationship with the farm family, a significant issue is organic certification.
Canada has had a voluntary standard in place since 1999, as I mentioned earlier, but recent external pressures are forcing us to move towards a mandatory standard enshrined in regulation. Recently the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has developed a regulatory framework proposal to put to the government for approval. This process could take at least a year to complete. We in the sector have been working toward a clear, effective regulation that is practical and affordable to implement. We must have a regulation in place as soon as possible in time to negotiate organic equivalents with the other countries with which we engage in trade.
We hope to see no interruption to current organic trade that is in place, and we hope to see improved opportunities to capture emerging markets in organic consumption for our farm families in Canada. Regulation is needed to authorize the specific duties of the federal and provincial authorities and the developing organic supervisory body. This regulation must set out procedures for cooperation between the governments and the organic supervisory body and to ensure regular accountability.
Due to a lack of resources and over-reliance on volunteerism, factions have crippled the development of the organic sector, especially in creating a national organic supervisory body. Outside of Quebec and British Columbia, no provincial associations exist with effective communication strategies. Leadership is key, and the organic supervisory body needs dedicated support in federal and provincial ministries. There must be ongoing support and a staff person coordinating regular national and regional communications through in-person and teleconference meetings.
Ms. Laura Telford, Executive Director, Canadian Organic Growers: I will take you through something that is called "Backgrounder No. 4" in your pile of papers. This will give you a bit of a snapshot of where our industry is right now.
I point out that data in our sector is very hard to come by. Until very recently, there have been very few concerted efforts to get data about production or about the retail value of the sector. Just recently, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada has contracted a past president of Canadian Organic Growers to try to get the data, and the contract just ended March 31. I thank them very much for allowing me to present this preliminary data to you. It has not been formally released.
What you see in front of you is from a report that was developed for Agriculture Canada. I will go through that. Some of the data are definitely not there yet. The report points out the need for further data collection, and we are hoping that, in the future, Statistics Canada will try to collect as detailed statistics as they do for conventional agriculture. It would really help our industry.
We are collecting data now because we are about to get a national regulation. These data will serve as a baseline. We are hoping that, by having a regulation, we will see increases in development in the sector. This will allow us to measure progress. This is the first real attempt to get solid data. Canadian Organic Growers has been keeping producer statistics since 1992, but we definitely have not been collecting the detail that is in this report.
The first graph shows the breakdown of small, medium and large farms across the country. You see a total of 3,100 certified organic farms. I am talking now about only those producers who have received organic certification. It takes three years to go through that process, and then you have to go through a rigorous tracking process to get certification. We believe that at least 10 times that number of farmers are practising organic techniques throughout the country, and around 250 of them are now in that three-year transition process. In all of these data I present, I am not talking about those people; I am only talking about the people who have already completed the three-year process and have the certification. There are 3,100 of them across the country.
The key places where we have certified organic farms are Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. You can see that from the chart. There has been steady growth in the number of organic farms since collection of data started in 1992. That is the second figure on the first page. You can see that we are now levelling off. For a while, the growth curve was fairly steep. We are now at 3,100, but last year we were 3,120. We are not sure if this levelling is a result of some faulty data we received from Ontario or whether many farmers are opting out of certification. We do not think people are stopping the use of organic techniques, but they may be opting out of certification because they do not see the market benefits. Take that for what it is worth.
In terms of acreage and production value, which is on the next page, the first chart at the top, close to 1 million acres of land are under organic certification. Another 295,000 acres are considered organic, including rangeland, Crown land, natural and wild areas, many of the maple syrup plantations, and land used for wild crafting.
The value of the farm production is incredibly difficult to estimate, but we think, using the best data available, that it is in the ballpark of $170 million.
Our largest export organic crop is the same as conventional agriculture; it is wheat. The graph on the second to last page shows the increase in wheat production since 1992. This is organic wheat production. We have seen a five-fold increase. It is now worth about $18 million a year, and the industry right now believes that this export market is in jeopardy because of the potential introduction of genetically modified wheat in this country. We have lots of evidence to suggest that these numbers will crash if the government licences Monsanto's Roundup Ready wheat. The second most valuable commodity in organics is flax.
There were very few data to draw conclusions on imports here. Not many of the respondents actually filled out the forms, so the data are tentative. We do know that imports are about $82 million worth of organic grocery products, around $74 million in fresh produce and $7 million in organic coffee. Much of this produce comes from the U.S.
Canadian market share in our industry is very variable depending on the commodity. In the dairy sector, for example, Canadians have 90 per cent market share, but when you look at organic groceries and organic produce, this decreases to 10 per cent and 22 per cent of market share. Most of this is being filled by U.S. imports.
You can see from this picture that the number of our farms is decreasing and consumer demand for organic food is increasing. We think that consumer demand is increasing by about 20 per cent per year. That is what the industry is telling us. A huge gap is developing, and that gap is being met by foreign imports. That does very little for the Canadian economy. We are hoping that we can increase the number of Canadian producers who are farming under organic systems.
Mr. Tom Manley, Chair of the Ottawa Chapter, Canadian Organic Growers: I am from just south of Ottawa, Eastern Ontario. I grew up on a farm converted to organic production in 1988 by my parents. I am now owner of an organic farm service and supply business here in eastern Ontario, serving organic farmers throughout the eastern part of central Ontario and western Quebec.
I wish to carry on with a sentence that Ms. Telford concluded with, that organic production in Canada seems to be at a standstill while imports are increasing. Why is that?
You would think that if farmers will believe the value to farmers, consumers and the demand for organic food, why are they not converting to organic production much more readily? There are reasons they are not. These reasons are summarized in the two pages you have beside you.
The statistics as well as my personal anecdotal observations in addition to the anecdotal evidence from other people in the sector confirms that organic production has reached a plateau.
Any new farmers coming into the sector are replacing farmers who are retiring or who have left certified organic production. Any actual increase in acreage is the result of current organic farmers completing the transition of their last acres or growing their operation with purchases or rentals of further acres.
Why are they not converting more quickly? I make presentations regularly to conventional farmers giving them the story and the reasons are consistent. There is the question of perception. Conventional farmers largely perceive that organic farming is still a niche and still very marginal. This perception is confirmed by a systematic avoidance of the word "organic" by academia, institutions and government at all levels. There is a systematic avoidance of the word "organic" in policies, budgets, staffing, declarations or communications. When a minister of agriculture talks about agriculture, they rarely if ever use the word "organic." Thus, farmers conclude that if our leaders are not using the word it does not exist, for all intents and purposes.
