Andrew McClelland

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Sometimes all the good things in life can happen at once. And Matt and Angela Kumlin will be the first to tell you how overwhelming so many blessings can be.

“After university, Matt had started a veterinary practice that saw him checking over 30,000 head a year, and I was working for BASF doing agricultural chem sales,” Angela said, speaking over Zoom from her home in Cochrane, Alberta, 40 kilometres northwest of Calgary.

“I had a great team to learn from, and Matt’s clients were really happy that their vet was a farm boy who knew how to rope. But we started to become a bit disenchanted with our high-speed lifestyle and we had some clues that we didn’t want to continue in that capacity in the ag industry long term.”

Around this time, the couple’s first child, Wade, was born. Soon, that little bundle of joy was followed by brother Bennett and sister Rachel. A lot of good things were happening in the Kumlins’ careers, but could they fit well with their lives?

“At work, I started to question the way that we were recommending products as Band-Aid fixes rather than long-term solutions to agricultural problems,” the 35-year-old said. “Matt would come home with these ideas buzzing in his head about all of the things that he wanted to try in farming. We both really wanted to be back in primary agriculture.”

Started transition conversation

There was a means of escape that the Kumlins hadn’t yet explored. Matt’s family’s ranch — the Lazy J Cattle Co. — in Cochrane had been in the family since 1885. Matt’s father was in his late 60s, and the couple began wondering if moving and taking up farming full time could be a way to pursue their dream and spend more time with their kids.

“We started the conversation with Matt’s parents to see if there was a place for us on the home ranch,” Angela explained. “And it turned out that Matt’s dad was at a good time and place in his life, and he was graciously ready to have someone else take the reins.”

That was a promising start, but Matt and Angela wanted to do something different with the family ranch.

They’d been to a “Ranching for Profit” course together and were inspired by the idea of working with nature and testing out theories of regenerative agriculture on their own land. Angela had heard about the “visioning” process for developing strategic plans used by non-profit organizations affiliated with the Institute of Cultural Affairs International, an international umbrella group non-profit organizations.

Sharing your ideas, hopes

“The way that the first step of visioning works is that anyone who is a stakeholder in the business gets to write their ideas and hopes on sticky notes,” Angela explained at a QFA videoconference held on Feb. 12. “You’re supposed to be really selfish at this point, just asking yourself: ‘What do I want this business or my life to look like in five years, in an ideal world without constraints?’”

In a visioning process, participants begin grouping their sticky notes according to similarities. Eventually, common ground emerges and group members start formulating shared goals.

“No one’s allowed to be critical at that point,” Angela said. “You go and sleep on it. The next morning when you show up you can put your critical-thinking cap on.”

What happens in a visioning process when participants disagree?

Well, group members have a conversation about it. In the Kumlins’ case, that happened early on when the goals and concerns of Angela and her in-laws seemed to be total opposites.

Issues are discussed

“One of the members of our group wrote down that they were worried how all the changes we were making on the ranch would be viewed by the community,” Angela said, laughing as she remembered the instance.

“Matt and I had written on one of our early sticky notes: ‘We don’t care what the neighbours think!’ That led us to some really interesting conversations where we asked, ‘Is this a company decision, or a family decision, or a decision about what’s best for our land itself?’”

Since their first farm transfer visioning, the Kumlins’ have gone through several visioning sessions — about their family life, the way they use and care for their land, and what the Lazy J Cattle Co. is all about. The language they use in describing their shared vision for their cattle company is a far cry from the mission statements of corporations:

“Lazy J Cattle Company Ltd is wildly profitable,” it reads. “The business is well-run and it is fun to work here. We have ample quality family time, we follow our mission, and we learn and try new things. We maximize our forage resources, yet we utilize more than grass.”

For Angela and Matt, the exercise of visioning has been revolutionary — for both their farm and their lives. While Angela admits that many can be skeptical when hearing the word “visioning,” she also points out that the results of having a vision are something we see and admire in our communities every day.

 “Vision is something you can’t actually see. It’s a figment of our imagination. But it guides us. It’s like an iceberg: as soon as you start talking about it, people can see the tip. And then when you start accomplishing things, people say: ‘Wow! Looks at all you’re accomplishing!’ But you know it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s lots more under the water. And, gradually, the more you talk and share your vision, more of it rises above the surface.”

To read about the Institute of Cultural Affairs International’s guidelines for visioning and strategic planning visit: https://www.ica-international.org/top-facilitation/

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

One of the great benefits of growing a family farm is that it can set the next generation up in business and in life. And for 19-year-old Sonia Auger, the farm life – and the business side of it – suits her to a tee.

“Something I really like about farming is the time I get to spend with my parents,” Auger said. “We might be in the barn looking at some aspect of the enterprise and then we can discuss it again at breakfast to find solutions.”

And help from the family is needed at the Augers’ dairy operation, where Sonia grew up. Nestled in the small town of Ste. Françoise, about 50 kilometres north of Victoriaville, the Augers milk about 115 cows. Along with raising all their heifers and cash cropping on the side, the family mainly grows feed for the dairy herd on a total of 250 hectares of land.

It’s a tall order. And Sonia has been helping since as long as she can remember.

“I’ve been doing a lot of little jobs since I was a kid,” Auger said. “I enjoyed going to work with my parents — and felt like I was really helpful at that time! And over the years, I’ve been assigned to more important responsibilities than just feeding the cats and scraping the stalls.”

These days, Auger is the family point-person for calf feeding and keeping health reports. She also takes on much of the field work during the spring and fall rush periods, along with managing the summer hay harvest.

Part of her long-term plan

Auger knows that she wants to spend her life on the farm. And she also knows that that means keeping up with technological and production changes in the world of farming. That’s why she enrolled in Macdonald Campus’ Farm Management and Technology program (FMT) after high school.

“Being on the farm helps me create a strong passion for farming and the idea of spending the rest of my life in the agricultural sector is what pushed me to apply for the FMT,” Auger explained.

Before applying to Mac, Auger spent a month in Victoria, B.C., at an intensive English-as-a-second-language school. The experience was so rewarding, it made her hungry for more.

“After that, I decided I wanted to pursue my studies after high school in English, learning something I am passionate about,” she said. 

When Auger started at Mac in 2023, being a francophone student had its challenges. But she overcame the hurdles.

Overcame language barrier

“It was hard for the first three weeks to get used to learn in English,” Auger said. “Some challenges were about communication — how to interact well with people when you don’t fullyunderstand what’s been said or not being able to find the right words. But after a couple of mistakes and a couple of tries, you get used to it and the language is not a problem any more.”

In fact, learning in an English-speaking academic environment was so much not a problem for Auger that she was awarded a Warren Grapes scholarship at the QFA’s 2024 annual general meeting — an accomplishment that surprised her and left her very thankful.

“I was mainly grateful to all the people — the teachers, family and neighbours — around me who support me every day. Not only in my studies, but also in my projects and ambitions,” Auger said.

Those projects and ambitions are considerable. After graduation, Auger hopes to continue her education at McGill by going into Agro-environmental Sciences so that she can help other agricultural producers in business and production management.

Looking to the future

“What I think about farming today is not what people were thinking about farming years ago,” she said.

“I think more about planning ahead and trying to understand the population trends and conflicts around the world, so that farmers can find opportunities to base their production upon. One of the biggest challenges about global farming today is the changes in demand and crop needs or animal products needs because of the growing population in the cities. Farmers will have to adjust their rotations and their future plans to fulfill the needs of those people.”

And her ambition of one day returning to the family farm?

Auger’s mother and father, Guillaume Auger and Monika Fitze, are fully in support of their daughter gathering experience off the farm so that she can one day operate the business the way she wants — and keep the family farm going strong.

“My family is really open-minded. We all know it’s important to have experiences away from the home farm,” Auger said. “I think, and my family thinks, that this path I’m on will help me bring the farm to the next level of sustainability and profitability one day.” 

The Advocate

The ever-industrious Office québécois de la langue française has published a new vocabulary guide to equip consumers and the Quebec food industry with French-language terms and words related to food preservation.

The guide — entitled “Des denrées bien gardées: Vocabulaire de la conservation des aliments,” which awkwardly translates to “Well-Kept Food: Vocabulary of Food Conservation” — includes 90 key terms of new or recent French-language coinages often used in food processing, nutritional information labels and home food preservation and fermentation.

As the guide explains: “From external parameters to treatments carried out on the food itself, many strategies are put in place to ensure that foods retain their safety as well as their organoleptic and nutritional properties.” 

Of course, that explanation is a translation of what the guide says. And for those who speak plain English, “organoleptic” refers to “relating to qualities of a substance that stimulate the sense organs, such as odour, colour, taste and texture of a food.”

“Food preservation techniques are varied and have become more refined over time,” reads the guide’s brief introduction, without pausing to add that this process of refinement has presumably occurred in an English-only environment.

The guide attempts to insert a little francization.

The curious can consult the 40-page guide at the OQLF’s website. While many of the translations are straightforward: “food additive” is rendered as “additif alimentaire” and “enzyme” is wisely translated as “enzyme.”

Other terms show great consideration for the variations of the French and English language, while others are touchingly poetic.

For instance “smart packaging,” used in English to describe packaging designed to collect and display data on the condition of its contents, becomes more noble in the OQLF’s preferred translation of “emballage intelligent.”

And the English word “smoking”— in this case meant to describe preparing and curing meat by exposing it to wood smoke — gets no less than three expressions to help guide users avoid making any dreaded anglicisme. It suggests “fumage,” “fumaison” and the delightfully fanciful “boucanage.”

Other terms will no doubt educate English-speaking users about their own language. The guide uses the term “espace de tête” to describe the empty part of a package not occupied by its chief contents — like the air in potato chip bags or the very top of the neck on a bottle of Coke —which it states is a translation of the English word “ullage.”

In its statement accompanying the publication of the Des denrées bien gardées guide, the OQLF explains the reasoning behind producing its vocabulary guides.

 “The (OQLF) produces new vocabularies each year to increase the availability of terminology in French linked to key and emerging economic sectors, where the terminological offer is limited and where needs are growing. In this way, it contributes to making French the standard and usual language of work.”

The food preservation vocabulary was produced in collaboration with specialists from Quebec’s Ministry of Agriculture, the Institute on Nutrition and Functional Foods of Université Laval and the Sectoral Committee for Labour in Food Processing. In 2023-2024, the OQLF produced six such vocabularies – on quantum computing, trucking, the circular economy, water treatment, toxicology and physiotherapy.

According to the OQLF’s annual report, the public institution now has 416 employees, a marked increase since its previous annual report, which cited 345 staffers. The language watchdog has a budget of nearly $42 million, a $7-million year-over-year increase. Last year, it spent $2.6 million on communications and about $1.6 million on research.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Canadian and Quebec governments have announced $35.3 million in funding to support agricultural producers who adopt more sustainable farming practices.

“By choosing to support our farm businesses with flexible assistance that is tailored to their reality, we are ensuring their long-term engagement,” said Quebec Minister of Agriculture André Lamontagne at a press conference at Edriphaniel dairy farm in Lotbinière on Feb. 17. “This is a key action on your government’s part to sustain our collective food supply.”

Partly funded through the federal Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, the investment ushers in the fourth enrolment period of the Rétribution agroenvironnementale (Rewarding of Agri-Environmental Practices), an initiative set up to “recognize the efforts made by farm businesses to improve their practices and generate significant environmental gains,” according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Up to 1,200 new farm businesses will be eligible for support under the new funding instalment. The total direct aid to businesses, part of the flagship measure of the Sustainable Agriculture Plan 2020-2030, will reach $122 million.

Producers are invited to submit projects that will increase the sustainability and environmental-friendliness of their farming practices. Plans most likely to improve off-season soil protection, reduction of herbicide use, improved fertilizer management, crop diversification and the implementation of biodiversity-friendly landscaping will be favoured.

The initiative — and the entire Sustainable Agriculture Plan — is part of the federal, provincial and territorial governments’ goal to reduce agriculture’s effects on climate change, specifically within the next decade.

“Farmers are often the first to feel the effects of climate change, and despite this challenge, they work tirelessly to feed Canada and the world,” said federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay.

“This funding is another example of our ongoing partnership with the provinces and territories to help our hardworking farmers make their practices more sustainable, while improving the performance and resilience of their businesses.”

Since the Rétribution agroenvironnementale started in Quebec in 2022, around 3,200 farm businesses have adopted more sustainable practices on almost 520,000 hectares of land. That represents 40 per cent of the province’s annual crop area.

Businesses submitting projects will be asked to take their soil protection practices out of season further by using root crops and cutting back on mineral nitrogen fertilizer use.

Projects must take place over the next two growing seasons (2025 and 2026). Each farm business could be eligible for $50,000 in funding.

Once again with funding of this type, Quebec is asking farm business managers to act fast. The enrolment period began March 5 and lasts until March 31 or until funds are exhausted.

Visit https://www.fadq.qc.ca/initiative-ministerielle-retribution-agroenvironnementale/description to read more about the initiative, and click on “ADMISSIBILITÉ” in the left-hand column to see if your farm is eligible.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

“I’m not a scientist. I’m just a cowboy who makes some observations,” said Devin Robertson. “My goal is to find a better way to feed the cattle.”

Feeding cattle is what Robertson does best on his ranch in Last Mountain Lake, Sask. Robertson Ranch, located 70 kilometres northwest of Regina, was operated by Devin’s grandfather until he died in 1995. Robertson recalls the tillage used on the farm from working it day-in, day-out as a teenager.

“Oh, I remember it,” Robertson said. “That was the way things were done. But out here, it’s short-grass prairie. You can look at the species growing along the edge of Last Mountain Lake and not be able to count how many species there are. And it’s been here since the buffalo.”

That native soil fertility made Robertson reflect on how to best retain the richness of his soil and get away from tillage. But in the late 1990s, finding practical information on rotational grazing and regenerative agriculture wasn’t as easy as it is now.

“This is all before YouTube, when you couldn’t sit down and learn this stuff from a computer,” Robertson said.

“But I had rented some land from a local landlord we’ll call ‘Cowboy Bill.’ He owned 300 housing units but had somehow read a book by Allen Savory and wanted to try his theories out on his pastureland. I was the only guy crazy enough to bring my cows to him.”

Savory was a Zimbabwean livestock farmer and ecologist.

Inspiration can come from surprising places.

While Robertson found that Cowboy Bill wasn’t overly concerned with the health of Robertson’s cattle, he was keen on the pasture health brought about by rotational grazing.

What’s more, Cowboy Bill’s hair-brained foray into agriculture had somehow put him in touch with a real luminary of livestock farming: mob grazing and stocking density pioneer Neil Dennis, now well-known from the documentary Soil Carbon Cowboy.

“He was running steers in high-density and he had grass like nothing you’d ever seen,” Robertson said, referring to Dennis’ method of moving cattle daily and having nearly constant availability of hay as supplemental forage or as fertilizer.

Robertson told his story during a videoconference Jan. 15 hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association. After being inspired by Dennis’s practices, he began experimenting with cover crops, purchasing multi-species green feed from Covers & Co. that combined warm- and cold-season grasses, legumes, sunflowers and more to provide his herd with a healthy, balanced feed and improve soil health.

“I’m not a rep or a salesman for any company, but you can just tell that the cows are healthier,” Robertson explained. “The runtier calves did well. The bigger calves got bigger, they’re hair was shiny, they’d walk by the lick tanks not craving anything. It was a complete ration and the feed was doing all the work.”

Robertson estimates his cost per head per day feeding corn is at $1.60. While his costs grazing cover crops are up to $2.70 a day, he feels the added cost is well worth the health benefits it brings out in his cattle.

“But it does more for your soil underneath, and your animals do better on a diverse species,” he explained. “I have no scientific fact for that other than my eyeballs and watching my animals grow for 20 or 30 years.”

For Robertson, the justification for better grazing through cover crops and rotational pasturing comes from common sense. Fertility is in the soil, and the producers’ job is to preserve it and pass it along to the herd — and have the herd return the fertility to the soil.

“If you can keep moisture in the soil, you grow a better crop. It’s not rocket science. It’s just life. It just works. So why wouldn’t you have a bigger diversity of species working for you?”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

An interesting thing started happening at agricultural colleges around a decade ago: students who didn’t grow up on a farm began looking at farming as a viable career.

Call it a spin-off of the “buy local” movement, a brief trend, or the surprising development of farming becoming “hip,” the fact remains that agriculture is attracting new recruits from outside its usual pool of farm-raised kids.

For prospective producers like 18-year-old Alice Charlebois, going into agriculture is all about following her heart.

“My grandparents used to have a small dairy farm, but they sold everything early on,” Charlebois said. “Then, they went on to grow vegetables in a greenhouse, but now they only have a sugar shack.”

Grandparents farmed

Growing up in Coteau du Lac in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges region, Charlebois and her family would often help in harvesting and boiling down the sap from her grandparents’ maple syrup operation. That was the extent of her farm experience until she got a part-time job at Jardin chez Julie et Lova, a local organic vegetable farm.

“All throughout high school I was working there,” she explained. “I’d work from spring to fall, but never thinking too much of it. Sure, I liked it a lot, but it was not really fulfilling all my needs.”

However, a high school acquaintance had gone to Macdonald Campus in nearby Ste. Anne de Bellevue and was now working at a local dairy farm. From what Charlebois heard about Mac’s Farm Management and Technology program, it seemed like a fast-track to becoming an agricultural producer. Hedging her bets, Charlebois applied to both Mac’s FMT program and a CEGEP program in animal health technology, knowing that admissions to both were competitive.

“But I got accepted in both programs!” Charlebois said. “So I had to choose!”

Learning English part of deal

Ultimately, Macdonald won out because it was closer to home, but also because Charlebois – raised in a francophone household – bravely wanted to improve her English.

“I personally believe that being well-spoken in English is important,” Charlebois says in eloquent English. “Just in terms of being understood, but also because it is a language that most people know because of its easiness to learn.”

Improving her second language has gone well, with only a little bit of awkwardness and trepidation as Charlebois plunged herself into an English-language learning environment.

“I certainly hope that my English has gotten better after studying here,” she said. “Some of the challenges would probably be trying to express myself at the beginning of the school year when I didn’t know all the words that I wanted to say.”

