De: agrisustentavel@yahoogrupos.com.br em nome de amachado@ism.com.br Enviado em: sexta-feira, 2 de dezembro de 2005 09:44 Para: agrisustentavel@yahoogrupos.com.

br Assunto: [agrisustentavel] The decline of Canadian production agriculture Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed November 28, 2005

If we stay with the present responses to the farm crises, the most we will accomplish is some management of the decline of Canadian production agriculture. That summarizes one of the messages I heard at last week s Christian Farmers Federation convention.

This reality check came from Peter Apedaile, professor emeritus in the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta, and a founding member of the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation.

Apedaile s reality check included: Farm cost increases and strong exchange rates cannot be passed on to buyers of farm commodities. China and Brazil are changing the viability of production agriculture in Canada. EU and US farm polices are really geo-political strategies that include security, and are highly unlikely to change. An agriculture exposed to a globalizing world will experience collateral damage. Farm, agriculture and rural have become three solitudes. Agriculture is becoming an industrial sector, while farming is about living on the land. 91% of predominantly rural regions get NO benefit from agricultural policy. Net farm income in Canada is approaching zero after 50 years of decline, implying that a growing proportion of agricultural businesses are economically unsustainable. Many farm families have opted for pluriactivity to support living on the land. That is a rural economist s way of telling us that many farm families have off-farm jobs or on-farm business with little, if any connection to production agriculture.

Apedaile warned that agriculture will have to shed more farms and increase

the size of those remaining to manage the treadmill to ever lower prices. He was critical of the circle the wagons strategy for managing decline: work harder, work longer hours, get detail oriented, manage uncertainty, insure the big risks and beg for income transfers from taxpayers.

All these efforts can only manage the decline as long as agriculture fails -- at the knowledge game. Apedaile described the knowledge game as by far the most powerful force changing production agriculture. AND, at present, farmers are not in control of the knowledge game. Independent family farm entrepreneurs are an unsuitable learning framework for the knowledge economy, according to Apedaile. To get a grip on their future, farmers and their organizations need to substitute a public interest for the traditional self-interest that has for decades dominated the farm voice.

Information is exploding. Knowledge is global. Organizing knowledge leads to new economic values. Since most of the organizing of new knowledge is happening beyond the farm gate, it should be no surprise that the economic rewards do not get back to the farm gate. Farmers need new partners for organizing knowledge relevant to the broader interests in society. __________ Elbert van Donkersgoed P. Ag. (Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post is heard weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario. Corner Post has a complimentary email subscriber list of more than 3,500 and appears regularly on Agriculture Online/Views at www.agriculture.com/ag/views/ and as Letter from Ontario on The New Farm website at www.newfarm.org

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