Farmers perceive that organic cannot succeed, that weeds will overtake the fields, that animals will get sick and die and that yields will drop significantly. This perception persists because governments, institutions, academia and extension services are not out there giving the story. They are not out there using success cases and presenting those success cases to the farmers. The farmers are not getting — other than from biased people like ourselves — the story that organics will succeed. There is no one out there giving validity to the claims being made.
Organic yields are lower than conventional yields, only confirming the perception. However, we must understand that organic yields are largely low because of our transition situation. While it takes three years to certify that a farmer is organic, it takes many years for a farm to master methods. During that interim period, yields will be lower either from animal or crop production. Until the farmer masters those organic techniques and rebalances the soil and minerals and gets a good biological system working, those yields will take years to recover. That transition period confirms to conventional farmers that yields are low.
Farmers must understand that it requires a combination of lower yields, higher sales prices and reduced input costs to deliver a better bottom line.
Farmers do not have confidence in the sustainability of organic premium prices. Currently, at the farm gate, prices range from 50 to 100 per cent premium over conventional equivalency. The farmers believe that if there is a large movement to organic production, supply will overlap demand and prices will drop. That is a fair statement and a valid concern. Stories out of Europe have confirmed this. Farmers must understand that there is more to organic farming than a premium price.
Some studies I have read suggested that organic farms would remain more profitable even if they were selling their products at conventional prices. The point is that conventional farmers, by reducing input costs and maintaining their yields through proven organic practices and selling at conventional prices can still improve their bottom line.
Organic farming is knowledge and management-intensive. Anyone can hire a local service company and spray the field, but it takes a real farmer to understand crop rotations, life cycles of pests, weed avoidance and so on. Farmers are busy people. Many farmers, as we know in Canada's current farm environment, are working off-farm to supplement their income. Intensive management, the learning curve and the labour involved are just out of reach for all those farms. They are avoiding organic because they do not have time for it; I hear that regularly.
No one is marketing or supporting organic farmers. Sector associations, such as Canadian Organic Growers rely largely on volunteers are stretched to the limit. We do not have the capability to reach out to farmers, to market organics and to support them in their transition and in their very steep learning curve. With governments pulling out of extension services, governments are leaving it to the private sector to fill in the gap to provide education and support to farmers in general. When the private sector provides support to a farmer, it comes with a product to sell: a fertilizer, a pesticide, a genetically-modified seed or a production contract. That is how they are providing their extension services. The price is free, but the product costs a premium.
In organic agriculture, the very definition means low input. If the organic farmer does not buy a product, how will someone provide them with information and support? Organic farmers are not buying enough stuff to be able to finance the education support that is required in a steep learning curve.
The current commodity system in Canada is structurally designed against the core values of organic farming. Canada's production management is largely designed around commodity silos. Each commodity association, the corn growers, the soybean growers, the cattleman's association all drive for increased production of their commodity at the expense of every other commodity. There are a limited number of acres. If I am going to produce corn, I cannot produce soybeans and so forth.
Each commodity with wild mono-crop comes with its own line of inputs, supply management system, integrated markets, and policies and extension efforts on silos. On the contrary, organic agriculture requires integrated long-term crop rotations, integrated crops and livestock systems, diverse and direct marketing systems, seasonal production, volume-adapted production, occasional production and so on. Organic agriculture cannot fit into the commodity- managed structures in the current silos. There is a disconnect.
Supply management, as it is currently structured, although I am personally in favour of its intentions, hinders the arrival of new organic farmers.
There are two ways to increase organic farming. First, convert current farms to organic production, but they are hindered, as I have just explained. Second, welcome the new generation of farmers. These are the sons and daughters of current farmers and also people adopting farming as a new career as a young person or as a career shift at mid-life. These people are growing farms from small to larger scales. Fifty-four per cent of farms in Canada earn less than $50,000 gross annual sales. These small farms cannot afford to get into supply-managed systems because of the cost of quota and the first steppingstone to get into quotas requires such large herds and flocks that they cannot afford the capital required.
Supply management is maintaining the status quo with consolidation and keeping organic and all new farmers out of the system of eggs, milk, chicken and turkey. There is a severe lack of adapted and appropriately sized distribution and processing systems in Canada for small and organic farms. Even large organic farms are widely diversified. They have multiple products and small quantities. However, through consolidation in agri-business in Canada over the last decades, this has caused the closure of many small, community-based slaughterhouses, cheese factories and vegetable packing plants.
Organic farmers, being small or at least diversified, do not have the outlets necessary other than their own farm stores, which are few and far between, to sell their volume that is seasonally adapted, species- or variety-adapted and is seasonal in some cases.
Our system of agriculture in Canada today is against organic farming and, in fact, small farms in general. For that reason, it is difficult to get conventional farmers to switch and even more difficult to invite new farmers into the stream.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you very much. We will begin with questions.
Senator Gustafson is from Saskatchewan and I am from Alberta. We have been on this committee since we were children, it seems, and we have travelled a lot across the country on a variety of farm issues. We have very often heard presentations on organic farming, presentations filled with pride and eagerness, as well as the frustration that we hear from you today.
On the federal side, I gather that there are two or three areas of major concern to you. One is the national regulations, and you mentioned they might take a year to implement. Is that an unreasonable time?
The second concern is with regard to communicating what you are doing and why it is beneficial to Canadians. Are you seeking assistance from the federal government on that issue?
The dip we see on the chart to which you directed us is not that large, but then the industry is not that large. Do you see that dip as a significant indicator of people not coming into organic farming, for the variety of reasons you have given, or others dropping out, or is it just a bit of a slowdown in organization?
Ms. Gibson: With regard to the timeline for regulation, we have been pleased to work in cooperation with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada in developing this regulatory process assessment and getting feedback quite broadly from across the country in a series of hearings that have been held.
We think that once we have support in principle from the president of CFIA and the Minister of Agriculture, a timeline of one year to implement the regulation is quite appropriate. Under the Canada Agricultural Products Act we already have legislation under which it would fall. We would only need to specify a regulation under that act, and I have been assured that a year would be realistic, which would fit in with our need to meet some of the timelines of our international trading partners, like the European Union, who want a national system because they want to deal directly with governments rather than with specific independent certification bodies, over 25 of which function in Canada. They want a national system.
The Deputy Chairman: Have you had an opportunity to talk to the Minister of Agriculture directly?