Attracted to niche market

And since starting in 2023 at Mac, Charlebois’ educational aspirations have been very much fulfilled by the FMT program. During her time at Jardin chez Julie et Lova, the owners expanded into sheep production. That change inspired Charlebois to consider moving into the niche market herself and Mac afforded her great learning opportunities. In the summer of 2024, she was able to work at The Northern Sheep Company in Lumsden, Saskatchewan, as part of her internship in the FMT program.

“I enjoyed every bit of time that I spent working there,” Charlebois said. “It’s what really confirmed my interest in lamb production.”

And improving her English?

Well, a summer in Saskatchewan and a year in an English-language university has made Charlebois very adept at expressing her thoughts on modern agriculture in her second language.

“I think the biggest challenge in global farming today is the bad image that agriculture has on most city people. They don’t know where their food comes from, or all the labour involved. They can be so detached from the reality of it all that, when the price of one thing goes up, they want to find a cheaper alternative that is eventually worse for the environment and for the local economy.”

Undaunted by challenges

Charlebois knows that, coming from a non-farming background, she has challenges ahead. While she would like to have a sheep operation of her own, start-up capital and land are hard to come by. As a back-up plan, she plans to pursue her studies after FMT with a goal to becoming an agronomist.

“I know that the price of everything it high and doing a start-up with little to no money is impossible,” she explained. “So I’d like to focus on the animal side of agronomy.”

But still, the lure of being a full-time agricultural producer looms large even for this “non-farming background” farmer. And with the determination Charlebois has, it’s quite likely she’ll succeed.

“Because of the increase of immigration in Quebec, the demand for lamb has increased — but the supply hasn’t met the demand, so most lamb meat is imported from Australia and New Zealand. My hopes are that the demand still increases so that we can produce more lamb to feed people. For me, working with sheep is more enjoyable and safer than working with cattle. Plus, you get cutes little lambs!”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Ann Louise Carson may be only the fourth woman ever inducted into Quebec’s agricultural hall of fame, but don’t tell the long-time Townshipper and agricultural executive that her gender held her back.

“It never, never, never affected me throughout my career,” said Carson, who was one of four individuals named to the Temple de la renommée de l’agriculture du Québec last fall.

Her many job titles have taken her from government to private industry to non-profits.

“Were there people cackling in the background when I was hired? Maybe. But if they did, I didn’t care.”

It’s that kind of confidence that has allowed Carson to forge her own path in the agriculture industry.

Raised on the family dairy farm in Durham-Sud, northeast of Sherbrooke, she grew up the only daughter of Ross Carson and Andrée Côté. Having an anglophone father and francophone mother would serve her well in life.

Start on Township farm

Growing up on a farm in the Townships meant long hours, hard work and plenty of 4-H Club activities.

“Growing up on the farm, there was no feeding half the cows or feeding half the calves,” Carson said as she explained her work ethic. “You simply got it done. And 4-H added to that, with leadership help and working for the team.”

Carson was the third generation of her family to attend Macdonald College. Her grandmother had trained as a teacher at the college in 1916. The campus also housed the headquarters of the 4-H offshoot – Quebec Young Farmers. It was there that Carson got her first job upon graduation in 1981.

Two years later, the ever-restless Carson became communications director for the Townshippers’ Association where, in 1985, she was noticed by Quebec Agriculture Minister Michel Pagé, who hired her as his press secretary.

Worked for provincial ag minister

“That was an exciting time in Quebec,” Carson said. “The province had been under a different government for a decade and Robert Bourassa was in his second term. It felt like we could really do something.”

After growing up in farming, seeing the political side of agricultural policy framework was fascinating for Carson. And it bolstered her career as other potential employers took notice.

“That led to people seeing me because I was hanging around with the ‘tops.’ When you’re in government, you work with the top people,” Carson explained. “But five years in a minister’s office is enough. You learn so much, but your head is down and you just work.”

When Pagé was transferred from agriculture to education, Carson handed in her resignation, having no desire to work outside of agriculture.

“He said, ‘Of course, you’re going to come to the Ministry of Education’,” Carson recalled. “I said, ‘Nope. I’m in politics because I’m interested in agricultural politics.’”

Undaunted about the future, Carson did what she often did when between jobs: she travelled. The trips allowed her time to think about the future and satisfy her restless curiosity.

“That’s what I would do, I would just ‘jump’,” she said. “I think that time I went to the South Pacific with my knapsack, travelled for a month or two, and came back to find a job.”

Corporate opportunities

In 1991, Carson was hired by embryo transfer specialists Boviteq to be the company’s CEO. She was only 31 at the time.

Carson spent the next seven years criss-crossing the globe in managing Boviteq’s embryo transfer and sexed semen production, guiding the company through a changing industry toward profitability.

At the end of her tenure, she envisioned a successful company merger that combined Boviteq with Semex. The only problem was that it also merged her out of a job.

“I knew I was doing that. Merging the companies meant there would be a lot of redundant jobs,” Carson said. “It wasn’t only my job that was going to disappear, it was one of many. But today, Semex is doing quite well as a company.”

Upper-management positions followed at both dairy excellence centre Valacta and dairy genetic expert Eastern Breeders. But it was in 2012 at Holstein Canada where Carson really began making headlines again.

First woman head of Holstein Canada

“I was the first woman CEO to be hired at Holstein Canada in its 140-year history,” she said. “And the first Quebecer!”

Carson made Holstein Canada a truly bilingual organization, reflecting her upbringing.

“That’s what it needs to be, to truly be effective,” Carson said. “But I always moved to where the job was — much to my family’s chagrin — and after five years of working at Holstein Canada in Brantford, I wanted to come home to the Townships. It was a lovely five years, but I said goodbye.”

Now in retirement, Carson has time to enjoy the finer things in life: travel, the farms of the Townships, and the accolades like being named to the hall of fame and, on Feb. 16, receiving the King Charles III Coronation Medal. Created in 2023, the award is given to Canadians who have been deemed to have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a province or region of the country.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Quebec lamb producers received a second compensation advance for the 2024 insurance year in late January as part of the Agricultural Income Stabilization Insurance Program (ASRA).

This advance amounts collectively to $3.3 million, which represents a net amount of $11.18 per lamb and $0.2577/kg of lamb sold. This payment is ASRA’s net amount paid to lamb producers for 2024 so far this year.

It’s a trying time for lamb producers in Canada — and Quebec in particular. Foreign imports, chiefly from New Zealand and Australia, make up 48 per cent of lamb in Quebec grocery stores. In order to stay competitive, Quebec lamb has to be negotiated at prices lower than the cost of production.

ASRA pays out to producers when the average selling price of a product is less than the adjusted stabilized income, which is based on the average cost of production of a given sector, such as lamb, slaughter cattle, with oats, wheat, barley, among others.

“Because even with (the current) high prices, we don’t cover our production costs,” said Jimmy Lapointe, president of Éleveurs d’ovins du Québec. “The proof is that ASRA was still triggered to the tune of $120 per lamb in 2023.”

Les Éleveurs d’ovins du Québec and La Financière were in extensive talks last fall regarding the cost of production calculation.

To calculate that cost of production, La Financière relies on data and analyses from the Centre d’études sur les coûts de production en agriculture (CECPA). A study released by CECPA last May caused concern among small-scale lamb producers who felt data from large-scale operations was tipping the balance out of their favour.

“We knew that the new study would have an impact, but it fell in our face last May. It triggered (ASRA), but very little compared to what we expected,” Lapointe told French-language weekly La Terre de chez nous.

While the present high prices for lambs address the cost-of-production imbalance somewhat, many producers are short of cash, facing liquidity problems that the advance payout from La Financière hopes to fix.

At the Éleveurs d’ovins du Québec’s annual meeting in November, members passed a resolution to set up a system for awarding heavy lamb sales contracts based on the same historical volumes of the past few years. Current Quebec production of heavy lambs exceeds market demand — and producers are concerned about a price drop.

“That’s good news in itself, because it means that our (sales system for heavy lamb) is working well,” said Lapointe, acknowledging that the sales system should be wary about oversupplying the market.

“Thanks to its ASRA program, La Financière agricole supports agricultural companies in the face of economic fluctuations and variations in production costs,” said La Financière agricole du Québec president Ernest Desrosiers.

“This second compensation advance for 2024 demonstrates the organization’s continued commitment to supporting and sustaining the agricultural sector.”

There are currently 709 sheep production companies registered in Quebec, making up a production volume of 4,000 tonnes. Monetary revenues for meat sales run to $51.2 million.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

When it comes to being a successful agricultural producer, most farmers learn the basics of production from a very young age.

They watch dad or mom tending the livestock, harvesting the cash crop and caring for the land from as early as they can remember. Many choose to go to an agricultural college to learn the finer points of farm management. By the time they return to the family farm, they know how to produce.

But making a living and managing profit margins is another skill set. And often, financial planning and money management are areas where there is much less training.

Karine Vasseur learned from experience that financial planning can deeply affect a family farm.

Growing up in St. Sébastien, just north of Lake Champlain, Vasseur comes from generations of agricultural producers. But when her parents were both forced to seek off-farm income and give up farming, the importance of financial planning was brought home.

“I went on to study finances and wanted to become a financial planner,” Vasseur explained. “And I always wanted to work with the farmers more than anything.”

For the past 10 years, Vasseur has been able to live that dream in her role as a financial planner with IG Wealth Management.

During a videoconference co-hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association and Les Agricultrices du Québec last month, she explained that financial planning on the farm starts with asking yourself difficult questions – and giving honest answers.

“The first step is asking ‘What are my goals?’” Vasseur said. “How much income or savings will you need to achieve those goals? And how much time do you have to earn income before you need it?”

For Vasseur, who lives in Stanbridge in the Eastern Townships, clients commonly ask how to build and strengthen their retirement plan as a starting point to financial planning.

“If we’re talking about retirement, then we have to know where your retirement paycheque will come from,” Vasseur explained. “So do you have RSPs or RRIFs (Registered Retirement Income Funds from Épargne Placements Québec)? Do you have investment income? Will you get Old Age Security? Probably everybody in this videoconference will get OAS or CPP or QPP.”

Likely the biggest question in any agricultural producer’s career is the decision to pass the farm on to the next generation or sell the farm. This, she explained, is where estate planning comes in.

“If your children are not interested in taking over the farm, those assets can be your primary retirement income. But that’s not what we see in most families.”

What is a frequent occurrence in farming families is what Vasseur describes as a difference in work/life balance between generations. Frequently, the older generation is prepared to put in more hours of labour for less income than the younger generation is. When the primary producer gets sick or passes away, the burden for the incoming generation can be too much.

“That’s when you need to consider: ‘If I couldn’t work, how many people would be needed to replace me? If I get a critical illness, how much would I need to pay someone to do my share of the workload – and how much would it all cost?”

That’s why Vasseur always highlights the importance of insurance in any financial plan for a farm.

“Insurance helps you manage risk and guard against the unexpected. And that’s something you need to do at every stage of life,” Vasseur said. “As you continue to build your financial base, you need insurance to help protect the assets you’ve saved.

“For instance, long-term-care insurance can help provide needed care so you don’t have to deplete your financial capital.”

For Vasseur, the most important part of financial planning is coming to the process without fear. The future will always arrive, and not having any plan should be the scary part.

“A financial planner is going to look toward the future. We’re going to project your finances and ask, ‘OK, if we just keep doing the same thing, are we going to get where we want to be? And if not, well, then we’re going to make some changes along the way to make sure that we’re going to achieve your goals in the future.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Growing up in Montreal’s Italian district of St. Léonard may not have been what instilled Massimo Malorni with a love of farming. But the 22-year-old’s family heritage provided him with a deep connection to agriculture, one that transcends boundaries, traditions and nations.

“My earliest memory of agriculture is harvesting tomatoes as a toddler on my grandparents’ farm in Italy,” Malorni said. “After picking the ripe tomatoes, I would watch in awe as my grandparents transformed them into homemade tomato sauce.”

Malorni’s family hails from the small town of Montorio Nei Frentani in the Molise region, about 200 kilometres north of Naples in southern Italy. There, his cousins still run a fourth-generation organic olive oil farm called Olio Frentana, where the Gentilly variety of olives are cold-pressed following the October harvest.

Young Massimo spent his summers on Olio Frentana, spending countless hours learning about traditional agriculture. It was an experience he describes as “profoundly transformative.”

Early appreciation

“That experience taught me the importance of hard work, resourcefulness and the joy of turning raw ingredients into something meaningful,” he explained. “This early exposure gave me an appreciation for the process of turning raw ingredients into something meaningful and inspired my love for farming.”

Much more than instilling Malorni with a love of agriculture, helping his grandparents harvest grapes or feeding livestock gave him a philosophical outlook on tradition and innovation – and how to balance those qualities in modern-day farming practices.

“The farm was small but self-sufficient, and its reliance on traditional methods showed me the importance of preserving heritage while also recognizing the need for innovation,” Malorni said. “These experiences laid the foundation for my future ambitions in agriculture.”

Strong science, business foundation

Those ambitions led him to Macdonald Campus, where he enrolled in the Farm Management and Technology program in 2023. Looking for an education that could provide him with a strong foundation in both the science and business of agriculture, Malorni hit the jackpot at FMT, learning the intricacies of crop management, livestock care and soil science.

So far his time at Mac has been eventful: in the summer of 2024, Malorni spent three months working on Hofstra Farms, a dairy farm in Millet, Alta., and in the fall he was one of six Mac students to be awarded a Warren Grapes Scholarship from the Quebec Farmers’ Association.

“When I found out I had won, I felt incredibly honoured and grateful,” Malorni said. “Receiving this scholarship not only validated my hard work and passion for agriculture but also motivated me to continue pursuing my goals with even greater determination.”

Aiming to start an operation

Currently, Malorni is focusing on his education as much as possible. In the long term, he wants to start his own farm in Canada, combining traditional methods with innovative practices, creating a sustainable farm that contributes positively to both the environment and the local community.

“One of my primary motives for entering the agricultural industry is to be part of the solution to the growing challenges we face as a global community,” he explained. “I’m particularly interested in how we can develop more sustainable farming methods that produce high-quality food while minimizing environmental impact.”

That balance between tradition and innovation, sound practices and environmental concern puts Malorni right at the heart of honouring the farming he observed on his grandparents’ farm in Italy while moving forward with cutting-edge techniques.

“The future of agriculture, in my view, lies in collaboration between tradition and innovation, between small farms and global markets. I hope to carry the values instilled in me by my grandparents while embracing new technologies like vertical farming and hydroponics. Agriculture is at a pivotal moment, and I am eager to be part of its transformation toward a more sustainable and equitable future.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

When it comes to being a successful agricultural producer, most farmers learn the basics of production from a very young age.

They watch dad or mom tending the livestock, harvesting the cash crop and caring for the land from as early as they can remember. Many choose to go to an agricultural college to learn the finer points of farm management. By the time they return to the family farm, they know how to produce.

But making a living and managing profit margins is another skill set. And often, financial planning and money management are areas where there is much less training.

Karine Vasseur learned from experience that financial planning can deeply affect a family farm.

Growing up in St. Sébastien, just north of Lake Champlain, Vasseur comes from generations of agricultural producers. But when her parents were both forced to seek off-farm income and give up farming, the importance of financial planning was brought home.

“I went on to study finances and wanted to become a financial planner,” Vasseur explained. “And I always wanted to work with the farmers more than anything.”

For the past 10 years, Vasseur has been able to live that dream in her role as a financial planner with IG Wealth Management.

During a videoconference co-hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association and Les Agricultrices du Québec last month, she explained that financial planning on the farm starts with asking yourself difficult questions – and giving honest answers.

“The first step is asking ‘What are my goals?’” Vasseur said. “How much income or savings will you need to achieve those goals? And how much time do you have to earn income before you need it?”

For Vasseur, who lives in Stanbridge in the Eastern Townships, clients commonly ask how to build and strengthen their retirement plan as a starting point to financial planning.

“If we’re talking about retirement, then we have to know where your retirement paycheque will come from,” Vasseur explained. “So do you have RSPs or RRIFs (Registered Retirement Income Funds from Épargne Placements Québec)? Do you have investment income? Will you get Old Age Security? Probably everybody in this videoconference will get OAS or CPP or QPP.”

Likely the biggest question in any agricultural producer’s career is the decision to pass the farm on to the next generation or sell the farm. This, she explained, is where estate planning comes in.

“If your children are not interested in taking over the farm, those assets can be your primary retirement income. But that’s not what we see in most families.”

What is a frequent occurrence in farming families is what Vasseur describes as a difference in work/life balance between generations. Frequently, the older generation is prepared to put in more hours of labour for less income than the younger generation is. When the primary producer gets sick or passes away, the burden for the incoming generation can be too much.

“That’s when you need to consider: ‘If I couldn’t work, how many people would be needed to replace me? If I get a critical illness, how much would I need to pay someone to do my share of the workload – and how much would it all cost?”

That’s why Vasseur always highlights the importance of insurance in any financial plan for a farm.

“Insurance helps you manage risk and guard against the unexpected. And that’s something you need to do at every stage of life,” Vasseur said. “As you continue to build your financial base, you need insurance to help protect the assets you’ve saved.

“For instance, long-term-care insurance can help provide needed care so you don’t have to deplete your financial capital.”

For Vasseur, the most important part of financial planning is coming to the process without fear. The future will always arrive, and not having any plan should be the scary part.

“A financial planner is going to look toward the future. We’re going to project your finances and ask, ‘OK, if we just keep doing the same thing, are we going to get where we want to be? And if not, well, then we’re going to make some changes along the way to make sure that we’re going to achieve your goals in the future.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation (MAPAQ) has promised new financial assistance for the purchase of new equipment for producers and companies in beekeeping and plant production.

Quebec estimates that up to 550 projects could be financed with the new funds. The money is being provided in the context of changing conditions for bee and plant producers due to climate change, which brings challenges to both sectors but also opportunities as the longer growing season allows for greater production.

“Increasing productivity in the agricultural sector is a priority for this government,” said Quebec Minister of Agriculture André Lamontagne. “I’m pleased with this support, which will allow companies specializing in plant and beekeeping production to modernize their equipment and increase their competitiveness.”