Ms. Gibson: I believe our presentation is being put to him on April 29.
With regard to your next point about federal support for communication, in my presentation I said that it is important that we receive federal support, especially for an organic supervisory body. Factions have developed across the country and there are difficulties in having solid provincial communication. Only two provinces have provincial associations that communicate effectively with all their organic farmers. We desperately need communication support primarily. Because we have been relying on volunteerism, the degree of effectiveness and, to be frank, professionalism in communication is not the best. Many of the volunteers are dedicated farm families that have been involved in this for the last 10 years, but their skills are primarily in production, not necessarily in communication. That has been a distinct drawback. We need staffing to coordinate communication within regions and nationally so that we can all work together to develop and present a unified position, not only to our federal government but also to our international trading partners.
With regard to whether the dip is significant, I believe it reflects intense frustration with the certification process, which can be very time consuming. Skilled and dedicated organic farm families have told me that filling out their certification forms has taken them between nine and 12 hours. That paperwork is very important because it gives consumers the gate-to-plate audit trail they are asking for. They want to know where their food has been and what it has been in contact with, which requires a great deal of record keeping by the farm families, and that is a skill that many of them are challenged by.
Organizations such as ours are looking for ways to help these farm families develop the skills of record keeping and application making, and of streamlining the applications so that they are not so onerous.
Those farmers are still practising organic methods, but they are not necessarily going through the certification process because of the difficulties they have with the bureaucracy.
Mr. Manley: With regard to the plateauing of the growth of production, I have been in business serving organic farmers for seven years. In the first few years, I saw new people in my store weekly asking questions about organic farming. They wanted to know how to get certificated, how to convert and where the markets are. However, in the last two years, there has been only a trickle of new faces, and of the people I saw in the previous years, not a large number actually converted. There are not a lot of new candidates at the gate waiting to certify.
Senator Gustafson: I am quite familiar with organic farming. A neighbour who farms right beside my land farms organically. He sent me a letter this spring stating what land was going to be organically farmed. That is fair ball and is part of the certification program, I understand. There are two other organic farmers not far from my land.
In Saskatchewan, many farmers who have been small grain producers or cattle producers find it very easy to get into the organic program because they have not used a great amount of fertilizer, if any. They have not used a lot of sprays because they were in summer fallow and so on.
I believe that the positive side of organic farming is environmental. Organic farmers have a lot to offer Canadians in that regard. On the other side, you are up against some very difficult situations. You mentioned the supply management problem. I do not know how you will overcome that difficulty. You did not mention the Canadian Wheat Board. Monsanto and the big fertilizer companies of the world will not support you. How will you overcome these challenges?
Mr. Manley: We are overcoming them. Despite us, who is doing it, the consumer. Only 2 per cent of the population are farmers. The other 98 per cent are buying food. Statistics and surveys have consistently and repeatedly demonstrated that they want environmentally friendly food, farmer-friendly food, energy-friendly food and organic food. Farmers only have to make the decision to deliver it or not. Now, farmers are not necessarily delivering in the quantities we want because of the reasons I have explained. Despite Monsanto and our lack of resources, it is happening. It takes a little longer, that is all.
Senator Gustafson: It seems that government direction has been for larger farms. We see it in the chicken business in the valley, the large farms half of which Senator St. Germain is responsible for. That has been the trend: get bigger, buy more land, expand and then go broke.
Now we are hearing voices to the opposite, but they are not strong yet. I was reading some in the National Post yesterday from Ontario farmers who are saying certain things that are quite striking. These forces are saying, if we went completely to organic farming the world would starve. What do you say to that?
Ms. Gibson: I am pleased to say no, definitely not. I think people who have been privileged enough to have access to a wide range of information see that our hunger problems are primarily distribution problems, not production problems. As Mr. Manley mentioned earlier, once a farm is fully in organic production often the diversity of life in the soil stabilizes yields so that during droughts, and one of the reasons I believe that the Saskatchewan numbers have stayed high, organic farming will out-yield conventional farming because there is more organic matter in the soil holding on to that precious moisture. There is more diversity of life.
I use the analogy in many of my classes and in talking with the farm families that I have the privilege to visit that when we are under stress, we need the support of our communities and our families and a range of supports. When the plants are under stress, when crops are under stress, if there is a range of micro-organisms in the soil and a diversity of crops in the rotation, that diversity supports their life and health. Under adverse conditions, organic farming regularly out-yields conventional farming. Given global warming and the bizarre weather events around the world, I think organic farming will increasingly prove that it is a more stable form of agriculture. It is the form of agriculture that fed us up until 60 years ago. I think if we go back to not pushing nature, to just push mono-crops — nowhere in nature do we see mono-crops; we see integrated diverse communities — that is what organic farm families are striving to create. That is why they have a diversity of crops: livestock, grain crops, pulses and vegetables. That diversity brings strength and stability.
The consumers are more and more — Mr. Manley's point was well made — asking for that stability. We want food security. Many are living in a very insecure world in many ways. If they know the farm families from which their food is coming and they know it is local production for local consumption that speaks to us at a very deep level.
Ms. Telford: In the conventional system, during the green revolution, we saw yields go up exponentially over the last 30 years. Now, they are dropping off. We think this might be because the soil is becoming depleted in many parts of the world. Some land is now out of production whereas in organic systems, as Mr. Manley said, we are seeing increasing yields as people learn how to farm organically. We are on the steep part of the curve and they are levelling out. The question is, will we ever make up those yields and I think the point made by Ms. Gibson is probably correct. It does not matter in that the problem is more about poverty and food distribution than lack of food in the world.
Senator Gustafson: I had the opportunity of chairing a committee that studied the drought situation in Western Canada. What you say is absolutely true. We have seen it again this year with dry crops in Saskatchewan. The soil has a way of protecting itself. In these dry years, in fact, it produced what we call kochia weed, which only grows in drought, but the farmers fed their cattle on that. That was the experience of my youngest son this year. He got 200 to 300 bales of this weed and fed the cattle all winter and nothing else grew. I agree with that.
The Deputy Chairman: Senator Gustafson mentioned the kochia weed. About two summers ago in the drought in Alberta, even that was dying on the hills of the cattle farms.
Mr. Manley, your spirit of hope and enthusiasm I know is reflected in some of the outlets here in Ottawa even. I know one that I go to, Herb and Spice, has dramatically increased the variety it has to offer and it is certainly being purchased. Hope is there.