The province wants producers to fully modernize both sectors of production, and projects approved must involve the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment. Apiculturists will increase their chances of successfully applying by outlining projects that will increase their beekeeping stock, whether by increasing the survival rate of bees or by purchasing additional hives.

Agriculture equipment prices have soared post-pandemic, with supply issues raising prices beyond already-high inflation. Beekeepers also suffered heavy losses in bee populations last winter. La Financière agricole du Québec has reported record-high claims in the province of over $3 million.

Special bonus for “outlying” regions

“With this announcement, we are also giving an additional boost to companies located in remote regions,” said Lamontagne in an official announcement on November 24. “The economy of all regions of Quebec will benefit.”

Quebec will make $20 million available, with a 15 per cent bonus for producers in “outlying regions”, which MAPAQ defines in this case as Abitibi-Témiscamingue-Northern Quebec, Bas-Saint-Laurent, Côte-Nord, Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Outaouais, and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Funding will come over the span of three years: an initial amount of $14 million will be paid in 2024-2025 and another $6 million in 2025-2026.

So what can the new envelope of $20 million be used for? The funding will chiefly benefit agribusinesses in Quebec that have ambitious innovation plans that involve the purchase of new equipment and can back up their project with a solid business plan.

MAPAQ says that the first part of the “Productivité végétale” initiative gave out $96 million dollars to over 4,300 projects from 2018 until 2023.

In those cases, funds were allocated to everything from nearly a quarter of a million dollars to Université Laval for conducting research on storage and overwintering for queen honeybees to $40,000 for creating a guidebook on the commercial harvesting of wild plants. Another Quebec company received over $80,000 to make improvements to it soilless strawberry cultivation system.

This time around, Quebec’s funding initiative is much more pointed, hoping to provide an economic stimulus in the purchase of new equipment and to put plant producers and beekeepers in a position to whether climate change and a shifting economy in the future.

First come, first served

Like many of Quebec’s agriculture funding programs in recent years, money is offered on a “first come, first served” basis. Applications will be assessed by a jury, but the initiative lasts until the deadline or until the money runs out.

That means Quebec agribusinesses will benefit by getting a strong application in early.

There are two sets of deadlines for the Productivité végétale initiative: producers from outlying regions will be able to submit their projects from December 10, 2024 to February 7, 2024 — or until the funds are exhausted. 

Producers from a “central region” will be able to submit their application from January 7 to February 7, 2025 (or until the available funds are exhausted.) Quebec considers these regions central: Capitale-Nationale, Centre-du-Québec, Chaudière-Appalaches, Estrie, Montréal-Laval-Lanaudière, Laurentides, Mauricie,  and Montérégie.

For more information or to apply, Google “initiative ministérielle productivité végétale” or visit:

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

La Financière agricole du Québec has unveiled its 2023-2024 balance sheet, showing that the provincial farm insurance agency provided nearly $1.23 billion in loan guarantees to Quebec farmers in the last fiscal year.

Much of that money was granted to dairy and commercial crop companies ($734.1 million) and forestry producers ($9 million). The FADQ cites climate change and inflation as the big reasons why Quebec producers and agri-food companies needed to appeal to their provincial agricultural risk management agency.

“Faced with difficult climatic conditions and the inflationary economic context, La Financière agricole has demonstrated its support for agricultural producers through its agility, support and ability to adapt its programs,” said FADQ president and CEO Ernest Desrosiers.

That $1.23 billion also comprises 2,305 projects under the FADQ’s Sustainable Growth Investment Program (Programme Investissement Croissance Durable), an envelope of funding for agricultural entrepreneurs undertaking productive and sustainable investment projects.

“Our organization continues its mission for sustainable agriculture,” Desrosiers said. “For Quebec ag companies, we’re a strategic partner through our unique offer in terms of risk management and financing.”

In its efforts to support the next generation of Quebec farmers, the agency awarded 501 grants in 2023-2024, totalling $11.4 million. In its “Young Entrepreneurs” program, FADQ committed amounts of $3 million for 189 projects.

FADQ’s yearly report also showed it paid $820 million into insurance and income protection programs. Crop insurance programs (ASREC) paid $196 million in compensation, including nearly $66 million to companies producing cereals, grain corn and protein crops. For the Agricultural Income Stabilization Insurance (ASRA), compensations represented $382 million, with 6,181 people, especially for hog farms as Quebec’s pork industry continues to suffer from plant closures and instability caused from recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ”Agri” programs — Agri-stability, Agri-Québec and Agri-investment — paid out $243 million to Quebec producers and agribusinesses.

Business Risk Management pay-outs

• Agri-stability
  • 13,183 participants
  • Payments of $66 million
• Agri-Quebec Plus
  • 10,458 participants
  • Payments of $6.3 million
• Agri-investment
  • 17,695 participants
  • Government contributions of $40 million
• Agri-Québec (year of participation 2022)
  • 14,786 participants
  • Government contributions of $130 million

Mac grad aims to continue and grow the family farm

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

For Connor Velthuis, growing up on the family farm in small-town Ontario was all about tractor rides and tagging along with dad.

“My very first memory on the farm is sitting in the tractor with dad, pulling the forage harvester,” the 21-year-old recalled. “I held my hands over my ears the entire time because I was afraid of the very loud metal-detector alarm coming on at any time. That would be the highlight of my week!”

The Velthuis farm in Osgoode, now part of the rural south end of the city of Ottawa, started long before Connor came on the scene. His grandparents founded it in 1959, shortly after their emigration from The Netherlands. They started a dairy and crop operation and raised nine children of which two remained on the farm – Connor’s father, Paul, and his uncle, Steven.

Connor joined his local 4-H Club at age 9 and never looked back. Over the years, he has been active in the crop club and dairy clubs and become a senior member.

“I’ve evolved from being the youngest to the oldest member in the club,” he said. “Having been on both sides over the years has led me to have a greater understanding of the teaching and learning processes — and that can be applied to anything in life.”

Diversified operation

Velthuis Farms Limited operates on an expanse of 2,000 acres these days, cropping corn, wheat, soybeans and alfalfa for feed and sale, and milking a herd of 230. But it was a recent venture into speciality beef that has brought Steven and Paul Velthuis’s farm more attention and profit: Wagyu beef, known for its marbling, fine texture and high price.

“The first time I heard of ‘Wagyu’ was when I came home from school one day and saw this big black cow in a pen, and I had no idea what it was,” Connor said. “From there we built our herd and started selling to customers. And it’s only grown ever since.”

Connor’s uncle Steven purchased a cow-calf pair of Wagyu animals in Vermont before the COVID-19 pandemic, when Connor was just enrolled in Macdonald Campus’s Farm Management and Technology program. The family did some flush work with their Wagyu heifer and put embryos into recipients to get their herd on the ground quickly. Now, they have a 50-head Wagyu herd that are DNA-registered with Wagyu associations in Australia and the U.S. to prove their authenticity.

“It was something different to try,” Connor explained. “With the popularity of beef-on-dairy breeding in the industry, we figured we might as well try this with purebred Wagyu and see the process to the end.”

Direct to consumers

Now, Velthuis Farms sells Wagyu beef directly to the consumer and to high-end restaurants and sports bars.

“The first years were essentially word of mouth,” Connor said. “We started going to the Ottawa Farmers’ Market in the spring to get our name out there directly to consumers and that bolstered sales greatly. Now, we have several repeat customers from as far away as Toronto.”

It’s a niche market that has done well for the Velthuis family. Paul, Steven, Connor and Connor’s cousin, Brendan, tend to the herd and are in touch with other Wagyu producers in the province. They estimate that the number of Wagyu beef operations in Ontario is in the low double digits.

And it’s likely to remain a niche product. In 1997, Japan declared Wagyu cattle a national treasure and no longer permits live cattle or their DNA to be exported, making Velthuis Farms a sizeable player in a somewhat protected market.

For Connor, knowing that there’s a stable and diverse farm operation at home means his future is secure. Since graduating from Mac in the spring of 2024, he has returned to Osgoode full time, taking on tasks related to dairy, the family’s cash cropping – and Wagyu beef.

“Having a say in what’s next is a great feeling to have,” he said. “And knowing that I have a great relationship with the prior generations and with my own third generation — that’s a truly great feeling.”

Cutline:

Connor Velthuis showed a heifer from the family farm in the Spring Yearling class at the Royal Winter Fair in 2023.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

A recent report from the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec reveals that the number of dairy cows in the province has decreased drastically in the past 40 years.

But the same report also shows that Quebec dairy producers have more than made up for it with their efficiency — producing more milk with smaller herds.

Using figures from Statistics Canada, MAPAQ states that “in the province of Quebec, the total number of dairy cows has fallen by 50 per cent, from 710,000 head in 1981 to 353,000 head in 2022.”

However, figures show that the province’s dairy industry is doing more with less.

“At the same time,” MAPAQ writes, “milk production increased by 21 per cent, from 29 million hectolitres (Mhl) in 1981 to 35 Mhl in 2022.”

Taken together, those numbers reveal that the average Quebec dairy cow is producing 140 per cent more milk in 2022 compared with 1981.

MAPAQ’s report also show that Quebec is leading the country’s dairy production in key areas. The province produces 50 per cent of Canada’s cheese and accounts for 75 per cent of the quantity of yogurt produced in the country.

Milk down, yogurt up

The report reveals some marked changes in consumer habits regarding dairy over the past 40 years.

Overall, consumption of dairy products has fallen by 14 per cent since 1981. That trend is largely driven by a decrease in actual milk consumption: whereas the average Quebecer consumed 55 litres of milk in 1981, and provincial per capita consumption peaked in 1987 at 63 litres annually, the figure now hovers at 30 litres per person. All in all, those numbers represent a decrease of 45 per cent.

Quebecers are also buying and eating less butter.

“From 1981 to 2007, per capita consumption of butter decreased from 4.34 kg to 2.59 kg, the lowest level recorded during the period,” MAPAQ’s report states. “A rise was observed from 2008 to peak at 3.71 kg in 2021.”

Such a drop in milk and butter consumption would have been catastrophic for Quebec’s dairy industry where it not for the great gains made in marketing yogurt and specialty cheeses.

Driven by health food trends and the promotion of yogurt’s probiotic benefits, MAPAQ notes that the consumption of yogurt has increased fivefold in 40 years. Annual yogurt consumption rose from 1.64 litres per person (retail weight) in 1981 to 8.89 litres in 2022. In 2015, annual consumption peaked at 10.99 litres, a level considered by Quebec manufacturers to be a plateau that is holding steady.

Interestingly, 2008 marked the year that yogurt consumption surpassed that of ice cream in the province. Quebecers are now eating far less ice cream than they used to: intake of the frozen dairy dessert has fallen by more than 60 per cent in 40 years, from 12.57 litres to 4.51 litres per year per person.

Specialty cheese capital

Quebec’s status as Canada’s leading cheese producer has meant that it has benefitted greatly from the marketing of specialty cheeses (including mozzarella, but excluding cheddar and processed cheeses).

Per capita cheese consumption across all categories increased by nearly 53 per cent, but specialty or “fancy” and “luxury” cheeses enjoyed huge gains, with annual per-capita consumption rising from 3.03 kg in 1981 to 8.65 kg in 2022.

“These cheeses now represent more than half (58 per cent) of the total volume of cheese consumed per person, compared to less than a third (31 per cent) in 1981,” MAPAQ states.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Environment Canada has launched a new federal agency that will protect Canada’s water from pollution and the damaging effects of industrial and agricultural activities, said Steven Guilbeault, federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

“Droughts, floods (and) pollution from farming and industrial activities have significant impacts on water quality — impacts that are very serious and costly,” said Guilbeault at a press conference in Winnipeg on Oct. 16.

The Canada Water Agency (CWA) will implement Canada’s Freshwater Action Plan, which was announced as part of the 2017 federal budget. The plan is aimed at improving freshwater management through efforts to improve the water quality of the Great Lakes, Lake Winnipeg, the Fraser River and other waterways of “national significance” throughout Canada.

“The agency will help the Government of Canada better address current water challenges and those of the future,” Guilbeault told a crowd of reporters and the public in downtown Winnipeg, where the agency will be based.

“We need to be prepared for what comes in the future, we need to recognize that water is becoming more scarce and more precious. We have a responsibility to protect the waters we have.”

Despite Guilbeault’s comments that agricultural pollution has a significant impact on water quality, the creation of a stand-alone agency to manage Canada’s freshwater has been a recommendation of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) for years.

CFA president Keith Currie said the federation felt a pan-Canadian regulatory agency was vital given the importance of water for food production and adverse weather conditions driven by climate change affecting farming.

“(We) knew it was imperative that the government coordinate water-related issues across provinces, industries and conservation authorities to best manage water to keep it safe, clean and available for future generations,” said Currie, a sweet corn and hay producer from Collingwood, Ont.

“Water is one of the most essential inputs when it comes to food production, whether that be growing crops or keeping animals hydrated.”

At the moment, Currie says he can’t be sure how the creation of the CWA will impact the practices of agricultural producers in Canada. The federal government’s official release on the agency does not mention agriculture, and Guilbeault did not mention collaboration with agricultural groups at his announcement in Winnipeg.

Nonetheless, Currie says the CFA is hopeful that Ottawa will see agriculture as an ally.

“We will be working with the water agency on behalf of Canadian farmers to ensure that our sector’s needs are represented,” Currie said. “We also hope to see agriculture as a priority sector for water resources when competing with other industries.”

The CWA is funded with $85.1 million set aside from the 2023 federal budget. Ottawa has also pledged $650 million to enable the agency to offer grants supporting projects focused on restoring and protecting water resources.

Aim of Canada Water Agency

The Canada Water Agency’s current initiatives are:

– to restore and protect water quality and the health of aquatic ecosystems

– to advance science, monitoring (including community-based monitoring) and the application of Indigenous knowledge in cooperation with Indigenous peoples to support decision-making and effective action 

– to improve collaboration with Indigenous partners, provinces and territories, and stakeholders 

– to mobilize knowledge and reporting to measure progress towards results

– to improve climate change resiliency through on-the-ground action

The CWA will be headquartered in Winnipeg, including five regional offices throughout Canada and comprise 220 employees when fully staffed.

Cutline:

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (right) announced the creation of the Canada Water Agency in Winnipeg on Oct. 16 with Winnipeg South MP Terry Duguid.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

You could say that from an early age, Andrew Dirven had his priorities straight when it came to farming.

“One day I came home from school and saw that my family was harvesting,” the 21-year-old grain producer recalls. “So I ran inside and told my father that I did all my homework on the bus — which I definitely hadn’t done — just so I could ride in the tractor with my grandfather. I loved every second of sitting in that tractor, until the next morning when I actually had to do my homework on the bus!”

From that young age, Dirven realized that his third-generation family farm in Bainsville, Ont., was something special. And there weren’t many other careers he considered pursuing.

“It was an amazing childhood growing up on the farm,” Dirven said. “I was always fascinated with tractors and combines. And that fascination is still with me. Working alongside my family as a child developed a special bond. Being passionate farmers brought us together.”

The story of the Dirvens’ farm begins in 1977, when Andrew’s grandparents, Peter and Betty Dirven, decided to sell their farm in The Netherlands and relocate to Canada. It wasn’t long before their son, Nick, took an interest in the family business and started a multi-generational grain and cash cropping operation.

Today, the family — along with lots of help from Andrew — produces corn, soybeans and wheat under the name Spendrew Farms.

Located a mere seven kilometres from the Quebec border, it wasn’t difficult for Driven to realize that Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue was a great, nearby place to receive an agriculture education.

“Mainly, I wanted to go there just because of my passion for agriculture. But after I started, I realized networking was just as important,” he explained.

“Over my three years at Mac, I met a lot of people with the same interests as me, and a lot of those people have become my closest friends.”

Dirven enrolled in the Farm Management and Technology (FMT) program in the fall of 2021, discovering the finer points of soil science, cash cropping and agricultural economics.

“Cash cropping is a very dependant industry on the markets. Our grain prices fluctuate depending on supply and demand around the world,” he said. “There isn’t a lot of security or guarantee to what prices we’ll receive. Although our farm works hard on marketing by making futures contracts, setting targets and other marketing strategies, it still puts a lot of dependency on what’s going on globally.”

That’s what gave Dirven the thought of diversifying. Instead of relying on grain prices to determine the revenue of Spendrew Farms, there was money to be made providing services instead of just selling commodities.

“Since 2023, we’ve been offering custom harvesting and custom spraying,” Dirven said, referring to two tasks he has taken on himself. “I believe in the importance of diversification, having alternative income sources to allow our farm to have more security.” 

With initiatives like those, Dirven is definitely working more than full time on the family farm. Along with spraying and harvesting, equipment maintenance is also his duty at Spendrew. He knows that one day, he’ll be able to take over management of the whole farm — and is more than grateful for the fact that he was born into a family farm so he could pursue his dream.

“I wish for my future generation and other future members in the agriculture industry to have the same opportunities as I had,” Dirven said. “Opportunities to purchase land will be the biggest challenge for young farmers. With land being an appreciating asset, it’ll continue to be more expensive for the next generation. Not only will receiving approval for a mortgage to purchase the land be a challenge, but as well as being able to cash flow the payments.”

That’s part of the reason that family — and family farming — play such an enormous role in Dirven’s life and journey in the industry. For him, family working together is a strength that has to be experienced to be understood.

“Just growing up and watching my family work hard day and night together — to either complete harvest, or try to get the last field planted before the rain, or whatever the task might have been — it’s a level of passion that most people wouldn’t understand unless they lived it.” 

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

A new study shows that the vast majority of female farmers in Quebec – 90 per cent – suffer from high levels of stress as they struggle to balance farm tasks, family life and farm management.

“Women in agriculture hold an average of 5.1 positions in the business,” explained Valérie Fortier, president of Agricultrices Québec.

“The five main tasks are management and administration — such as strategic planning, business management, finance and accounting — tasks related to agricultural production, purchasing and supply, and human resources.”

In other words, female agricultural producers feel forced to spread themselves too thin over the many areas of farm production. The study, conducted by Léger, was carried out on behalf of the Fédération des agricultrices du Québec, a specialized federation of the Union des producteurs agricoles. The association was founded in 1987 to highlight concerns of female producers in the province.

“The results of the survey confirm what our members have been telling us for several years,” said Fortier, herself a dairy producer from Saint-Valère in Centre-du-Québec.

“The situation is worrying and concerns all of us, considering the fundamental and structuring role that women play in the agricultural sector in Quebec.”

Province-wide, 27 per cent of farm businesses are owned or co-owned by women. While female producers have made great gains in recent decades, figures show they also bear more than their fair share of the workload, particularly when it comes to paper work and financial management.

“Managing multiple tasks is the top source of stress that respondents report experiencing on a daily basis,” Fortier said.

In fact, 63 per cent of respondents said that multi-tasking and balancing roles was a key source of mental stress.

Other sources of stress include pressure for productivity (46%), financial problems (43%), family responsibilities (41%) and weather conditions (40%).

The situation can be even more challenging for young female producers (between the ages of 18 and 34), who are often juggling the work of supervising children while also managing farm labour.

“For younger women farmers, balancing domestic and professional tasks and reconciling work and personal life are the most important challenges,” Fortier said.

“Women farmers who have children in their household reported that the main challenges are balancing domestic and professional tasks, reconciling work and personal life, and salary conditions.”

Chief among the stressors and tasks often foisted upon female farmers are what sociologists call “invisible work”— work done within the family that may include household chores and personal care, labour performed for a family business, or caregiving for the older generation.

In November, the Les Agricultrices will launch a tool to quantify invisible work in agriculture. The data collected will be used to obtain gendered information on invisible work, to document the phenomenon and raise awareness among agricultural producers.

“Our programming at Les Agricultrices is a response to the mental stress-load issues experienced by women farmers that were identified in Léger’s study,” Fortier explained.

This year, the federation is offering members up to seven hours of free consultations with experts, including notaries, tax specialists, lawyers, agricultural management consultants, marketing-communications advisers and financial planners. Fifteen workshops on various themes along with entrepreneurial mentoring, personalized support and networking are also planned.

To find out more about what help is available from the Fédération des agricultrices du Québec, visit tellementplus.ca

Caption:

Valérie Fortier, a dairy producer from Saint-Valère and president of the Fédération des agricultrices du Québec, knows the type of stress women farmers are feeling. A new study reveals that female producers are carrying a very high stress load from managing multiple roles on the farm.

Credit:

Agricultrices Québec

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Ross MacDonald doesn’t necessarily believe that success is all about business savvy and making the right decisions. For the south Saskatchewan rancher, luck and timing are factors, too.

And MacDonald will be the first one to tell you his success is a prime example of that.

“The largest single determinant in business success is timing,” said MacDonald, who grazes beef cattle, a Hereford base herd crossed with Angus genetics.

“If you just sit back and wait for the timing to click, you might not recognize it. But the thing is you have to be searching, MacDonald said. “Things might not always click, but if you’re not searching, you’re not gonna find it.”

The timing first ‘clicked’ for MacDonald growing up the son of lawyers in Lake Alma, Sask. – just 20 kilometres from the Montana border. Many of his parents’ clients were local agricultural producers, and meeting them instilled him with a respect for ranching and grasslands.

MacDonald learned to rope and ride as a teenager and took an animal science degree at the University of Saskatchewan. Upon graduation, the research and teaching being done at Montana State University influenced him as a young grad student.

Broadened his horizon

“In Montana, I got exposed to some very different thinking than I grew up with in terms of agricultural production systems and low-input cow systems,” MacDonald explained. “It really planted a seed of creativity within me. It sort of became my goal to try and capture a piece of grass of my own.”

The timing was right in the early 2000s, when grassland prices were at low-value prices in Saskatchewan. To build his land base, MacDonald was able to parlay small purchases of land with conservation easements and grazing leases with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada. Today, he grazes his herd on about 5,000 acres of prairie grassland.

“I’m pretty risk-averse when it comes to huge financial risks,” MacDonald told participants of a QFA videoconference held Oct. 2. “But I’m not too risk-averse on relationships when it comes to non-typical agricultural relationships, whether that’s with conservation organizations or trying to get further up a supply chain.”

Enter A&W

Having conversations further up the supply chain is what made the timing and the luck really click in MacDonald’s career. When fast-food chain A&W started its “Raised Without” program in 2013, marketing beef raised without artificial hormones or steroids, MacDonald realized that the company’s commitment dovetailed nicely with his production practices.

More, he suspected that the company he was selling his cattle to — Spring Creek Ranch of Vegreville, Alta. — was one of the suppliers for A&W.

“I went to a local producers’ meeting where one of the vice-presidents of A&W was taking questions from ranchers — a lot of whom were really upset by the Raised Without program,” MacDonald explained. “And I said to (the VP), ‘I’m a small ranch that sells into your supply chain, I think there could be a lot more to this story of ‘Raised Without’.”

That encounter developed into a relationship with A&W that has lasted years. MacDonald and his wife Christine Peters began discussing their production with executives at the restaurant chain, ultimately appearing in their commercials and being featured in a series of short documentaries about Canadian ranchers.

And it expanded from there

“During one of our conversations, they said to me, ‘How do you feel about grass-fed?’” MacDonald said.

“I said: ‘Well, really, that’s where the logic of my production system is going, but we don’t have a commercially viable market in Western Canada for grass-fed.’”

That’s how MacDonald contributed to A&W’s decision, in 2020, to use all grass-fed and grass-finished beef. He didn’t tailor his production practices to suit their market — he was searching for opportunity and the timing just clicked.

“Each of those big events in my life has been the result of searching for it,” MacDonald said as he reflected back on his trajectory in the business.  “So when the opportunity arose, I was ready for it. Sure, it also came with an education, a steep learning curve, and a cost. But it has been a lot of fun, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Maple Star Farm in St. Felix de Kingsey is definitely what you’d call a family farm.

“My brother takes care of the equipment and machinery maintenance; my sister, Trinity, takes care of the social media and sale advertisement of the farm,” explained 20-year-old Ruby Mastine.

“My father does a little bit of everything when it comes to the barns and fields, and my mother helps in the barns for the sheep as much as she can. Everyone has their own role in the business.”

The Mastines come by their dedication to family farming naturally. Ruby is part of the fifth generation to farm the land in St. Felix de Kingsey, just 60 kilometres north of Sherbrooke. What started out long ago as a dairy operation and sugar bush expanded to sheep production with Ruby’s grandparents in the 1960s. Today, parents David Mastine and Erika Brock own and manage the farm, selling lambs for meat all year long and winning multiple awards for their herd and livestock genetics.

For Ruby, sheep rearing has always been a part of growing up.

“One of the first farm memories I have is swinging in a swing that was hung in the barn for us kids while I watch my father feeding the sheep,” Ruby said.

“Seeing all of the ewes running to get their grain while their babies were running and playing up and down the straw bedding. My grandmother, Blanche, always said that if the lambs were playing, that meant they’re healthy. To this day I love seeing them run around, and that quote has always helped me spot when something was wrong.”

Ruby was a member of the Richmond 4-H Club for years, showing sheep, beef, participating in exchanges and even doing some square dancing. After high school graduation, she was uncertain if she wanted to take over the home farm or get a job doing something else in the agricultural sector.  

But she knew that enrolling in Macdonald Campus’ Farm Management and Technology (FMT) program would give her a head start on either path.

“Either way, I knew that the program would help me in the future with either choice,” she said. “I had several family members attend FMT before me, and they showed me the knowledge, friendships and opportunities that they received through it.”

Upon graduating in the spring of 2023, Ruby began working as a feed rep for Moulée Vallée Feeds in Richmond.

“So I ended up doing both,” she said. “Working on the home farm and getting a job elsewhere!”

Maple Star Farm boasts impressive numbers and achievements by any measure: 350 ewes (300 crossbreds and 50 purebred Suffolks) and many of them award-winners. The family won champion Suffolk ewe with a junior ewe lamb at the All Canada Sheep Classic this summer, also racking up three first-place showings in the four categories they entered.

Maple Star also won top terminal breed flock in Canada on the national genetic evaluation program in 2021. In 2022, the family sold the highest-bid Suffolk ram in all of Canada.

Recently, at the new generation’s initiative, the farm has expanded into beef production. In 2017, Ruby and brother Callum decided to purchase two Herefords from their cousins. Seven years later, they’re up to seven cow/calf pairs of purebred Simmentals and Herefords, and the project has made the siblings hopeful about expanding.

“For now, they are an enjoyable hobby,” Ruby said. “However, I would like to one day expand to a larger production of beef to diversify the farm more.”

Through all the hard work and deserved accolades, Ruby Mastine is a confident and determined producer, able to eloquently articulate the challenges of farming for the new generation.

“The weather has always been a farmer’s worst enemy, and it gets worse every single year,” she said.

“With the excessive amount of rain we received last year in Quebec, it made 2023 and 2024 very difficult,” she said. “Expenses have increased immensely since the pandemic, and now they’re doubling over the years due to weather.

“This is a part of farming that the world does not see: it takes a long time to recover after one bad spring/summer, one bad season costs you a lot for the next year. This pushes producers to have to sell sometimes. How are we going to feed the world by 2050 with these weather and economic issues that producers are facing?”

Cutline:

Ruby Mastine of St. Felix de Kingsey in the Eastern Townships has grown up in a successful sheep-producing family. In 2017, she and her brother decided to add Simmentals and Herefords to their family’s fifth-generation farm.

Credit:

Courtesy Ruby Mastine

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Quebec government has announced it will provide $1 million to fund technological innovation in horticulture in a move it hopes will help agricultural producers address issues of climate change, environmental practices and labour scarcity.

The Ministre de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation (MAPAQ) made the announcement late last month, stating that it hopes to offer producers in the market gardening, greenhouse, apple, potato, and strawberry and raspberry sectors “concrete technological solutions,” like robotic machinery, automated tools or intelligent sensors.

“More than ever, research and development of technologies must be systematized in agriculture to increase the robotization and automation of fruit and vegetable production in Quebec,” said Agiculture Minister André Lamontagne. “These are foundations on which prosperous and competitive companies will develop, for a sustainable and modern agri-food sector and greater food autonomy.”

The Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec, the province’smarket gardeners group, welcomed the announcement, saying the funding will address key issues in Quebec horticulture and prepare the sector for a future where labour shortages are increasingly acute and automation is seen as the best solution.

Automation is key

“Mechanization, robotization and automation remain little integrated in horticultural farms,” said Catherine Lefebvre, president of APMQ. “Companies still rely heavily on the workforce, which accounts for up to 50 per cent of their total costs.”

The APMQ will receive a sum of $760,000 to evaluate technologies aimed at increasing the automation of horticulture production and optimizing the use of pesticides and inputs.

Each horticulture sector – market gardening, greenhouse, apple, potato, and strawberry and raspberry production – will select and test a new technology identified by producer associations as most likely meeting that sector’s needs.

For Quebec market gardeners, that new technology is the Ecorobotix ARA precision sprayer, considered today to be the most precise in the industry.

Already in development and use for 20 years, the Ecorobotix ARA is a semi-autonomous sprayer that allows for a finely-targeted application of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides or fertilizers. The operation of the sprayer is based on algorithms specific to each crop, can be operated remotely, and is able to operate in strong wind conditions thanks to a protective curtain system.

Equipment will be loaned

The province’s greenhouse, apple, potato, and strawberry and raspberry sectors are yet to identify the respective technologies that they will test out through the new program. The $1 million in funding is intended to finance the creation of an evaluation protocol and the implementation of the evaluations in the field. Equipment will be loaned out during the trial and evaluation periods, not purchased.

The project is being carried out between the horticulture producer associations along with the Réseau d’expertise en innovation horticole (a centre of expertise founded to democratize and speed up the adoption of horticulture technologies) and Quebec non-profit La Zone AgTech.

“In the past, there has been no overall vision to develop a strategy for adopting new technologies and to build bridges with technology transfer centres and developers,” Lefebvre said, citing this as a reason the Quebec horticulture industry needs to foster greater use of new technologies to meet its challenges.  “This is where the (Réseau d’expertise en innovation horticole) can act.” 

Quebec’s market gardening and fruit sector includes more than 4,700 producers. In 2023, the sector  generated revenues of nearly $1.47 billion.

Cutline:
Five of Quebec’s horticulture sectors have been given the chance to test out new technologies that will help their production thanks to new funding. The Association des producteurs maraîchers du Québec will be testing out the Ecorobotix ARA precision sprayer, a semi-autonomous sprayer that can be run in remote locations with no Internet signal.

Credit:
Courtesy Ecorobotix

Andrew McClelland

The Advocate

Staff at Macdonald Campus’ Farm Management and Technology program say their fall enrolment numbers are down slightly from last year, but that it’s still too early to determine if it’s a direct impact of Bill 96.

“Have our numbers gone down? Yes. This year, only 31 (students) instead of around 40 showed up on Day 1,” said Pascal Thériault, director of the FMT program. “How much of it is due to government policy? Hard to say.”

When the Quebec government introduced Bill 96, its update to the Charter of the French Language, it stipulated that students attending English CEGEPs would have to take five courses in French.

While FMT is run by McGill University’s Macdonald Campus, the program is considered a CEGEP-level offering. As such, explains Thériault, FMT is not affected by the controversial tuition hikes for out-of-province students in Quebec universities.

But the program is affected by Bill 96’s introduction of more French-language courses in English CEGEPs.

“The new language regulations might have had an impact and scared away a few students, but it is hard to put a number on it because our student numbers tend to vary from year to year,” Thériault said. “We had to turn away about six Ontario students whose French level would not have made it possible for them to meet the necessary French requirements.”

Bill 96’s new changes do not require that students have a certificate to attend an English institution. But they do impose a quota on the number of non-certificate holders. FMT is excluded from the quota as its students are considered McGill students.

“FMT is funded to train future Quebec farmers who are native English speakers,” Thériault said. “Our recruitment efforts have always been geared toward that clientele, whereas francophones attending the program have been a minority that is always welcome since we do value diversity it all its forms.”

Tuition hikes cause uncertainty

The other issue causing uncertainty at McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is Quebec’s announcement of tuition hikes for out-of-province students.

When the Quebec government initially announced the tuition hike, it proposed an increase from $8,992 to approximately $17,000, causing an outcry from both the province’s English-speaking community and prospective students from the rest of Canada.

That increase has since been lowered to a minimum rate of $12,000, but with a catch: out-of-province students will need to be able to demonstrate a level-five oral proficiency (an ability to carry on a basic conversation) by the time they graduate.

The decision sent shockwaves through McGill’s recruiting department, says Valérie Orsat, acting dean for Macdonald Campus.

“The number of applications from Ontario significantly dipped,” Orsat said. “We had to reduce our recruiting activities in Ontario, as the feedback from their high schools was not positive: ‘If Quebec does not want us, we shall not apply.’”

Nonetheless, McGill’s Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is seeing a healthy enrolment. Admissions from Canadian high schools in the department are the same as last year’s.

“Overall, our incoming numbers for this fall for our B.Sc. or B.Eng. programs are similar to last year’s numbers,” Orsat said. “Although our applications from the rest of Canada were significantly lower than last year’s.”  

Everywhere in Canada, enrolment in agricultural programs at the post-secondary level is struggling. The fact that Mac has been able to maintain high enrolment numbers is exceptional.

“There is a general trend in ag colleges in Canada where numbers are not on the rise,” Thériault said. “That’s a concern, as I believe we must attract more people to the ag sector.”

Decreasing enrolment in agriculture education is a worrying sign for a variety of reasons, Thériault said.

“Training future farmers is one thing, but the FMT program also trains agricultural technologists who help farmers to make our agricultural sector more resilient, better prepared for climate change and to help them meet social expectations on issues such as pollution, pesticide use and animal welfare. There will be more and more need to offer support for those farmers in the future.”

Cutline:

FMT students at Macdonald Campus receive hands-on training.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The federal government announced earlier this month that it is taking measures to crack down on what it calls “misuse and fraud within the system” of the temporary foreign worker program.

That could mean serious changes in Canadian agriculture: in 2023, just over 70,000 temporary foreign workers were employed in primary agriculture industries in Canada, and just over 45,000 worked in related food and beverage manufacturing industries.

While not singling out agriculture, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages Randy Boissonnault spoke out on Aug. 6 against employers taking advantage of the program.

“Abuse and misuse of the (temporary foreign worker) program must end,” Boissonnault said. “The health and safety of temporary foreign workers in Canada is a responsibility I take very seriously. Bad actors are taking advantage of people and compromising the program for legitimate businesses.”

Changes and possible changes

The biggest change will be the government enforcing a rule that sets a 20-per-cent cap for low-wage temporary foreign workers. That would mean that low-wage workers that applied through the temporary foreign worker program could make up no more than 20 per cent of a Canadian business’ workforce.

So far, that cap does not apply to agriculture. But should Ottawa choose to be more stringent, it could have drastic impact for many Quebec and Canadian farm businesses, many of which rely on workforces made up of foreign workers to pick fruits and vegetables.

The cap also applies to workers enrolled in what is called the “dual intent sub-stream,” which applies to temporary foreign workers who intend to apply for permanent residency. While workers hoping to use their work period in Canada as a springboard for permanent residency wouldn’t be limited, their employers would be subject to stricter guidelines.

Employment and Social Development Canada says the temporary foreign worker program is designed “as a last resort for employers to fill jobs for which qualified Canadians are not available.”

Under the program guidelines, an employer must pay for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) for approval, demonstrating there is a need for a foreign worker to fill a position for which no Canadian worker or permanent resident is available. Boissonnault says that fee might increase so that further checks and investigations could be made.

Ottawa also says it’s looking to implement future changes regarding employer eligibility. An employer applying to the program would have to have a minimum number of years of business operations or make its history of lay-offs known.

Boissonnault’s announcement on Aug. 6 could be in reaction to a UN report that denounces the temporary foreign worker program as a “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”

That report followed a fact-finding mission conducted by UN observers in Ottawa, Moncton, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver last year and was tabled on July 22.