Senator Callbeck: I have a couple of questions. One is on your organization and the other one pertains to my own province of Prince Edward Island and an article that appeared in the local press recently.
You mention you have 1,600 members and 14 chapters. How is your association funded? Is there a chapter in every province?
Ms. Gibson: Yes, we even have chapters in the Yukon and up north and as global warming makes the north more able to do agriculture more farm families are joining us there. We have excellent distribution of our chapters across the country. We have a majority of chapters in Ontario and British Columbia. I do not believe we have one in Newfoundland and Labrador but generally we have them across the country. We are member-based and the organization is supported from our membership, which fluctuates. We have had 1,700 to 1,800 members and down to 1,500. We are trying to grow that all the time. We think it is too small. We think a higher percentage of the organic growers across the country should be members but it is our members who primarily support our organization. We go to foundations — we have received more encouraging support lately through foundations — but primarily it has been membership-funded.
Senator Callbeck: My other question concerns an article that I saw in my local press recently. An organic grower of potatoes on Prince Edward Island was interviewed.
As you know, Prince Edward Island is a potato-growing province. Last year, I believe, we grew 106,000 acres and less than 200 acres were organic potatoes. There was a symposium in Charlottetown where 150 people attended and the heading of the article is, "Growing interest." There is a statement in the article, which I want to read to you and I would like you to comment on it.
The statement is, "there is no proof that an organic potato is any healthier than a conventional potato."
Ms. Gibson: We were pleased to participate at that symposium by the Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network. I have seen studies both from Rutgers University in the United States and from the University of Austria — unfortunately, there is nothing from Canadian research, which needs to happen — about the benefits of organic product in terms of nutrition.
Yes, I am familiar with a range of research that indicates organic produce not only has less chemical pesticide residue on it but is healthier and has a greater range of vitamins, minerals, and salicylic acids that decrease tumour formation in people. In Austria, you have to legitimate why you are charging more, which is why their university has done more testing and found quite a range of higher levels of nutrients in their organic produce. There, the producers have had to put that information forward to justify why they are charging higher prices. The research is all too scant here in North America, although Rutgers University has done some specifically on the benefit of organic potatoes and how a healthier potato minimizes pesticide residue from organic production. This area needs more research in Canada and in North America in general.
Mr. Manley: When I hear the statement that there is no proof that the food is better or the yields are higher or whatever, I think it is largely because the person is not willing to go out and seek that information. The information is out there and readily available. One has to invest some amount of effort to find it.
The next part is the definition of the word "proof." If the person is searching for, or expecting, absolute, 100 per cent occurrence of that statement, then of course it will not happen. Proof is found in probability and tendency. It is possible to certify an acre of gravel and try to produce food on it. You will not get good quality out of it, and therefore the contrary will be true. Generally speaking, the strong tendency and the strong probability is that through diverse soil conditions, organic food is of superior quality, shelf life, taste, and texture, and is lower in contaminants.
In my retail enterprise, on a regular basis, I receive new clients who come in on specific recommendations from their doctor. They are suffering from disorders of various types — celiac disease, lactose intolerance, attention disorders, allergies, cancer and so on, and a professional is recommending they go on an organic diet.
Senator Callbeck: Mr. Manley, you mentioned farmers who have returned to conventional production. Are there many people who go back to conventional production?
Mr. Manley: It does happen, but not very often — not often in numbers nor in size of farm. When it does happen, the typical reason is, "I just do not have time for it." I know a few cases close to home, my brother being one of them.
I mentioned that organic growing is knowledge- and management-intensive, hence labour- and time-intensive. Those farmers, especially if they are small, have to supplement their farm with off-farm income. When they should be in the field on a good day doing tine harrowing of their soybean crop, they are working off-farm, and by the time they get home it is raining and it is too late. They run into difficulty in consistency, quality and timeliness. They decide they just cannot handle both, and they make the decision in favour of their job versus the farm and go back to conventional production.
Senator Lawson: I am one of the senators here who grew up on a farm. I can recall during the Second World War period when we had rationing of butter and sugar and so on, and then margarine appeared on the scene. By the time we had all been educated on that, it was an act of treason to use it. We had to have real cream that came from the cow et cetera, and we grew up in that environment.
When we started to hear about organic farming, we thought, well, that was a bunch of elitists who, for whatever purpose, were doing this, until someone discovered it had some impact on the environment. Farmers, as a natural thing, protect the environment, so you grow from that. I have watched it grow. In the supermarkets, particularly in California, you have sections larger than this room dedicated to organics.
In my backyard, in Surrey, we grew some blueberries ourselves, and they were very good. We were wondering what all the fuss was about this particular farmer growing blueberries. We met him and found out he is an organic grower, and you do not get any blueberries from him unless you order in advance of the crop. He sells it all at a premium because it is an outstanding product and better than what we have.
You mentioned some levelling off. I have never used the Atkins diet, but I admired Dr. Atkins because he seemed to deal with my biases. I recall him being interviewed when they brought out Cool Whip, and he was asked if they should use it and feed it to their children. He said, "I do not want to be negative about this, but with all the chemicals in there, I would not shave with it." That sounds to me like a negative comment, but he made his case, and I agreed with that.
The irony is that Dr. Atkins died in that accident a few years ago, and now there has been an explosion. Where Senator St. Germain and I come from, British Columbia, there is a low-carb store in North Vancouver. We checked it out, and it is doing very well. You can get a loaf of bread for $10 and all these great cereals for all these high prices and so on. The lady who put it together on her own initiative just announced before the first year was over that she would be franchising these stores. There is an explosion everywhere on these low carbs. You now even have low carb beer, so it has now gone mainstream. Has that affected this levelling off you are talking about with organics, or have you fallen by the wayside because it is kind of a cult thing and low carb now seems to be mainstream?
Ms. Gibson: No, I would think not. I think that is a reflection of people paying attention to their diet. We see an increase in organic sales. My concern is the demand for quality food products. Whether it is an explosion in low carb or an increase in organic consumption, people are very conscious of their diet. They are conscious of the consequences that we are what we eat, I think more so than we have been for some time. It is another reflection of the increase in consumer demands. My concern is that that demand is being met by farmers from outside Canada.
I grew up on a family farm, and I think that a family farm is a wonderful place to live and a wonderful place from which our food should come. It has not received the support it needs. It breaks my heart to see our farm families lose the opportunities to be sustainable. I have been privileged as an organic inspector and producer, but primarily inspector, to visit farm families and see how healthy the organic farms are in comparison with their neighbours, and also to see how many younger farmers are choosing to farm organically. There is a growth in that.