“The temporary foreign worker program serves as a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery, as it institutionalizes asymmetries of power that favour employers and prevent workers from exercising their rights,” the UN report states.

Protecting workers

All effected and proposed regulation changes to the temporary foreign worker program are intended to protect a potentially vulnerable labour force. Employment and Social Development Canada notes that fines for infractions against the program increased by a marked 36 per cent. 

Statistics Canada says that between 2005 and 2020, the number of temporary foreign workers in Canadian crop production, animal production and aquaculture sectors more than tripled.

However, few of those workers succeed in gaining permanent residency. Figures show that after five years of work in Canadian agriculture only slightly more than 10 per cent of temporary foreign workers obtain permanent residency. After 10 years since workers were first employed in the sector, the cumulative transition rate reaches only 16.8 per cent.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Canada’s agiculture ministers announced the introduction of a grocery store code of conduct, improvements to the AgriRecovery program and a levelling of the playing field between local and imported products at a meeting in Whitehorse this summer.

The annual summer gathering of federal, provincial and territorial agiculture ministers allows the country’s top agriculture decision-makers to come together and, hopefully, harmonize regulations and programs across all levels of government.

This year’s meeting, held from July 17-19 in the Yukon capital, yielded the announcement of $1.2 million towards the creation of a “Grocery Code Adjudication Office.”

This grocery store code of conduct will operate as a non-profit organization funded by dues collected from grocery supply-chain stakeholders. The Grocery Code Adjudication Office will act as a referee and publicly report violations of the code.

“This will definitely bring more predictability, transparency and fairness among the (supply) chain, and a mechanism to resolve conflict,” stated Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne, who has been instrumental in bringing about the creation of the code in the wake of food price increases.

At the meeting, ministers announced that Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Walmart and Costco had agreed to abide by the code, which should come into effect in June 2025. Sobeys operates IGA stores in Quebec.

Level playing field

Lamontagne also advocated for harmonized regulations between local and imported products, saying Quebec products have to compete with American and other imports while living up to more stringent environmental and health regulations.

“Our agricultural and processing businesses are facing more and more constraints and are constantly making efforts to meet environmental and social requirements,” said Lamontagne, adding that he is pleased with the commitment of his fellow ministers of agriculture to support Quebec’s request to explore ways to ensure that imports meet standards equivalent to those that apply to local products.  

Risk programs

Lamontagne and other provincial agriculture ministers also made recommendations to improve AgriRecovery, the federal and provincial governments’ aid framework designed to help producers get back on track after adverse weather and crop failure.

Ministers stated that within the context of climate change, AgriRecovery needs to be made to work faster and take into account that different types of production need different types of support.

“We don’t think it’s productive across the country to have a program have to fire up and be specialized each time,” said John Streicker, minister responsible for agriculture for the Yukon. “We’re looking for something to be more predictable across the board.”

Lamontagne also said he was pleased with an action plan submitted by the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Working Group on Pesticide Management, stating that he is in favour of weaning Quebec producers off synthetic pesticides and promoting alternative methods of pest management.

The 2025 annual meeting of ag ministers will be held in Manitoba and chaired by Manitoba Agriculture Minister Ron Kostyshyn.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Work has begun on the Quebec government’s project to build more than 100 new cellphone towers in regions of the province that have poor reception or no signal at all, representing an investment of $170 million.

Premier François Legault made the announcement earlier this summer, noting that the first phase of the CAQ’s high-speed connectivity plan built 79 cellphone towers by the spring of 2024.

“I am very proud of the work accomplished so far to improve cellular coverage and I am delighted to be able to offer all residents, no matter where they are, a quality of life that lives up to what we have the right to expect in Quebec,” said Legault in an official release.

The plan seeks to address the danger of not having cellular reception in some of Quebec’s most remote areas, including a lack of reception for 9-1-1 and other emergency services.

On the North Shore, portions of routes 138 and 389 are still beyond the reach of any cellular network.

In 2022, a 22-year-old woman from the Minganie MRC (north of Anticosti) discovered she was outside any zone of cellphone reception following a near-fatal car accident. The incident highlighted the need for a speedy construction of new cellphone towers across the province.

“In 2024, it is unthinkable not to have a cellular network across the entire territory of Quebec,” said Legault in an announcement made on June 28. “It is a matter of the safety of citizens and visitors, but also of the dynamism and economic development of the region.”

In 2022, the provincial government mapped out what it called “cellular deserts” in Quebec, determining that anywhere from 400 to 700 antennas would be needed to eliminate these dead zones.

Under phase 1 of Quebec’s high-speed ​​internet and special connectivity plan, 84 new cellphone towers were projected to be built. The government’s latest announcement adds an additional 100 towers to the overall project plan, and will extend coverage in the regions of Bas-Saint-Laurent, Mauricie, Estrie, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Côte-Nord, Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Chaudière-Appalaches, Laurentides and Centre-du-Québec.

“The regions that will benefit from this new infrastructure will quickly see the difference,” said Gilles Bélanger, MNA for Orford and parliamentary assistant for high-speed Internet and special connectivity projects. “Where their citizens could feel isolated, we are improving daily communications. For both leisure and work, this extended cellular coverage will make life easier for those in the areas concerned.”

The vast majority of the cellphone towers will be constructed by Videotron, Sogetel Mobilité, and TELUS. Quebec says construction is expected to be completed by 2027.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Nicolas Audet knows that great farming technique comes from experience.

But, as this Gaspé-based market gardener, who runs Ferme la cigale et la fourmi, is quick to point out, gaining experience is never easy.

“Making good decisions comes with experience, but experience often comes from making bad decisions!” Audet said with a laugh as he shared his experience with participants of a videoconference hosted by the Quebec Farmers’ Association on July 24.

“I’ve made a couple of mistakes in my career – and I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years. But now, I think I’m starting to make good decisions,” he said.

One of the best decisions Audet ever made was getting into market gardening to sell community-supported agriculture (CSA) memberships early in the game. In 2005, he and his partner Melanie started their farm in Carleton-sur-mer, on the south shore of the Gaspé peninsula, where they grow a huge variety of vegetables and herbs. Today, they deliver baskets to over 200 clients.

That started their family – now grown to include four children — on a life divided between the growing season from July to October and spending November to April in the kitchen turning their harvested produce into products for their loyal clients.

“Our main goal is for our kids to live a good life and have fun on the farm,” Audet said. “They don’t really work on the farm yet, but they can appreciate all the good stuff that comes from living on the farm.”

Audet decided to make the investment into using heated greenhouses after he observed that it just made sense from a business perspective.  

“If you don’t have a heated greenhouse, you’re going to have your products at the same time of year as your clients already have them,” Audet said. “You’re going to have tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers at the same time as your clients who have gardens, so your supply will be high when demand is low.”

Nicolas and Melanie started growing in non-heated tunnels in the summer of 2006. But in Gaspé, where summer nights can easily drop to 10 degrees Celsius, growing in non-heated structures won’t produce the size of harvest that can support a CSA business.

“In our non-heated tunnel, we would come up with cherry tomatoes by the 10th or the 15th of August,” Audet explained. “So you don’t have a big harvest and it’s not the best moment.”

La cigale et la fourmi grows most of its produce in a 30-foot-by-100-foot heated greenhouse made of double polythene. Its foundations and end walls are made of sturdy polycarbonate to hold up against the Gaspé winds, and the 10-inch-by-10-inch cement footings keep the structure stable.

“We also have a garage door, because you have to be able to bring a vehicle in there,” Audet said. “And the height of the rafters has to be a minimum of 10 feet if you’re going to grow cucumbers and tomatoes.”

Audet says one of the keys to success is to seek out a consultant or agronome who knows heated greenhouse production. At the start of La cigale et la fourmi, an agronome would visit for several hours every week, advising on cultivar types and production methods.

“For our whole first year, we had an agronome visit every two weeks. It was a huge help! You should definitely look around your region and see what service is available before investing in the greenhouse.”

Having a technician nearby who can fix and troubleshoot a variety of problems is essential for operating a heated greenhouse, Audet said, explaining that he was lucky to have a close friend able to do repairs at a moment’s notice.

“Of course, the most important thing is what you grow,” he said. “That’s where your value is. You want to be different from what your clients can get in the supermarket, so that when they taste your tomatoes, they say, ‘OK, that’s something special.’”

That’s why Audet grows “Big beef plus,” “Beorange,” “Favorita,” “Sunpeach” and “Sunsugar” tomatoes – types that aren’t as common in grocery stores. And the farm doesn’t do things the easy way. If a type of crop is easy to grow, but tasteless, it doesn’t end up in clients’ baskets.

“Varieties like Rebelski or Sakura tomatoes are easy to grow, and they’re easy to ‘read’ and know what’s going on with them,” Audet explained. “But we don’t like to eat them, so we don’t grow them.”

And that’s what it all comes down to at La cigale et la fourmi — being different from the supermarket competition and being proud of what they do. So far, it has been a recipe for success.

“That’s the main factor for us. Of course, you need the productivity, you need the conservation aspect, but what makes us different? Why do people choose us? Because we have something more special than the supermarkets.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The provincial government has announced a new envelope of $4 million to encourage Quebec consumers to buy their food directly from agricultural producers.

But if you’re an agri-business owner, act fast! Project submissions for the program are open until Oct. 31, 2024 – or until funds run out. That means the earlier you submit a proposal, the more likely you are to receive funding.

“I’m very happy with this new support, which will promote local marketing and help bring consumers even closer to those who feed us,” said Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne during the “Mise en marché de proximité et agrotourisme” announcement on May 31.

 “The supported projects will make it possible to offer Quebecers even more fresh, quality products. I invite businesses and business groups from across the province to submit their projects.”

The Mise en marché de proximité et agrotourisme 2024-2026 program is designed to support local marketing and agritourism initiatives, both collective and individual (i.e. both individual producers and collective agri-businesses may apply). Producers, businesses, public institutions, co-ops and non-profit organizations can put forth a plan to shorten the supply chain between producers and consumers and bring farmers and the public closer together.

“Local marketing is an important development lever both for bio-food companies and for (rural) regions,” the government claimed in an official statement. “It makes it possible to support joint planning for the marketing of local products or to finance projects aimed at better positioning a company’s products on local markets.”

While projects like starting up a community-supported agriculture food basket program or building an on-farm kiosk are eligible, Quebec’s Proximité initiative can also fund carrying out planning, diagnostics or studies for an agri-business, designing marketing material, or simply provide money for organizational support.

According to the Agriculture Ministry, one in five agricultural businesses in the province sells directly to consumers, either in a public market, through the sale of CSA baskets or directly from the farm gate.

The Quebec government wants to increase those numbers, encouraging more non-farmers to purchase products from producers directly, or from artisanal processors existing outside the traditional distribution networks of grocery stores.

To qualify for the Proximité program, an individual or farm business must have an annual gross revenue greater than $30,000 and less than $1 million.

In response to criticism from earlier versions of the program, applicants with a current gros annual revenues of less than $30,000 are now deemed eligible if the marketing plan they submit shows that they plan to generate an annual income of at least $30,000 within 36 months of submitting their application.

Quebec also says that it has included “an increase in financial aid for projects targeting organic products as well as for those involving an emerging agricultural business.”

With local market season having just started, MNAs from across the province are stepping up their vocal support of farmers’ markets and farm gate sales.

“Summer is just around the corner, and it’s the perfect time to discover the best in agriculture, anywhere and nearby,” said Audrey Bogemans, MNA for Iberville. “Let yourself be surprised by the richness of the terroir and the authenticity of the producers. Everyone will benefit, even your taste buds!”

Applicants to the Proximité program should submit their applications as soon as possible, as previous provincial programs of this type have run out of funds well before the official application deadline.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Designating soil as a “strategic national asset” is one of 25 recommendations put forward by the Canadian Senate agriculture committee to protect the soil structure on Canadian farmlands in a report issued earlier this month.

“We do not have another 40 years to protect and conserve our soils,” said Senator Robert Black, chair of the Senate agriculture committee, as he unveiled the new two-year study entitled “Critical Ground: Why Soil is Essential to Canada’s Economic, Environmental, Human and Social Health” on June 6.

The report, which took two years to compile with on-site tours and presentations from farmers, ranchers, research scientists and government officials, recommends that the federal government appoint a national soil advocate.

It is the first substantive study of soil produced by the Senate in four decades, when in 1984, Saskatchewan Senator Herb Sparrow put forth a report entitled “Soil at Risk: Canada’s Eroding Future.”

That report was key in the Canadian farming industry’s adoption of no-till farming. Since then, soil management has improved in Canada and crop yields have increased. But the country’s soil faces new challenges.

“Climate change, extreme weather events and urbanization are degrading soil conditions in every region of this country,” said Black, who previously worked for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture for 15 years. “We need to look at this strategically because it is an important issue.”

The latest study gathered information from more than 150 producers and considered 60 written briefs, along with supporting documents from soil science researchers, agronomists, farmers, ranchers, foresters, environmental organizations, agri-businesses, industry groups and federal, provincial and territorial governments to make its recommendations.

Chief among those recommendations is the proposal that Canada change the public conversation about how vital soil is to the nation’s health and economy.

“Soil is a valuable natural resource,” states a leading paragraph in the 160-page report. “The Government of Canada should designate soil as a strategic national asset. Other countries, such as Australia, have appointed a national soils advocate; the committee believes that the Government of Canada should do the same.”

The report also suggests that Canada’s current methods for measuring soil health are not advanced enough. The committee called on the federal government to collaborate with the provinces and territories to support the development of a consensus on how to measure, report and verify soil health.

It also recommends that farmers and ranchers should have access to “viable and valuable carbon markets,” be eligible for tax credits for soil preservation action, and that the government fund peer-to-peer knowledge sharing groups.

“To protect and conserve farmland soil throughout Canada, the committee heard that all levels of government … should work together to plan agriculture into, and not out of, communities,” the report states.

Witnesses also said that building soil-based incentives (tax credits for farmers, enhanced crop insurance, a viable carbon market), as well as sustained funding for soil research initiatives is imperative for producers’ prosperity.”

However, the Senate Committee on Agriculture notes that the problem of protecting Canada’s soil goes deeper than that: much of what threatens soil in this country is the lack of awareness on the part of the public about how precious soil health and agriculture are.

“We need to be changing the perception of farmers in our children and youth,” said Carolyn Wilson of the Canadian Young Farmers’ Forum in her address to the committee. “Some of the initiatives that Agriculture in the Classroom is doing include bringing young farmers into high schools or elementary schools — where the students are able to see that face, and think: “This could be me. It’s not just my grandfather, my uncle or what have you.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Sometimes the early childhood memory of being on the farm is enough to set your path in life. And for 20-year-old Travis Larwill, growing up on the family farm in Buckingham, Que., in the Outaouais region was full of such memories.

“I remember sitting in the cab with my grandfather on hot days and hauling grain from the combine,” Larwill recalled.

“I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always wanted to farm. Just hearing my grandfather’s stories and talking with him and my grandmother, seeing my dad farm, made me love it so much. It gave me a passion to want to grow the farm.”

Larwill is the seventh generation of his family to work the land in Buckingham, which is now part of the municipality of Gatineau. His grandfather made the decision to wrap up the family’s dairy operation and focus on cash-cropping when Travis was a toddler, keeping the young aspiring farmer busy with the annual wheat and grain crop.

Larwill is an only child, and that came with a lot of attention from his father and grandparents —and the knowledge that he had to take on his fair share of the workload.

“It was pretty good,” Larwill said, before adding: “and then sometimes you wish you had a brother to spread the work around with!”

Opted to enroll at Mac

When it came time to decide what to do after high school, Larwill knew that he didn’t want to stray too far from the family farm. He wanted to be able to get back on weekends to help his father, Randy Larwill. Macdonald Campus, a “short” 150 kilometres away, seemed like an ideal fit.

“My grandfather had done some agricultural classes, but I’m the first one from my family to go into a university program for farming,” Larwill said. “I always wanted to have more education after high school in agriculture and I had friends who raved about how great Mac was.”

In the fall of 2021, Larwill enrolled in the Farm Management and Technology program. While the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic required that students remained masked at all times, he was able to attend in-person classes and meet members of Quebec’s larger English-speaking farming community.

For many students at FMT, the highlight of the program are the required internships, where students stay for weeks at a time with another farm family across the country. For Larwill, that meant heading to Marquette, Man., about 50 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, where he worked with Jeff and Chris McMillan. It was an eye-opening trip.

Internship opened eyes to possibilities

“I drove out there,” Larwill said. “At first you see a bit of bush in eastern Manitoba and then it just opens up till you see nothing but prairie farmland.”

Larwill’s family farm never had any livestock during his childhood, but seeing a Manitoba dairy, beef and cash-crop operation allowed him to have a hint of what animal tending is like.

“I saw a completely different way of farming,” he said. “Helping with beef and dairy, making feed – it was great to get experience on all those things I had been studying at Mac.”

That experience gave Larwill an idea to diversify his family farm back home: if he started building a small herd of sheep now, it could be a great way to use the family’s vacant dairy barn — and add a new revenue stream to its operations.

“At first, I thought getting into beef would be best,” Larwill said. “But it was too expensive and sheep was an operation you could basically run by hand.”

Larwill had his first lambing season this year. He describes it as a “pretty good start” with all the enthusiasm of a young producer excited to apply the theory he had learned at school on the farm.

“It was definitely a steep learning curve. But any time I was stuck, I could go back to my books and get most of the answers for what I needed to do.”

For Larwill, the family farm, which also includes 650 acres of cash crops, is the obvious place to stay. His father is still working and ready to share his experience.

“With the prices these days, just getting land is so hard if you want to start in agriculture. I made great farm connections with people at Mac, and we have the land here. After that, knowing people is often the best tool we have.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Agricultural production has never been for the faint of heart. And maybe it’s never been easy being a young farmer in Canada.

But today’s young producers face challenges that previous generations never had, from the pressures of keeping up with technological change, to the fears of climate change and extreme weather.

No one in Quebec knows that more than the Fédération de la relève agricole. Established in 1982, the FRAQ is the voice of the next generation of Quebec farmers, fighting for the improvement of working conditions for the 8,000 professional and aspiring farmers in the province between the ages of 16 and 29.

“Our membership isn’t limited to people actively working in agriculture, because we recognize that it can be so hard to break into the industry,” said Meghan Jarry, a former dairy producer from Abitibi-Témiscamingue who works as an administrator for the federation.

“Especially with land prices being so high right now, and start-up capital being hard to acquire, we welcome anyone between 16 and 29 who wants to get into agriculture.”

First-hand experience

Jarry knows how hard it can be to get started in farming first-hand. Raised in the Montreal suburb of Boucherville, she bravely enrolled in farm management at Université Laval. Several years later, she married a dairy producer and moved to the little town of Palmarolle, 65 kilometres north of Rouyn-Noranda.

“I was able to see, very up close and personal, how succession planning can be difficult and emotional,” she said, relating her husband’s struggles in navigating his own farm transfer. “And now, I’m still very much committed to seeing that it goes well because that farm will maybe one day be our son’s farm.”

Succession planning is just one of the challenges that FRAQ addresses as it advocates for young farmers within the Union des producteurs agricoles and at the provincial level. And its recommendations on the topic are concrete, well-researched and sometimes radical, as Jarry explained in a June 12 videoconference with the Quebec Farmers’ Association.

Relève advocates for farm splitting

For instance, FRAQ recommends Quebec allow for the splitting or dividing of farmland so that succession can be made easier, a change that would overturn the Commission de protection du territoire agricole du Québec’s long-held ban on splitting farmland.

But, says FRAQ, “splitting farmland can be beneficial for certain agricultural projects, particularly those involving the next generation. By encouraging the diversity of models, it can be a beneficial element in starting new businesses.”

The FRAQ also has solid proposals for changing the way farm financing works in the province.

“We want to help young producers by abolishing the ‘part-time’ category in La Financière agricole’s programs,” Jarry said, echoing a long-held grievance of many producers who are trying to establish themselves. “So many more producers could be helped if all farm start-ups could qualify for the full-time subsidy.”

No shame in being a part-timer

In fact, the distinction between part-time producers and full-time producers is one that the FRAQ is challenging in its advocacy work. For generations now, many producers in central and Atlantic Canada have found it necessary to find off-farm work to maintain a stable income. And that shouldn’t be a point of shame among farmers young or old.

“There’s this perception that, if you are a part-time farmer, you are not a ‘real’ farmer,” Jarry said. “And changing the perception of the industry from within, and changing how the public perceives it, is part of what FRAQ does.”

For Jarry, creating an atmosphere of hope for young farmers in the agriculture industry is a constant battle, waged on a personal level. When asked if the dominant mood among young producers is one of optimism, she reflects pensively and responds:

“Well, when I got into dairy, I was so eager,” she said. “And my friends said to me: ‘Just wait till you’ve been farming five years!’ I do find that I’m more jaded now than I was at the beginning. But we have to support one another and power through. And the community at FRAQ is one that powers through and endures.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Horses used to be the backbone of a farm. Only a century ago, if a producer wanted to plough a field, remove trees or get into town, he’d have to hitch up a team.

In Canada, it was only in the 1940s that tractors started replacing horses as the engines of most heavy lifting in agriculture.

Yet, the love and fascination for equine companions remains. That means the work horses kept today are descendants of the past genetic selection of Belgians, Percherons, Clydesdales, and all breeds that worked on farms.

But with the more “leisurely” lifestyle that work horses now enjoy can come health concerns.

“All draft horses tend to become overweight very easily,” said Angie Beaudet, an equine nutrition consultant who has worked in the field for 10 years. “Canadians, Halflingers, many of the Spanish breeds, mules, donkeys and miniature horses can also tend to obesity. And these are the ‘easy-keeper’ breeds that are popular for horse lovers to own.”

The most common culprit regarding obesity is insulin resistance. Horses are able to produce more insulin on a higher level than many other species. Similar to a human with pre-diabetes, the insulin of a horse will kick in strongly when its blood glucose levels are rising. While its glucose levels are under control, its insulin is soaring.

Health issues to watch for

“That can lead to a lot of health problems for horses,” Beaudet explained to participants at an April 24^th videoconference organized by the Quebec Farmers’ Association as part of its ongoing Farm Forum series. “It’s what leads to laminitis or founder. It’s often associated to Cushing’s disease, and gut issues and even asthma can result from horse obesity.”

Those are health issues no horse owner wants to deal with. Knowing if your horse is overweight is key, says Beaudet, who works at Moulée Vallée Feed in Richmond, QC.

And, much like keeping cattle, keeping track of a horse’s body condition score is the best safeguard against equine obesity and the host of problems that arise from it.

“When I’m evaluating a horse’s health, I’m going to use a body-score system to evaluate the fat distribution in key areas on a horse’s body,” Beaudet said. “That means checking fat distribution in the neck, withers, shoulder, ribs, loin and tailhead.”

Equine body-condition scoring gives a rating between 1 and 9 for each of these six areas; divide the sum total by six and you’ll have an indication of a horse’s body score.

An ideal score in the “easy-keeper” breeds is 5, Beaudet explained. However, most tend to obesity and will stand at the 7- to 9-mark when the overall score is calculated.

Conditions are preventable

“All of these health concerns are pretty much 100-per-cent preventable and we can manage them if we do the proper things,” Beaudet said. “We just have to adapt the horse’s diet to stop health concerns from arising and managing them if they do.”

The first step is getting an analysis of the hay you’re feeding your equine friend. Working with a nutritionist is key, she said, along with getting the hay analyzed by a reputable lab.

“We want a hay with low sugar, starch and digestible energy so that your horse doesn’t gain weight too easily. We also want a low iron level. There’s still a lot of debate on the subject, but some studies have shown that high iron levels predispose horses to insulin resistance,” she explained.

A common misconception among horse owners looking for feeding hay holds that a lower protein level will keep a horse’s protein intake in check.

Keep sugar intake low

However, Beaudet said, hay with a protein level below 10 to 12 per cent will be detrimental to the animal’s ability to gain muscle mass — and muscle mass is key to combating insulin resistance.

“We always want to keep sugars as low as possible,” Beaudet specified. “That means no feed, no grains, no molasses. You want to avoid everything that’s oats, corn, barley —

all those kinds of ingredients.”

As many agricultural producers know, keeping a horse is not for the faint of heart — or for the light of pocketbook. Horse-keeping is expensive due to feed, stabling costs and professional expertise required to keep them healthy. For Beaudet, keeping a close eye on diet and nutrition is vital to making sure your horse is happy and healthy.

“One hundred years ago or even 50 years ago, horses could work 10-12 hours a day, several times a week. That’s just not really realistic nowadays. But the right diet, with the right exercise and monitoring of health concerns can help them adapt to being kept as a hobby or for sheer enjoyment.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Canada’s commissioner for the environment and sustainable development has accused Agriculture Canada of falling behind in meeting its goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

In an official report issued April 30, Jerry DeMarco, the commissioner appointed by the federal government to provide an independent analysis on its environmental and sustainable development issues, heavily criticized Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s climate policies and monitoring efforts.

In his “Agriculture and Climate Change Mitigation Report,” DeMarco put emphasis on the Agriculture Ministry’s lagging efforts in developing a plan to reduce emissions from nitrogen fertilizers and suggested the industry needed to shape up fast.

“Given the current climate crisis and limited results thus far, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada will need to ensure that all its expected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions for 2030 take place in the six growing seasons that remain,” said DeMarco in a press release that accompanied the report.

“The department has so far achieved less than 2 per cent of its 2030 overall greenhouse gas reduction target,” the commissioner stated.

Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay thanked DeMarco for the report and outlined what steps his ministry would take to meet climate goals in the future.

“There is no doubt we need to do more to help the agriculture sector reduce emissions, and quickly,” MacAulay said.

In his response to DeMarco’s criticisms, MacAulay outlined the steps his ministry has taken to ensure Canada’s agriculture industry contributes to the nation’s overall goals in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, citing the funding of 14 research labs across the country and the creation of two programs to help farmers adopt more sustainable farming practices.

“Since 2020, the Government of Canada has announced over $1.5 billion in funding to advance climate change mitigation in the sector,” MacAulay said, “including the Agricultural Clean Technology Program, the Agricultural Climate Solutions – Living Labs Program and the On-Farm Climate Action Fund.”

The federal agriculture minister also pointed out both its “Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership” (Sustainable CAP), a series of programs and activities cost-shared between Ottawa and the provinces, and its “Sustainable Agriculture Strategy,” a long-term plan that it hopes will help bring together action on climate issues in agriculture.

Programs included in both are voluntary for producers. DeMarco noted that such funding programs were flooded with applicants and were delayed by a year in disbursing payments.

“The department’s delays in funding approvals resulted in recipients missing a growing season,” the commissioner wrote, “which limited the greenhouse gas reduction results achieved….”

In his report, DeMarco notes that agriculture accounts for 10 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, which have been increasing since 1990. Agriculture remains a major source of methane and nitrous oxide, which are potent greenhouse gases. Between 1991 and 2021, the sector’s emissions have risen by nearly 40 per cent, driven by increased crop production and fertilizer use.

Those figures are still below the greenhouse gases emitted by Canada’s oil and gas industry (28 per cent), transportation sector (22 per cent), buildings (13 per cent) and heavy industry (12 per cent), prompting MacAulay to defend the efforts the country’s farmers are already making in the fight against climate change. “Being on the front lines of climate change, they have felt the devastating effects first-hand, from droughts to wildfires to floods,” MacAulay said in a statement, referring to producers. “Canadian farmers work hard every day to produce the best products in the world and are already making significant efforts to be more sustainable.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

When Ottawa announced the federal budget last month, few agricultural groups were impressed. Citing a lack of investment in a key sector of the economy, both the Union des producteurs agricoles du Québec and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture spoke of their disappointment in the lack of support the budget offered to agriculture.

Now, many observers are also saying that while the government’s plan to increase the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption (LCGE) will benefit many producers, it could also introduce a heavier tax burden onto the younger generation of Canadian farmers.

The latest federal budget unveiled in April introduced the government’s intention to increase the LCGE to apply to up to $1.25 million of eligible capital gains, an increase from the current level of $1.016 million , which is indexed to inflation.

“This in and of itself is a positive development,” said the CFA in an official statement, noting that the government’s decision was consistent with the CFA’s budget recommendation “to increase the capital gains exemption threshold above $1 million to be more in line with current market farmland values.”

But the good news stops there, say industry observers. Because those same changes could make it even harder for families to transfer their farms to the next generation.

“This may make it a little bit harder on the incoming generation to generate the cash flow to have funds available to pay out mom and dad,” said Ryan Kehrig, national leader for agricultural tax with accounting firm MNP.

In a podcast hosted by RealAg Radio, Kehrig explained that the increased exemption for capital gains could put younger agricultural producers in a position where they feel obliged to pay more taxes to ensure their farming parents have a comfortable retirement fund.

“Let’s say mom and dad want to have X amount of dollars to fund their retirement, and they plan on selling the farm to the farming kid — to the successor. They’re going to gift anything over and above that number that they want to have here,” Kehrig explained.

“If they want to have, say, $3 million after tax, they’re probably going to have to sell more share equity to their kids at capital gain rates to trigger that $3 million after tax.”

But with a larger equity share being purchased by the successor at capital gain rates, the incoming generation of farmers will feel the pinch.

“So for the farming kid, there’s probably going to be more ‘skimmage’ — taxes being paid to the government — to leave mom and dad in that position.”

Kehrig’s concerns over how Budget 2024 will impact young producers is the same as CFA’s. The national farmers’ federation predicted the increase in the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption “could play at odds with CFA’s policy objective of creating a more favourable tax environment for young generations of farmers seeking to the enter the sector.”

The federation says that a more detailed analysis of the potential implications for Canadian farms and farm succession planning is required.

But for analysts like Kehrig, the new budget certainly isn’t a cause for celebration for producers who are looking for a break when taking over the family farm.

“There’s a short, immediate impact in terms of succession planning here,” Kehrig said. “And I do see it being a tightening for the younger generation in that regard.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

For anyone not involved in agriculture, the words “family farm” often bring up images of a simple life with a few hens and cows and picturesque buildings on the homestead.

But farm families, like the Egans in the town of Low, north of Wakefield in the Gatineau hills, know that running a family farm is a tough business that constantly requires innovation.

“We try to run a very tight ship,” said 20-year-old Ory Egan. “We take genetics seriously and do our research on our bulls and stallions to ensure we get the best quality offspring.”

It’s a statement Egan — who represents the sixth generation to farm his family’s land in the Outaouais region — makes with pride. 

Any visitor to “Egan Home Farms” will see a lot of Simmental cattle. The family calves 180 a year, keeping full blood Simmentals, commercial Simmentals as well as F1 females crossed between Simmental and Red Angus.

The family – including Ory’s father, Kelvin Egan; grandmother, Leith Egan; mother, Christina Thompson; and sister, Kendall Egan – takes genetics very seriously, working together on the cattle herd along with keeping 20 Percheron draft horses.

“Growing up on the farm was great. I’ve always enjoyed the horses and cattle,” Egan said.

“I remember leading one of our draft horses across the yard with my dad beside me. The mare looked gigantic since I was so small, and I really thought it was crazy how I was able to walk with such a big animal who was so calm and nice.”

Life on the Egan farm was full of hard work and fun: going on sleigh rides, feeding horses and cows, calving cows, foaling mares and working on equipment in the winters. Summers were spent in the hay fields, or moving mares and cows to different pastures, and going to horse shows.

When high school graduation came about, it didn’t take long for Egan to decided that enrolling at Macdonald Campus of McGill University in Ste. Anne de Bellevue was the right thing to do.

“I thought it was important to continue schooling in agriculture, since it would allow me to improve on my strengths and weaknesses,” Egan said. “As we’re focused on livestock at my family farm, cropping was one of the main things I wanted to learn about.”

And learn he did in Mac’s Farm Management and Technology program. Enrolling in the fall of 2021, Egan benefited from the program’s internship component by going to work on a whole different scale of family farm, the “Anchor D Ranch, run by the Skeels family of Rimbey, Alberta.

“It was just a great experience,” he said. “They’re one of the best Simmental breeders.”

“My boss, Dan Skeels, took me in for the summer and treated me as if I was a part of their family,” he added.

Egan stayed out West for 13 weeks, liking it so much that he extended his trip to join the family for a cattle show and getting a chance to travel to British Columbia and see the Rocky Mountains.

Egan finished  the FMT program just this semester. But already he has some great ideas for the family farm in Low.

“I’d like to begin selling some of our heifers privately – both our full-blood replacement heifers and commercial replacement heifers,” he said. “I believe that we have great quality in our cows and would like to give the opportunity to them to go to other farms and show what they have to offer.

“I also think it would be a great Idea to put some focus in cropping,” he continued. “As the saying goes, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket, and we do have both cows and horses. However, I believe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to diversify even more and add crops to our farm.”

But whatever the future holds, this enterprising young farmer is grateful to have come from a family farm.

“You have more reason to be hopeful when your family already has a farm and you are able to take it over,” he said. “I feel bad for young people trying to begin farming and who are starting from scratch. Everyone knows it is not at all easy to get into, nor to be able to afford.

“I do believe that all young farmers can have a future. However, they really have to love what they’re doing. The ones with established farms will have a head start as they will have the knowledge and the capital to continue and or start out.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

It looks like the 2024 maple syrup season will be a record-breaking one for Quebec producers, as early warm weather started the sap flowing in February and luckily kept it going into the spring months.

“We were done by March 17^th, but we had more than enough made,” said Walter Last, a cow-calf, lamb and maple syrup producer from Poltimore in the Outaouais region.

The trend of an early-but-bountiful harvest was repeated throughout Quebec, as surprisingly early warm weather started most taps flowing around Feb. 10. While some producers were caught unprepared, and all worried that the early season wouldn’t last, early predictions agree that the 2024 season will likely be the most productive on record.

“We could end up with a production equivalent of a season and a half — maybe even the volume equivalent of two (average seasons),” said Joël Vaudeville, communications director at Producteurs et productrices acéricoles du Québec (PPAQ).

The provincial maple syrup producers federation only tabulates final production data by May, typically making that information public by June. But already, the quantity of syrup harvested in 2024 has surpassed the 35.5 million litres produced across Quebec last year.

See MAPLE, Page 12.

MAPLE: 2024 season could set new record

From Page 1

And that’s welcome news for the province’s maple industry. The lacklustre 2023 season, which brought in only 124 million pounds, resulted in Quebec’s “Global Strategic Reserve,” the federation’s reserve of surplus syrup kept in storage to insure against poor harvests, being reduced to 6.9 million pounds.

This 2024 bumper crop will allow the province’s maple syrup industry to replenish the reserve to its comfort level of around 100 million pounds — if not more.

Global warming, global reserve

For David Hall of Hallacres Farm in Lac Brome, the fantastic 2024 season is both a result of good weather conditions and improvements in the industry.

“What surprised us most is that the sap ran early and it ran hard,” said Hall, who also serves as president for the Montérégie-Est syndicate of the PPAQ. “We had a good February, a great March and finished just yesterday,” he told the Advocate in an April 9^th interview.

Hall recalls the previous record-breaking season of 2022, when each of his taps averaged a 5.75-pound output. This year, the average per tap on his 22,000-tap operation is 6.3 pounds.

“The difference is that we as an industry are ready for it now,” said Hall, explaining the number of record-breaking harvests recently enjoyed by Quebec’s maple producers.

“If you’re in the business, you should be ready by Feb. 10^th, and able to keep going until around April 15^th. That’s the reality now.”

Hall has been involved with maple syrup production his whole life, representing the fifth generation of his family to farm the ancestral land he owns. He’s seen weather trends change and production techniques improve to harvest a lot more than the family business did during his childhood.

“When we still used buckets, we used to start sugaring the 15^th of March,” he said. “But buckets dry out, and you’d get dirty spouts that were hard to clean even with a good cleaning regime. Now, vacuum tubes have changed things, and sugar houses have heating in them. So there are a lot of factors at play in our infrastructure that have improved harvests.”