I think the levelling off comes from the new initiators. In any group in society, there are always the new initiators, the ones who do not mind being the pioneers. All of those have stepped forward, and now we need to give support to those who need to re-educate their aesthetic. Many farmers have been taught that a good-looking field is all one crop. This idea of intercropping two or three different crops in the same field does not look quite right to them, or weeds in the field do not look quite right, even though that diversity may mean a healthier crop and healthier yields and a much healthier bottom line. There is a whole aesthetic, training and support for a change in approach that needs to happen with the farm families.
Consumers are saying, "We want whatever will make us healthy," whether it is low carb or organic. If that woman is making money at $10 for a loaf of bread, that says the premiums are not a problem. People want quality. I want to ensure that our farm families have the support to deliver that quality and that market is not being lost to the U.S. entrepreneurial spirit, which seems to have received much more support from their government than our farm families have received from ours.
Senator Lawson: Is there any way that you can have low-carb organic products? Is there some way you can hook onto this comet out there that seems to be taking a large portion of the market?
I talked to a farmer in California. I asked him how he was doing. He said that because of the craze for arugula, the purple cabbage to cover up the salads, he put 400 acres into that and he says he makes more from that than all the other crops. Some of these things are faddish, cultish or so on, but there appears to be a niche and lucrative market for people to get involved in.
Ms. Gibson: Our current organic farm families are early adapters. They do look at a diversity of crops and take on new crops. They have the resources to retool and to learn how to take advantage of that type of thing. That is happening. The stagnation is the need to help those who require more supports to be adapters and to adapt their operation.
Senator Lawson: I wish you success.
Senator St. Germain: As Senator Gustafson said, you have quite a cross-section of senators here this morning. Senator Gustafson is a huge grain farmer and I have been in the chicken and beef industries.
I was farming in Martha Sturdy's area. You may have heard of her. She is an organic farmer in Pemberton. We used to grow nuclear stock seed potatoes there. There are not huge productions. We had one of the bigger farms and we only had 500 acres, which was peanuts, when you compare to these guys with 10,000 acres.
My concern is that in a place like Pemberton, if you get an insect infestation in one of these valleys, herbicides, insecticides and what have you have always controlled them. I have seen infestations that have been quite dramatic on the production. What I am saying to you is that my observations are that you could have a total disaster and you would not be able to control it if you did not have the backup of the insecticide or the chemical industry or what have you. What is your reaction?
Mr. Manley: There are two reactions. First, I have read reports indicating that from before the chemical farming area to now, the percentage of crops lost to pests has actually increased. What have our chemicals achieved? We have only increased our losses, proportionally speaking.
Senator St. Germain: If I may, in the same breath, if they start spraying copper for whatever reason to control an insect outbreak, it can be controlled. We have evolved to this stage. Maybe the evolutionary process that has evolved has contributed to an increased number of insects or what have you, I do not know. All I am saying is that if you do the right things you can control it. I have seen an outbreak in the south end of the valley. We in the north end have taken quick action and we have been able to maintain our crop. I am not trying to discredit anything; I am just asking questions as to how you see the world.
Mr. Manley: The way we see it is that this discussion exemplifies the structural, intellectual and cultural difference between conventional and organic farming. One is attempting to control the environment; the other is attempting to manage the environment. One is attempting to control an outbreak; the other is attempting to avoid an outbreak.
Controlling an outbreak is not part of the consideration for an organic farmer. The consideration is to avoid. Avoidance is accomplished in two ways: first, through genetic diversity and horizontal resistance, that is, being able to have plants, animals and people who have the genetic make-up, exposure and immune systems necessary to resist pests and to cohabitate with pests. Pests are ubiquitous. Knowing that, we avoid, suppress and resist, we do not control.
If the animals, crops, plants and humans have increased genetic diversity and improved immune systems, that pest will make minor impact and progress and we will not have to control it as a last resort.
The second way is dispersion. Why do you have to kill 19 million chickens in a valley? That is because there are 19 million chickens in a valley. Organic farmers wish to disperse that in small pockets across broad geographic areas where natural barriers contain outbreaks. Dangers are ubiquitous. The risk of outbreaks, disease, or whatever, will never be zero. Knowing that ahead of time, organic farmers will disperse, just like a capable military commander will disperse his resources to minimize the impact of one hit. By small flocks, small herds and diversity of herds, flocks and crops on farms, if there is a hit somewhere, and it will happen, guaranteed, the impact is small and will be mitigated by the dispersion and diversity of livestock and by improved immune systems.
Senator St. Germain: I hear what you are saying. I know the chicken industry really well. I happened to be the chairman of the board. Supply management has its weaknesses. One of the greatest weaknesses is the inability to supervise.
My trade union friend here, Senator Lawson, and I agree on most things and we are the best of friends, but on some of these things there is abuse, such as there is with labour unions or vice versa on the part of management. In the case of these chicken farms, it is the management of these units that is the problem.
I have actually been part-and-parcel of revoking a licence from a grower because of poor farming practices. I believe that if Georgia can grow $4 billion worth of chickens, the Lower Mainland can grow $1 billion worth. It is up to the supply management groups. If they have the right to control supply and have certain powers over price controls, they have a greater responsibility as far as the management and the supervision of the units. That is another situation, which I am concerned about because the force-feeding of poultry is a really scary situation in the way that they have genetically improved the breeds as well, but the medication that goes into these flocks is scary.
If we did not produce at that level, a vast majority of farming nowadays is virtually not viable economically. You can say that people should work more, but the thing is that if we are to have a standard of living, there is no reason why farmers should have a lower standard of living than a clerk or someone who works here in Ottawa.
If you compare the salaries of some of the people who work in Ottawa and what you pay to these poor devils working on farms — and you are worth every cent, by the way — the fact is that it does not relate. How do you rationalize this situation?
You ask someone to work on my cattle operation that I am setting up in B.C. Now, I cannot pay them $60,000 a year. How do you rationalize that situation?
Mr. Manley: The current state of agriculture is one of deficit. Net farm incomes over the last 40 years have continued to decline while gross farm incomes have continually risen.
In 2003, as demonstrated by results from Statistics Canada, including supply-managed sectors, which are price- controlled, including organic which is premium-paid, overall agriculture in Canada ran a deficit in net farm incomes, and that is before paying the farm labour. Net farm incomes were negative last year, and this is with conventionally managed agriculture with the consolidation we have seen, which is chemical reliance and vertical distribution chains. That is the situation we are trying to address. That is what exists today. We are saying that organic agriculture will deliver not potential solutions but real solutions in three ways: first, reducing the input costs of farming while maintaining acceptable or superior yields; second, improving the sale price at the farm gate; and third, improving the farmer portion of the consumer food dollar by improving the linkages and reducing the distances between farmers and consumers through direct and farm-gate marketing.
Ms. Gibson: If I may, I mentioned earlier that as an organic inspector I have done over 1,000 inspections that have put me on over 700 farms. Time and time again, I have seen a crop in one field being decimated by aphids or diamondback moths, and right adjacent, across a little farm track, a multigenerational organic farm that has never seen chemical or has just been organic for the last 15 years, but with a healthy soil, and not a bug on it, or only on the weeds. I have seen that over and over again. What the soil is healthy and the crop is healthy, the insects are not as interested in it.
Not only have I seen this, but research from the Lethbridge Research Station has verified that when barley was intercropped with canola, the diamondback moth reads the field as a barley crop and leaves the canola alone. Unfortunately, I have not seen any more organic canola crops because of the introduction of genetically modified canola, so our farmers have not only lost that market, which they desperately needed, but they lost that broadleaf crop in the rotation to ensure the diversity. I have seen over and over again that when operations are diversified and a range of products is grown, they are not hit by the kind of pest problems their neighbours have. I will go into an area where wireworm is causing problems, and I will ask how they are managing that. Over and over again, the organic farmers say, "I have not really had a problem. I had a bit of damage on the edge of the field, but it is like the immune system of the crop is healthier."
Go back to the devastation that happened in the valleys of Eastern Europe after Chernobyl, when all those radioactive isotopes went through. Research was done through the University of Austria. The government had people out there. People were moved, and they were destroying crops. A series of farm families were directly hit, and the government kept bringing in different forms of equipment because they thought there must be an equipment problem. The crops and soil were not registering as being radioactive. That soil was so alive through biologically balanced composting that neither the crop nor the soil had absorbed any of the radioactive isotopes. It was as if they were full. It was full of the healthy nutrition, and the crop was not radioactive. Other crops in that area, I believe because they were chemically produced, absorbed the radioactivity and had to be destroyed.
That is an example of a healthy, integrated organic system, and organic soil boosting the immune system. The three of us could be exposed to germs, and whoever has the healthiest immune system would be able to repel. I have seen that happen over and over again on farms. Much more research needs to be done here, but the incidents with the non- radioactive market-garden crops in that village after Chernobyl is fundamental and should have received more press and research than it did. That series of farm families that did the composting and had the healthy soil fed that whole region because their crops were not radioactive and they were able to continue to produce. Their soil did not become radioactive, while that of their neighbours did. This is research available through the University of Austria, and it backs up what I have seen anecdotally. I have seen organic crops resisting attacks, not only being healthier through bizarre weather conditions but actually resisting grasshopper infestations, resisting diamondback moth and resisting aphids. I have seen that anecdotally.
Senator St. Germain: Is there any scientific research being done on this at the present time?
Ms. Gibson: Dr. Jill Clapperton at the Lethbridge Research Station has been doing a series of research on how to protect crops through intercropping.
Senator St. Germain: More definitively, you are saying that organic soil is more resistant. Is any actual definitive study being done on that?
Ms. Gibson: Yes, sir. I have just returned from Michigan State. There was a world congress on organic food safety. Scientists from all over the world were present, and I was representing Canada. A series of papers were presented. I believe their Web site is Organic World Congress through Michigan State. They were publishing papers that showed that with organic production, the crops actually resisted pathogen growth on the crops. They were a healthier product. They tried to inoculate them with pathogens, and the organic crops had a higher resistance. There is more and more mainstream science. I was surprised. I thought there would be more critical studies on organic and that perhaps there would be bit of an attack, but much to my pleasure, almost across the board the research that was presented was that organic production seems to boost the resistance of crops to pathogens both in the growing stage and in the end product. It was very impressive. I was very pleased to be part of that.
Senator St. Germain: What kind of government support do you think you need to grow an industry?
Ms. Gibson: I have a list of five recommendations that we think are necessary for the health of the Canadian organic sector. The first, very clearly, is that we need a federal organic regulation that will apply to all products that carry the label organic. The credibility with the consumer is key. We need to protect the organic label. After the United States enacted their national organic program regulation, there was a great increase both in organic consumption and in organic production. Our consumers, producers and processors need to be assured of the organic integrity of products in Canada bearing the organic label, so we definitely need a federal regulation.
The second recommendation is that we need to enact a moratorium on the introduction of any new genetically modified crops for human or animal consumption. We have seen the introduction of GM canola destroy our organic canola market. We cannot have that happen with the organic wheat market. It is our largest seller. A huge percentage of our buyers are saying that if we even introduce genetically modified wheat, they will find another market for their chemical wheat. They do not want to risk genetically modified wheat contamination. We need to protect our organic wheat. It is the backbone of our organic producers across Western Canada. Prince Edward Island is looking at it. It could have a niche market, because it is an island, for growing genetically pure and non-contaminated. They are looking at a moratorium on all genetically modified seeds. We need to look at a moratorium on the introduction of new GM products.
We also need to enact a law requiring labelling of genetically modified foods. Many other countries have passed such a law. The consumer's union is not happy with our proposed voluntary labelling of genetically modified foods. Consumers in Canada want to have the choice and know whether or not they are eating genetically modified food, so we need a law requiring the labelling of GM food.
We need to develop federal programs to encourage farmers to transition to organic agriculture. We have received only minimal support from our government in terms of developing organics. All of the countries in the world that have a strong, vibrant organic agriculture system have received a lot of support from the government. In terms of educating consumers, when we look at Austria where over a third of daycare centres and senior centres, targets of our population that we know have weakened immune systems, the food they are served is all organic. We know that people at risk in terms of health do better with organic food. We need federal programs that encourage. I am delighted that this evening the Governor General will join us at our organic gala, hosted by Mr. Manley and the Ottawa chapter, and that she serves organic food in her home and has turned her grounds to organic production. I would love to see leadership from Ottawa, not just production of food, but also management of play spaces so the children are safe in playing on the lawns; federal programs to encourage use of organic methods both in agriculture and management of our environments.