The province’s overall production will further improve over the next few years due to the fact that the Quebec industry will welcome 739 new maple syrup businesses, due to the issuance of 7 million new taps under the supply-managed system.

Those new businesses will enjoy good harvests provided they can be adaptable and at-the-ready when the sap flows. For producers like Hall and Last, each harvest season is a new ball game, where farmers are left guessing when the sap will start flowing from one year to the next.

“In 2023, we had stopped collecting by the date we hadn’t even started the year before,” Last said. “So you never know what kind of season you’re going to get till it comes.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Quebec government has granted more than $7.4 million to finance projects by nine agri-technology innovation companies from different regions across the province. 

The companies that will benefit from the funding were announced March 14 by Quebec Economy, Innovation and Energy Minister Pierre Fitzgibbon.

The largest single amount from the $7.4-million envelope was awarded to Montérégie-based robotics designer SAMI Tech. The company will receive $2 million to work on improvements on a robotic machine that harvests broccoli. 

First manufactured in 2021, the device consists of a farm tractor pushing a machine with robotic arms installed on both sides to pluck broccoli from the field. SAMI Tech hopes the robotic harvester could also be used for asparagus, celery, cabbage, weeding or for crop inventory in the field.

“Our government is committed to investing in agri-technology companies to help them implement innovative solutions specific to their sector,” said Fitzgibbon, who is also minister for Regional Economic Development and minister responsible for the Montreal Metropolitan Region in the CAQ cabinet. “I am convinced that this is how we will create more wealth for all of Quebec.”

Opti-com Solutions, a tech company based in St. Eustache that specializing in artificial intelligence, communications technologies and risk management, was also awarded a large sum. The company will receive nearly $1.8 million to design an air-disinfection and greenhouse-gas-and-odour-reduction system for pork and poultry operations.  The system will use ultraviolet light and be operated through intelligent remote control. 

Other recipients of funding are a Quebec City-based company developing a multipurpose “biopesticide” hoped to promote sustainable agriculture and replace chemical pesticides, a Montreal tech firm designing a humidity-management system to improve energy efficiency and plant production in greenhouses, and a Sherbrooke company creating a prototype of robotic equipment for precision mechanical weeding of root vegetables.

The $7.4-million announcement follows a call for projects launched by the Quebec government in the fall of 2022 to encourage the development of agricultural technologies adapted to the challenges of the farming industry. It is part of the CAQ’s larger Strategy for Research and Investment in Innovation aimed at supporting investments and the commercialization of business innovations over the five-year period from 2022 to 2027.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Quebec’s Fédération de la relève agricole has launched a new social media campaign to point out the stress and strain caused by uncertainty for young producers in the farming industry.

Taking to Facebook and Instagram with the sarcastic hashtag #maistoutvabien (#everythingisfine), the FRAQ hopes to highlight the distress facing young producers in an industry where Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada forecasts a 49.2-per-cent drop in net farm income in 2023 and an 86.5-per-cent drop in 2024.

The social media movement was unveiled at the federation’s annual meeting on March 15 in Longueuil, where outgoing FRAQ president Julie Bissonnette spoke of the frustration of seeing governments undervalue agricultural work.

“During my presidency I was able to see that young farmers everywhere share the same dream:

that the premier would speak of agriculture as a real, concrete project for society,” Bissonnette said.

Pointing out double standard

“Why is it that developing, say, an electric car battery industry is considered a plan for the future — a great collective project — but when it comes to investing in agriculture, we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel?”

At the heart of the FRAQ’s social media campaign is the income crisis forcing many young producers to take on a second job and make enormous personal and financial sacrifices just to stay in business.

FRAQ-affiliated producers took to social media, posting photos of themselves holding signs that air their grievances.

“I work for free to feed the world,” one said.

“I took out a second line of credit to start the 2024 growing season,” reads another, each accompanied by the hashtag #maistoutvabien, which the FRAQ hopes will catch on as other young farmers are invited to post similar photos.

Forced to get an off-farm job

Currently, almost half of Quebec’s young farmers must work part time or full time in addition to their work on the farm to ensure the survival of their businesses.

With climate change directly attacking their production and access to financing limited to investment programs that encourage taking on huge debt loads, Quebec’s young farmers are facing an unprecedented crisis.

“It’s as if it’s become ‘normal’ for us to work off-farm jobs while managing a full-time business,” said David Beauvais, FRAQ’s incoming president and a sheep producer from the Eastern Townships. “Meanwhile, we’re never been able to take a vacation and are operating at the breaking point. Would that be considered ‘normal’ in any other sector of the economy? I highly doubt it.”

The FRAQ says its ironic hashtag #maistoutvasbien was inspired by a phrase too-often heard by young Quebec producers when explaining the present income crisis to politicians and decision-makers, who insist that despite their hardships “everything is fine!”

More than words needed

Meanwhile, says the FRAQ, young producers looking to start out are facing enormous increases in land prices. Meanwhile, government spending on agriculture still accounts for only one per cent of the provincial budget.

“Food autonomy shouldn’t just be a slogan,” Bissonnette said. “It should be a set of concrete actions aimed at supporting the entire agricultural network from the work in the fields to the meals on our tables.”

Cutline:

Anouk Caron, a producer in the Eastern Townships: “I work for free to feed the world! #maistoutvabien #FRAQ #quitravaillegratos?”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Every farmer has a story about how difficult it is to find someone to help out on the farm. 

You’re a dairy producer who wants to take a short vacation? Good luck finding a relief milker. Or, maybe you actually want a full-time hired hand? It can be nearly impossible to find someone reliable who is less than an hour’s drive away.

Now here’s the bad news. Attracting employees – and keeping them – is going to get harder, according to a recent study conducted by the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council, a non-profit focused on addressing human resource issues facing farm businesses across Canada. 

Blame the COVID-19 pandemic or the mass retirement of Baby Boomers, there are a lot of factors leading to Canada’s farm labour crisis.

“There are 500,000 fewer Gen Xers in Canada than there were Baby Boomers,” said Phyllis MacCallum, senior program manager at Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council (CAHRC). “How are we going to fill that gap? It’s just something happening in the economy generally.”

MacCallum explained the findings of her research during a QFA videoconference on the topic of agriculture labour shortages held March 21. According to her, the fact that small farms often get consolidated into larger operations and that producers are aging has exacerbated the labour shortage in agriculture.

Farmers older than average

“The average age in Canada is 45 right now,” MacCallum explained. “But the average age of a Canadian ag producer is hovering between 56 and 58. We’re getting to the point where the entire Baby Boom generation is at retirement age. Combine that with farms consolidating and families not being ready for succession, and it becomes very difficult to manage.”

In 2022 alone, the agriculture sector reported a peak worker vacancy rate of nearly 7.5 per cent. That’s 25-per-cent higher than the national average. CAHRC estimates that accounts for a whopping loss of $3.5 billion in potential sales for Canada’s farm industry.

“We’re expecting over 30 per cent of the current ag workforce to retire by 2030,” MacCallum said. “That would be about 85,000 positions – and that will cause a significant challenge for the sector.”

The quickest and most obvious solution for many in the industry has been the hiring of temporary foreign workers. More than 21,500 foreign workers were employed in Quebec agriculture in 2022, which accounted for around 22 per cent of the sector’s workforce – a relatively higher share than most other provinces.

7,800 unfilled jobs in Quebec ag sector

“And even with Quebec’s reliance on temporary foreign workers, Quebec ag still had an estimated 7,800 positions that went unfilled at peak season in 2022,” MacCallum said. 

Temporary foreign workers are most present in Quebec in the  fruit, vegetable, greenhouse and nursery production sectors, with their seasonal nature and need for numerous hands at key moments. For most owner-operators, the program has been a lifesaver.

“Most placements of foreign workers are hugely successful,” MacCallum said. “And we have to remember that the ‘temporary foreign worker’ is filling the long-term labour gap. If things work well, this worker will be here on his work visa for two years, he’ll go home on vacation when necessary, and then the producer will renew his visa for two more years. He’s temporary on a long-term basis.”

But CAHRC has more ideas on how to revive the Canadian agricultural industry than hiring temporary workers. MacCallum and her fellow researchers believe that addressing issues with the perception and awareness of Canada’s farm industry can attract more workers. 

People don’t know of opportunities

“We’re doing a lot of work at high schools and colleges to inform students about what the opportunities are and what your career path can look like in the ag industry – most of them simply don’t know!” she said. “It’s also important that we talk to those looking to change careers, those looking to build a new skill set about what the opportunities could be in the ag space.”

The CAHRC is also doing research into other areas in the aim of identifying ways to make agriculture a more attractive work environment. Improving the workplace culture of farming is a big part of that, as is skill development in the wake of automation and technology.

MacCallum is optimistic in building an agricultural workforce, recognizing that at some level, farming will always be work for people who like to get their hands dirty.

“This is still manual, physical work,” she said. “Ag producers do jobs that get them in the dirt. We need folks who do those jobs – that’s the simple reality of the situation. There’s so much opportunity in the ag sector that pretty much every interest can find an ag job.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Avian flu has been discovered at a commercial poultry operation in the Outaouais region, in the MRC of Papineau, causing the death and euthanization of approximately 17,000 birds.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reported the case Jan. 3, noting that the contamination is “unusual” during the winter season. The case is the first confirmed in the Outaouais since 2002.

“It’s surprising us to have cases (of avian flu) in winter,” noted Martin Pelletier, director general of the Équipe québécoise de contrôle des maladies avicoles (EQCMA), a non-profit that works with government authorities to prevent and control diseases in the poultry industry.

“The farm was right in front of a lake where a pump ensures that the body of water doesn’t freeze,” Pelletier told the French-language daily Le Devoir. “It attracts waterflies. With a surface that is not frozen nearby, there is a greater chance that (wild) birds will winter near us (and contaminate domestic birds). That’s an obvious risk factor.”

The case was detected at Abattoir Charron, a family-run commercial poultry slaughterhouse in St. André-Avellin. Approximately 30 employees had to take a leave of absence from work while the facilities were sterilized.

As is customary in cases of avian flu, the federal food inspection agency has declared a wide radius around the site of contamination a possible infection zone. The wilderness as far as Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix to the north and North Nation Mills to the south is included in the agency’s “primary control zone.”

See AVIAN FLU, Page 4.

AVIAN FLU: Number of birds affected by flu in Canada hit 10-million mark this year

From Page 1

“We are very surprised. We know the company is careful in its procedures, in its protocols,” said Jean-René Carrière, mayor of St. André-Avellin, in a interview with Radio-Canada.

“We thought we were safe. Then, we realized that no one is safe. If there are regions that have been spared until now, redouble your efforts: you never know when (the flu) will arrive in your area,” Carrière said.

Biosecurity authorities are particularly worried about a new virulent strain of avian flu that can be transmitted from wild birds, like ducks, to domesticated fowl. Unlike earlier strains of the flu, the virus survives in cold weather and seems to find lakes and wetlands a fertile breeding ground.

The Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec is quick to point out that avian flu is rarely transmitted from birds to humans. In the rare cases when it is transmitted, the virus usually infects people who work in the poultry industry — either on farms, in slaughterhouses or at live poultry markets.

Since 2022, avian flu has caused the death of more than 1 million farmed birds in Quebec. Across Canada, the number of affected animals exceeded the 10-million mark this winter.

Decades ago, outbreaks of avian flu were known to flare up across the globe but would dry up with dryer weather in days or hours. However, this seasonal type of flu has now reached the point where avian flu is now endemic in European countries. The H5N1 strain has been detected in 76 countries in 273 breeds of birds.

There are currently 58 outbreaks in Canada, most in the province of British Columbia.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay wrapped up 2023 with an ambitious trade mission to Vietnam, Japan and South Korea — countries that many agricultural economics experts predict will make up the world’s fastest-growing export market in the coming decades.

MacAulay, a veteran Liberal cabinet minister who also served as agriculture minister from 2015 to 2019, travelled to the Indo-Pacific region in November to meet with key industry groups, facilitate new business opportunities for Canadian exporters, and promote Canada’s agri-food products.

“We want their business, MacAulay said, who serves as MP for the riding of Cardigan on Prince Edward Island. “We want to provide more and we want to produce more. That’s simply where we are.”

Currently, Canada exports nearly half of its agriculture production to the region.  In 2022 alone, Canada’s agriculture and agri-food exports to the Indo-Pacific totalled $21.8 billion.

But Ottawa sees even more opportunity for growth when looking at the surging population of these overseas markets. It is estimated that by 2030, the Indo-Pacific is likely to make up two-thirds of the world’s middle class — and over half of global GDP by 2040.

“It’s very, very interesting to look at Vietnam and its population, as well as Korea,” MacAulay said. “These are markets that are certainly available to us. And as the population and demand expands, that means the requirement will be bigger, so we want to be there.”

The federal ag minister’s trip was highlighted with key business meetings with government officials in each country.

While in Tokyo, MacAulay joined the Team Canada Trade Mission led by Mary Ng, Canada’s minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development. The mission included 160 organizations from Canada, with 17 of them coming in the agricultural sector. 

In Seoul, MacAulay announced more than $23 million in funding for Canada’s agricultural industry stakeholders under the AgriMarketing Program. That program is designed to help major food producers and exporters build ties overseas and diversify the range of Canadian products available around the globe.

“When I first became minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in 2015, our agricultural exports were $56 billion,” MacAulay said. “As I return to the portfolio, we’ve increased that number to over $92 billion. My goal is to continue to grow our exports. And that starts with opening markets and creating opportunities for our hardworking Canadian farmers.”

Ottawa is also attempting to bolster the presence of Canadian agriculture overseas by opening the first-ever Indo-Pacific Agriculture and Agri-Food Office, planned for Manila, Philippines. No date has been set for the office’s opening, but the federal government has pledged $31.8 million to its development and construction.

MacAulay’s trip is part of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, unveiled by the Liberal government in November 2022. The strategy’s main priorities include expanding trade and strengthening and diversifying Canada’s economic partnerships through investment and supply-chain resilience.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Five generations is a long agricultural legacy. And 19-year-old River Morse of Hatley, in the Eastern Townships, knows that it’s a special benchmark for any farm family to reach. It’s an achievement that is one of the main joys of his life. And one that he aims to keep going.

“My first memory of being on the farm is of riding along with grandpa in the tractor while feeding cows,” Morse recalled. “Growing up, I would spend most of my days off school with my grandparents, helping out with chores around the farm.”

Morse grew up with a firm sense of his family’s farming history. His great, great grandfather Samuel Morse started the farm that the family still works today. Pork and dairy were the mainstays of production until grandfather Delmar sold the dairy herd to get into beef in the mid-1980s.

“I was raised on the family farm alongside my grandfather,” River explained. “It was him and my dad who started our beef operation. Growing up there allowed me to learn so many life skills, like having a strong work ethic, perseverance and determination.”

Growing purebred herd

That’s how the family business, Sonmar Simmentals, was born.The Morses currently calve 100 to 110 cows on a yearly basis, focusing on highly maternal cows that raise competitive calves for the seedstock industry. They have a growing herd of purebred Angus and Simmentals that River and his father, Jason, hope to expand in the coming years.

“Moving forward, I’d like to expand our purebred side of the enterprise and focus on genetic advancement with functional cattle,” he said.

Morse started participating in events with his local 4-H Club when he was 8 years old and never looked back. For the past two years he has served as the club’s provincial director. His involvement has afforded him opportunities, like interning for a summer in Forestburg, AB., (just east of Red Deer.) He credits 4-H with teaching him valuable life lessons and is eager to mentor farm kids in the way he was mentored.

“The 4-H program has shaped me into the individual I am today,” Morse said. “It’s taught me that nothing is given for granted, and if you want to be successful, you must outwork every other competitor. Luck isn’t given. It’s earned!”

Collecting prize ribbons

And Sonmar Simmentals have earned quite a few prized ribbons with its herd over the years, thanks in no small part to that work ethic and attention to genetics. A heifer that Morse and his father purchased out West last winter was named Grand Champion Female at both the Ayer’s Cliff Fair and Cookshire Fair last summer.

And the honours didn’t stop there.

“My fondest memory growing up would probably be just this past fall in receiving the honour of Supreme Champion Bull at the Expo Boeuf (in Victoriaville),” he said.

A month later, one of the family’s purebred bulls also made it among the top five finalists in the Supreme Champion Bull hunt at Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair.

“It was a remarkable experience being with a bull we bred and own — something my father has been doing for 30 years — and then finally being able to celebrate that moment with him and the family!”

Morse enrolled in the Farm Management and Technology Program at McGill University’s Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue in the fall of 2021. Last November, he was one of five students to win a Warren Grapes Agricultural Scholarship from the Quebec Farmers’ Association.

“I actually heard about the award from my friends and my father,” he said. “So I decided to apply with no intentions of winning. I was very honoured when I received the email to discover I was selected as a recipient.”

Looking to the future

These days, Morse is thinking ahead to graduation, hoping that he can one day return to the family farm while also working off-farm in the ag industry. He knows that the challenges faced by future farmers are considerable, but he’s never been afraid of hard work.

“It’s certainly going to be a challenge for young farmers to be able to progress in today’s world, but I believe my generation has the vision and ideas to continue to progress in this industry,” he said. “The cost of production is rising in all aspects of the agriculture industry, so we have to find other ways to reduce the cost or eliminate it.”

Morse seems poised to progress in his chosen vocation of farming, with both an optimistic mindset and the dedication to achieving his goals.

“I believe the non-farming public needs to better understand the day-to-day life we live. Without agriculture, the world would have a lot of empty plates come meal time. For many of us, it’s a passion that drives us to get up every morning and do the same thing over and over. I strongly encourage farms to have tourism to encourage the public to come see what the farming community does and why. Take the time and tell your story.”

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

La Financière Agricole du Québec is answering the call of thousands of agricultural producers to provide relief money as inflation and a wave of extreme weather events have left them struggling to make ends meet.

On Nov. 23, Quebec Minister of Agriculture André Lamontagne announced an increase of $10 million to La Financière’s annual budget. That brings the total amount of relief funds up to $25 million, generating liquidity of $167 million.

“This announcement demonstrates our determination to ensure the sustainability of our agricultural businesses,” Lamontagne said.