Finally, and most importantly, we need to create alternative marketing boards for organic systems. Buy-back systems through the Canadian Wheat Board have been a great challenge to many organic grain producers. We need to continually modify that system so that the benefits that some farm families have enjoyed through the wheat board are not compromised but those marketing independently and marketing a unique crop like organic are not penalized. We need to look at the whole marketing board system and see how to develop a way to encourage organic production while addressing some of the concerns of the marketing boards but building on the strengths they offer to our farm families. I was ready for that question.
Senator St. Germain: Are you sure?
Mr. Manley: I want to emphasize a thread through Ms. Gibson's presentation and recommendations; a very important zero-cost help that is required is simple recognition and legitimacy. As long as everyone from the ministers to the departments and other agencies avoid the word organic it tells farmers it does not exist and it is not legitimate and viable. I am not saying, get out there and over the top of the building say, organic is the best thing in the world, even though it is. At least give recognition that this is a viable, appreciated way of doing business and farming, consumers want it, and the government will support it. When that message is clear in the ears of farmers, they start taking their own initiatives, considering their own alternatives and making their own plans before costly government programs come into place. Simple recognition would be a mile ahead of everything else.
Senator Gustafson: First, Canada has become an urban society. Our farm population amounts to about 2.5 per cent of the Canadian population. An article appeared in the National Post yesterday right on the front page about what is happening in Ontario in terms of farmers. We are in a very serious problem as farmers. You cannot blame the governments for trying to get the votes out of the urban centres. We have no political power. There is no political power left in agriculture. This is a very serious thing, yet the production of the country that stimulates the economy — fish, forestry, gas and oil, mining, and agriculture — all these things come from rural Canada, but nothing goes back in. This article in the National Post had the audacity to say that Agriculture Canada is no longer viable, that rural Canada is no longer viable. It is nonsense. However, at the same time, if you look at what Europe is doing — and I want your comment on Europe and the United States — they have moved to put together environment, rural development and agriculture under one caption. They say simply that the farmers cannot be responsible for all of the environmental problems and pay for them alone. It has to be a responsibility of all society.
This presents a pretty blue picture, black picture, of the whole industry. What I want to know is, how does Canada compare with the rest of the world under the organic system; the United States and European countries?
Ms. Gibson: I was pleased last August to tour with 10 Canadian trade commissioners from seven different European countries as we crossed Canada to brief our sellers of organic produce and grains on where we are in terms of our national standard and our regulation development so their markets to the European Union would not be cut off because, just as we have said, the share of organics in Canada hovers around 3 per cent, actually 1 per cent to 2 per cent. It is much higher in Europe. The European consumers demand more organic product; it varies between 10 and 15 per cent of their agriculture. Without exception, all these Canadian trade commissioners from European countries and the buyers they brought with them said that Europe is hungry for more organic product than they can produce. They want to have Canadian products. Canadian farm families are losing markets. As the European Union welcomes more countries into the European Union, they are producing the organic food for their markets and we are losing our place in the queue. This is why it is so key that we finalize our national standard and put it into a regulation so we can be on an even playing field with the European countries because in the European Union it is a regulation.
In the United States where organic is about 5 per cent of the agriculture, again higher than ours, and has received much more government support including a recently announced initiative of many millions of dollars toward increased research, the United States has really prioritized funding organic research and production techniques because they know it makes money for their farm families. Because my mother is American I also do inspections in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. I cross the border and see the same farms of the same size, even though the Americans do not call them farm subsidies, receive much more government support. They have programs to ensure that their bins are up to specifications. They all have aeration systems and they all have concrete floors. The same size farms in Canada I see struggling with old wooden bins lined with plastic. They do not have initiatives to ensure they capture that quality because the whole organic market is about quality.
I have been asked many times what kind of value-added do we need on the Canadian Prairies — I am a Prairie girl, that is what I know, Prairie agriculture — I say before we get into value-added we need value preservation. I see farm families that do not have the equipment that is of a quality to get that product into the bin. They do not have the bins and aeration to maintain the quality of the product. Across the border in the south they have the supports needed. I see much more support for organic agriculture both in Europe and also in the United States than I have seen and experienced on the farms I have visited in Canada. There is a disparity there. The Europeans do not call them subsidies. They say we are paying our farmers for this environmental product. Here we have a watershed region; we want to protect the water quality because all of these people are being watered from this watershed. We will pay these farms to be organic as a preventive measure to reduce the likelihood of ground-water and surface-water contamination. We are paying these farmers to convert, not as a subsidy, for the product of reduced contamination in the environment. I think in Canada we need to look at it that way; that we value these environmental products in our quality of life and we are willing to pay a certain number of farm families for contributing to this higher level of environmental state.
Senator Gustafson: Labelling and genetically modifying: it is my contention that we have lost the battle in canola. I have grown acres of canola on my farm and I have never seeded genetically modified canola until this year. I had no choice. We were absolutely forced into it. I did not want to seed it. To survive, you have no choice. If you seed Roundup Ready canola, the field is clean and there is no question that it does yield more. If you do not have the ability to do that, you cannot compete.
I would say we are ten years away from labelling in Canada. While I agree with many of the things that you say, experimentally, I have to tell you it is a big battle. It is a big, big battle. You compare our farmers with the Americans, where they put in an additional $93 billion into subsidies in just the last two years, which will be a 10-year program. What really bothers me is that our bureaucrats in Canada keep saying, "We will get the Americans out of subsidies. We will get the Europeans out of subsidies." It will never happen. We have bought that lie for 25 years. The values of our farms are going downhill and no one does anything about it. It is almost to the point of desperation.
Mr. Manley: I appreciate and recognize the anecdotal evidence that on your farm the Roundup Ready canola delivered more yield. Here in eastern Ontario, I approached a large soybean vendor to obtain conventionally produced untreated soybeans for organic farmers, as I was running out of organic seed. He said, "I am sorry, there is none left." I said, "What do you mean, there is none left? It is a popular variety." Of course, it is a big variety. The problem is that my genetically modified Roundup Ready soybean seed sales are down this year because farmers have found they have problems with yields, weed resistance and markets, and a number of them have switched back to conventionally produced soybean seed, which is his anecdotal evidence.
My point is that we lack independent government-sponsored public-interest research into questions like that. Who will we believe out there in the marketplace about the value of genetically modified crops and their yields? The only ones giving us any kind of reports are the companies selling the product. We do not have government-sponsored public interest independent research confirming or denying anything that is said out there. I criticize the way government, in order to reduce its budget, has gone to private-public partnerships in agriculture research. Of course, all that research will be geared to purely a corporate agenda and not a public interest one. If the results are negative, they do not get published. If the results could be negative, it is not attempted. If it will be in the interests of the public sector as public domain, there is no corporate funding because it is not private. Therefore, we have a severe lack of public interest research in areas like that or in seed development, in livestock genetics, in agricultural practices, et cetera.
The Deputy Chairman: Your comments, Mr. Manley, lead into a question I want to ask. About three weeks ago Pulse Canada was here. They suggested to the committee that Canada needs to bring together all of its commodity groups to develop a comprehensive agricultural research framework that would look not only at value-added processing but also at production systems that would be needed to feed that processing in the future.
Do you believe that idea is useful to present to government? Would your industry be in a position to be one of those groups that would come together to discuss these issues?
Mr. Manley: Yes. I support, and I believe Canadian Organic Growers in general supports, an integrated approach to agriculture in areas of research, market management, production, et cetera. Managing things by silos is getting us into terrible predicaments, with commodity silos fighting for government funds, crop acreage and marketing products. If you say, "Eat more eggs," you do not eat something else, obviously. It hampers everyone else.
Agriculture overall is a non-elastic system. It is a non-elastic consumption product. People do not eat more food just because it is advertised. They will choose foods. You will have commodity groups competing for the consumer food dollar. We do not think that is an appropriate way to address it.
Marketing, right back to research, should be done in an integrated fashion for the interests of agriculture and farmers.
Farmers must practice crop rotations. You do not practice that when the corn board and the soybean board are competing for acres and check-off fees accordingly. When check-off fees are driven by production, all the soybean board and corn board do is compete for more acres to get more check-off fees. It has to be done in an integrated fashion.
Will we participate? We would love to. Can we participate? We are maxed out on a volunteer basis. We need core staff to undertake those initiatives. To get four core staff we need funding. One possible idea is through an integrated check-off fee. Other ideas include private donations, foundation donations or government subsidization of the organization, at least to get a core staff in order to represent those issues.
The Deputy Chairman: Arising from the discussion today, I want to ask you a second question. Do you believe that the Canadian Wheat Board should be marketing organic grain? If so, would you be making any recommendations to us as to changes in the way they do it now?
Ms. Gibson: Yes. The marketing of organic product is a different skill set that many organic producers are challenged by. I have recently been doing a number of interviews of organic farm families specifically on their marketing. Some have excellent marketing skills, while others do not. I think that the skills of the wheat board in marketing Canadian grain have served a majority of farm families. However, their current buyback system is not appropriate for the organic sector. That really needs revision. I hear over and over again that farm families feel that they have lost markets and that it has cost them money to go through the wheat board system.
I believe that they have made some efforts at revision to accommodate organic marketing. That needs to be encouraged and needs to happen with much more in-depth consultation, and taking the actual marketing experience of the farm families that are marketing organic.
Yes, there is a role for them to play, because not all farm families have the marketing skills. I see that. However, there are those who do and they need to be accommodated. The buyback system needs substantial revision.
Senator St. Germain: Is there anything from the government that you know of that supports these people?
The Deputy Chairman: To my knowledge, there is not. There may be.
Ms. Gibson: I did not hear the question.
Senator St. Germain: I was asking the deputy chairman, as part of the government, as to whether the government at this moment has anything that supports you people.
Ms. Gibson: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada through their horticulture and special markets division has been supporting the development of our national organic standard through the Canadian General Standards Board. We have been revising the standard on the books since 1999 to have one that meets the current European standard and the new national organic program regulation code of federal regulation 7 from the United States. They have put some resources toward that.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has allocated, I believe, seven staff right now, working on developing our organic regulation. However, this has really been minimal. In 2002, I was asked to represent Canada at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development meetings. That was the first one held outside of the European Union, and was held in Washington. It was an organic workshop. Canada did not have a presentation. If Canadian Organic Growers had been asked, we would have put one together. I was asked to attend as a volunteer, and I did, but I was very embarrassed. Countries like Greece and Romania had a government presentation. There were ministers of agriculture there. Our Minister of Agriculture still never acknowledges organic in any of the speeches. As Mr. Manley said earlier, organic is almost invisible in Canada. We have had to represent Canada internationally. I have done a fair amount of that as a volunteer of a national organization supporting organics in Canada, because of how little government support we have had.
Special markets through horticulture have been supporting the development of our standard; we are very appreciative of that. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is looking at this regulation and we appreciative that, but we need more. There needs to be more staffing and more support for an organic supervisory body because of the diversity of organic production in this country. We have different kinds of agriculture. From Prince Edward Island, all the way across the Prairies to British Columbia, we have such different perspectives on agricultural production. We see ourselves as part of agriculture across Canada, but we need support at the federal level for an organic supervisory body so we can step up and participate on these national endeavours.
The Deputy Chairman: On behalf of the committee, thank you all. You have been very vigorous, skilled, passionate advocates for your cause. We appreciate that because this is the kind of thing that the committee wants to hear. I think we can guarantee — certainly myself as an individual and the rest of us as a group — that we will do everything we can to facilitate a response. Hopefully there will be a coming together of you, on behalf of your industry, and the Minister of Agriculture and his people. We wish you all the very best.
Senator Gustafson: How do we find a solution to this problem of agriculture? One group of farmers says this; another group says that. The government says, "Because you guys do not know what you want, we will have to do what we think is right." That is a problem. There is no question about it. That has been a problem down through the years. This committee did a great deal of work on environment, global warming, et cetera. My theory is: If we are to captivate the urban-centre mind — and we have to do that before things will change — then it will be done through the environment. Farmers cannot have good environmental programs if they do not have something to work with. They cannot do it otherwise; it is impossible. The solution is to somehow convince the urban centres that there is a responsibility of all Canadians to the environment and to the land.
Ms. Gibson: We agree. We see an increasing number of consumers who want to buy organic. They prefer to buy locally produced organic if it is available. There is a bottleneck. We do not have the infrastructure. We do not have the supports. We have the farm families who want to grow organic goods and who want to stay on the farms. We need to find ways to support local production for local consumption. We need to reward the increasing awareness of the environmental impacts of their choices by saying, "Here, urbanites, is what you can do: Buy local organic food and this is what we have made available to you."
The Deputy Chairman: With that commercial comment, we will end our hearings. We are very pleased that you came. It has been an enlightening discussion. We will follow up at our end and we wish you the very best.
The committee adjourned.