“The enhancement of the Programme Investissement Croissance Durable (Sustainable Growth Investment Program) and the modification of its parameters will allow companies to receive financial assistance based on their turnover,” Lamontagne said in a statement. “We will continue to work collaboratively with partners to finalize the analyses of the 2023 season.”

La Financière is also reviewing the terms of that program to provide support based upon the revenues of each farm business.

The 2023 season has been particularly hard on Quebec farmers, with heavy and prolonged rainy periods making harvesting nearly impossible in some regions.

In August, the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) set up a special committee to suggest changes to existing programs to help producers meet the cost of production.

In early November, André Fortin, agriculture critic for the Quebec Liberal Party, told the National Assembly that La Financière’s programs no longer met the reality of the province’s agricultural economics.

“It is urgent to review our programs to offer support to those who feed Quebecers,” said Fortin. “We need solutions adapted to their new reality. Our food autonomy and security depend on it.”

Key changes to aid program

The key changes to the Sustainable Growth Investment Program are follows:

• Eligible businesses benefit from a 10-year working capital loan guarantee with no capital repayment for the first three years.
• The period for submitting an application for the “Working Fund” component is extended by one year (until March 31, 2025, or until the amounts are exhausted), whichever comes first. So apply early.
• The financial assistance granted can be no more than 15 per cent of the value of the working capital loan.
• As of Oct. 31, 2023, 426 businesses obtained a working capital loan from the program, for a total value of nearly $21 million.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

There’s a reason why so many successful farm businesses are also family businesses.

Through the decades, the knowledge and passion for agriculture are passed down, giving each generation a solid foundation to build upon and leaving room for some improvement.

You can’t find a better example of that business model than the Crack family of the Eastern Townships. And 21-year-old Savannah Crack is very aware of the benefits she’s reaped by coming from a dairy family.

“I’m very grateful,” Crack said, speaking on a rare break from work at the family farm in Cleveland, Que. — just a few kilometres east of Richmond in the Eastern Townships. “It is extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to get into this business if you don’t come from a dairy farm family, if you don’t have quota already.”

But it’s more than just quota and assets that Crack is grateful for. From a young age — looking up to her father, David, and grandfather, “Butch” Crack — young Savannah was aware that every day on the farm was part of an agricultural education.

“I always associated the farm with family,” she said. “It was always: ‘We’re going to see Grandpa!’ And my brother, Kolton, and I learned a lot of tips and tricks of the trade over the years when it comes to animal handling.”

It was, in fact, Savannah’s great grandfather, Gordon Crack, who founded the farm in 1967. The next generation — represented by grandfather “Butch” Crack — took Crackholm Farm into the world of dairy cattle genetics, a passion that Savannah and her younger brother Kolton share to this day.

Started with 4-H

That passion started young as Savannah became a devoted 4-H member. Soon she was showing Crackholm heifers at locals rallies and fairs and setting her sights on the TD Classic at the Royal Winter Agricultural Fair in Toronto.

“I was 12 the first year we went,” Crack said. “And I’ve gone every year ever since — except the year they didn’t have it during COVID.”

The TD Canadian 4-H Dairy Classic competition requires participants showing their cows to have already shown in four other rallies that year in order to qualify. So life for the Crack family often consists of practicing the finer details of cattle showing and, of course, loading up the cattle trailer to make it to a regional show or national competition.

“It’s normally me, my dad and brother in the truck when we head to the Royal,” Crack explained. “Along with the trailer, holding our cows and pretty much anyone else’s from the region who is showing in Toronto that year.”

Wins racked up

And the Crack family has racked up quite the impressive trophy collection in the past few years. Just this year their Holstein “Midas-Touch Montery 1127-ET” won first place for Best Udder in the 4-Year-Old category; another placed third in the Spring Heifer category; in 2022, the family brought home the First Prize Female ribbon in the Junior 3-Year-Old category.

“My brother and I generally do pretty good at the Royal,” said Crack with characteristic understatement.

“Although every year, nothing goes according to plan. I’ll have a heifer who behaves well in every other show ring, and then when we start showing at the Royal, she won’t walk. There’s always something that’s off. Every calf that I’ve shown.”

But any setbacks in showing don’t seem to be affecting Crack’s success. In October, she won the Merle Howard Award at the 56^th World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, (where she also won the Junior Showmanship Contest in 2015, by the way). The award is the highest recognition a youth showperson can receive at World Dairy Expo — and Crack is the first Canadian to ever win it.

FMT grad

But you won’t hear Crack gloating — or even mentioning — those awards and honours in conversation. Instead, she’s more focused on her integration into working full time on the family farm, having graduated from Macdonald Campus’ Farm Management and Technology program in April of this year.

“Every day, I get up and milk, feed my dry cows, go back for breakfast, then check on the heat, check on the cows that don’t feel good and she who needs to be vet checked,” she said, with a tone that reveals this young farmer has no fear of hard work or long hours.

“What makes me feel good is when I can sit down at my computer and look at the data and see that our cows are hitting a 40-kilo average,” Crack said. “That makes me proud. And that’s what makes me feel really good about farming.”

Cutline: Savannah Crack of Crackholm Farm in Cleveland, Que., has shown a lot of cattle. In October, the 21-year-old became the first Canadian to ever win the Merle Howard Award at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Quebec Liberal agriculture critic André Fortin is calling for the provincial government to completely revise its farm support programs in the wake of inflation and adverse weather due to climate change.

“The reality of today’s farmers has changed a lot,” said Fortin, who also serves as the MNA for Pontiac. “Climate change, the meteoric rise in production costs and inflation are making their lives extremely complicated and too often leading them to consider abandoning production.”

The 2023 growing season has certainly been a trying one for Quebec’s agricultural producers, with extreme weather events and high amounts of rainfall making production unpredictable, particularly for market gardeners. Those factors are creating financial havoc for farmers, and Fortin says many of his constituents are saying the existing insurance programs offered by La Financière agricole du Québecno longer address their needs.

“We need to review our agricultural insurance programs,” wrote Fortin in a post on his official Facebook page on Nov. 2. “They are old, clunky, hard to navigate and are most certainly not adapted to the reality of farming in 2023. We have to protect our farms better.”

La Financière could probably attest to that fact itself. For the 2022-23 fiscal year, it paid out a whopping $287.1 million in support to stabilize the income of agricultural producers. That’s is more than double compared with the 2021-22 fiscal year’s total of $119.6 million, and substantially above the $198.9 million paid out in 2020-21.

See LA FINANCIÈRE, Page 4

LA FINANCIÈRE: For some, it has been wettest summer ever

From Page 1

For producers like Rob MacWhirter from Gaspé, the extreme weather events of the summer of 2023 led to never-before-seen troubles.

“Our haying was really out of whack this year,” MacWhirter said. “It rained intermittently and then there were rains like monsoons. It was just ridiculous. And there was so much damage to the fields.”

MacWhirter’s family beef operation cuts hay on about 300 acres in Hopetown, about 10 kilometres east of New Carlisle on the Gaspé coast. For him and his family, getting dry hay in the barn was nearly impossible.

“In all of July and August, we had two narrow windows of four days each where we had west wind and sun,” he said. “And we were in such a rush to get the early hay in and wrap it that the quality is low. It didn’t get dried down to where it should’ve been.”

As a result, MacWhirter’s operation found themselves doing their first cut of hay at the beginning of September, indicating a full month of waiting for dry weather.

“It’s certainly the most rain we’ve had in a summer in my lifetime,” he told The Advocate. “And my dad is 90 years old, and he said the same.”

In response to reports like these from producers, Quebec Agriculture Minister André Lamontagne held a meeting with the Union des producteurs agricoles on Nov. 9 to hear what a special committee created in August by the Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) could do to adapt to increased inflation and adverse weather.

La Financière had already made adjustments to the calculations and coverage offered by its Crop Insurance Program (known as ASREC) to provide emergency support to producers. But now, it says, an in-depth review of ASREC is being conducted to see how it can be changed to align with increasingly unpredictable weather, inflation and climate change. A completely revised version of the program is expected to launch some time in 2024-25.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Union des producteurs agricoles has voiced its concerns about how the provincial government will implement its “Plan Nature 2030” — Quebec’s far-reaching consultation and planning project that will determine how it will preserve biodiversity and protect 30 per cent of its terrestrial, marine and coastal ecosystems by the beginning of the next decade.

The producers’ union wants to make sure that agricultural and forestry producers are involved in the development and implementation of that plan. And chief among its concerns are protecting the agricultural zone and ensuring that environmental regulations work in tandem with ag production.

“The protection of biodiversity through the conservation of 30 per cent of Quebec territory by 2030 — the Quebec government’s Plan Nature 2030 — must not be done to the detriment of agricultural activities,” said UPA president Martin Caron. 

The UPA also wants there to be consistency between federal and provincial strategic plans that promote biodiversity and also between the different plans put in place by the government of Quebec. That includes Quebec’s Sustainable Agriculture Plan and Ottawa’s Agricultural Climate Solutions Program.

Farms already doing their part

The union listed its demands in a consultation document sent out to UPA members in October. Those included that “the publication of the Plan Nature 2030 be made once the government guidelines for agricultural protection have been established,” while also noting that “practices beneficial for biodiversity are already in place on farms,” such as the use of agricultural landscaping, windbreak hedges and cover crops.

The UPA is also concerned that the Plan Nature could lead to much agricultural land in the green zone being lost should it be re-zoned as conservation areas. That, says Caron, could lead to further sacrifices made by the agriculture industry in the name of sustainable ag development and biodiversity protection.

“The government of Quebec must clearly reaffirm that all agricultural areas are important and suitable for agricultural and forestry activities, regardless of their classification,” said Caron, noting that since 1998, Quebec’s agricultural zone has been losing the equivalent of 12 football fields of arable land per day due to areas being classified as “non-agricultural” territories for everything from the drainage of municipal lands and right-of-way usage.

Zero net loss of farmland

“(Quebec) must also curb urban sprawl and the growing use of the ‘non-agricultural usage’ legislation, while introducing the principle of ‘zero net loss’ in green zones,” Caron said, adding:  “That is to say no new loss of agricultural or forestry area.”

The UPA’s demands include that there be “zero net loss” in the green zone, requesting instead  that the implementation of the Plan Nature 2030 “respect the principle of zero net loss for the agricultural zone and defend the agricultural zone from conversion into a conservation zone.”

The CAQ government announced the creation of the Plan Nature in December of last year, following the signing of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted at the end of the 15^th conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (aka, the COP-15), held in Montreal in 2022.

The plan has a budget of $650 million to be used over seven years to protect and restore biodiversity, encourage sustainable practices, act on factors of biodiversity loss and collaborate with Indigenous communities and civil society to conserve biodiversity.

That collaboration has recently taken the form of an extensive series of public meetings conducted throughout October and November by the Regroupement national des conseils régionaux de l’environnement du Québec (the National Network of Regional Environmental Councils of Quebec or RNCREQ).

Financial support for farmers needed

UPA representatives have been following and participating in the consultations, citing that it wants new investments for research to find innovative solutions to increase agricultural productivity while improving environmental quality. It also asks for financial support for

agricultural and forestry producers implementing practices beneficial to biodiversity, along with funds for technical support, training and awareness.

Described as the largest investment in land protection and biodiversity in the history of Quebec, the Plan Nature 2023 should be launched at the beginning of 2024.

Montérégie producer wanted to be worthy of being part of family operation

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

Sometimes, coming to the realization of what you want to do in life comes slowly, after trying out a number of career options. And sometimes, it just hits you like a tonne of bricks.

It was definitely a tonne-of-bricks moment for Alexandre Verdonck. He grew up in Ste. Marthe, about 70 kilometres west of Montreal, on the farm his grandfather bought in the 1950s. A farm kid all his life, some of his earliest memories are of tending to the land.

“My first memory of working on the farm is probably when I was 5 or 6 years old, helping my parents pick rocks in the fields with my brother,” the 24-year-old said. “It isn’t much, but it’s a good introduction of learning to do long, hard work with no salary for long-term benefits.”

Agricultural entrepreneurship runs deep in the family. Verdonck’s grandfather and great-uncle formed the company, Belcan, which sold alfalfa cubes and fertilizer. In 2001, Verdonck’s father, aunt and uncle, combined resources and land to form Groupe Stell-Ag, growing corn, soybeans, wheat and peas for the Bonduelle food group.

But still, Verdonck wasn’t sure agriculture was for him.

“I was kind of a lost kid in high school,” he said. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do growing up.”

As graduation loomed, Verdonck found himself casting about for a career path and reflecting on his future.

Looking for direction

“I guess it was because of my lack of maturity at the time — I never really saw farming as an option, even though it had been staring at me my whole life,” he explained.

“Suddenly, I felt a calling to pursue my career in hopes of one day taking over the farm business, and hopefully becoming worthy of it.”

That calling sent him to the Farm Management and Technology program at Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue. Although he was a farm kid, Verdonck said the ag knowledge of many of his peers was a bit intimidating.

“I’d be lying if I said that I was anywhere near the level of competence of some of my peers when we started the program,” he said. “These ambitious farmer kids, who had been involved in their farm business probably since they were able to hold a shovel, really opened my eyes. I still admire them to this day.”

Verdonck graduated from FMT in 2019, and then continued on at Mac in Agricultural Economics, a degree he felt he needed to become a successful farm manager in the current climate.

Wanted to gain a better edge

“I wanted to gain an edge with how to manage my farm better with regards to global events,” Verdonck explained. “Wars, pandemics, political conflicts — so many factors affect farming in relation to input and output prices, and the ability to adequately market commodities through unstable supply chains.”

With two degrees under his belt, Verdonck has returned to the family farm, working the 2,000 acres Groupe Stell-Ag has in crop production and helping with expansions. Recently, the business has started a broiler operation with a 23,000-bird-capacity barn.

“This is a very new field for us since we’ve never had animals before,” Verdonck said. “So it’s an adaptation to say the least. The goal was to diversify the enterprise and not rely so heavily on grain for our source of income.”

Stell-Ag is also currently switching over to a no-till system on its acreage and has begun acting as the local dealer for Environmental Tillage Systems, a project in its infancy that the Verdoncks hope will also diversify their revenue streams.

Alexandre has come a long way from not knowing if agriculture is right for him. But after proving himself worthy of making a huge contribution to the family farm, he’s also become a capable and articulate producer with much to say about the future of farming.

Support needed

“I think farmers just want support from non-farming people rather than criticism,” he said.

“We don’t necessarily need people to know the difference between a grain combine and a forage harvester, what a corn tassel is, or even why biosecurity is important in a poultry barn, but just a general understanding that we are dealing with big enterprises that depend on many factors in order to survive. A bit of gratitude for the food you enjoy every day is all we ask.”

Cutline: Alexandre Verdonck of Ste. Marthe felt he needed a solid foundation in production techniques and agricultural economics before returning to work on the family farm. “Events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have had major effects on the prices of grain, fertilizer, fuel and other commodities that our farms depend on,” said the 24-year-old.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Lucyporc cutting facility in Yamachiche just west of Trois-Rivières will close its doors for good on Nov. 17, leaving 74 workers out of work.

The announcement was made by parent company Viandes Robitaille in early October. The Lucyporc factory specialized in preparing the “Nagano” pork line — Quebec-raised-and-butchered pork designed specifically for the Japanese market. According to Viandes Robitaille plant manager Carl Robitaille, the decision to cease operations was based on currency inflation in the destination markets.

“The very difficult decision to close the plant comes from the reduction in demand for pork products for export,” said Robitaille. “We just have to look at the price of the yen. The ability of the Japanese to pay a good price is more difficult.”

While Viandes Robitaille said the Lucyporc facility was doing well, the age of the building — and the fact that its equipment is more than 30 years old — meant its closure was a necessary choice.

Quebec pork giant Olymel has a variety of facilities in the Trois-Rivières region, including those operated through partnerships with groups like Viandes Robitaille. Workers from the Lucyporc plant will be well-positioned to find employment at “Olymel de Yamachiche.”

“From a workforce and operations perspective, Olymel de Yamachiche is able to fully serve the Japanese market with Olymel and Oly-Robi products,” says Richard Vigneault, Olymel’s corporate communications manager. “Oly-Robi employees from the former factory will be able, given their experience, to apply for a position in the meat sector at Olymel.”

Included in that group are approximately 50 temporary foreign workers, some of whom have been in the country for a little over a year and are still in training.

Troubled times

The Lucyporc factory has shifted operations and parent companies a few times in recent years. In 2015, the facility merged operations with provincial pork giant, Olymel. In 2019, all employees were transferred to the nearby “Atrahan Transformation” processor. Then, in October 2021, Viandes Robitaille formed a partnership with Olymel, resulting in the reopening of the Lucyporc building.

The Lucyporc closure follows the announcement of another in July of the closure of the Olymel factory in Vallée-Jonction, in the Beauce region. That plant is scheduled to close on Dec. 22. In that case, an additional 50 foreign workers will be transferred from Beauce to Yamachiche, more than 200 kilometres away.

“What we want is for these workers to rediscover the pleasure of working with us, but in another region,” said Olymel vice-president Paul Beauchamp.

The many plant closures and workforce transfers point to the global pork crisis resulting from the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising input costs and a drop in demand. Olymel claims it has lost $400 million in the past two years alone.

In February, the company also announced the closure of processing plants in Blainville and Laval. And in November, it announced the closure of a factory on St. Jacques Street in St. Hyacinthe. Olymel has remaining facilities in Yamachiche, in Ange-Gardien (Montérégie region), and St. Esprit, in Lanaudière.

While Viandes Robitaille’s Lucyporc building will close Nov. 17, the slaughterhouse in Yamachiche will remain open.

Cutline: The Lucyporc pork processing plant operated by Viandes Robitaille in Yamachiche will close Nov. 17, eliminating 74 jobs, the company announced in early October.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The federal government is teaming up with the province of Ontario to offer maple syrup producers in that province an envelope of $1 million to help increase productivity, efficiency and growth in the maple industry.

The Maple Production Improvement Initiative is aimed at boosting Ontario’s maple production by covering up to 50 per cent (to a maximum of $20,000) of costs on improvement and expansion projects. But it does not have producers in Quebec too worried, at least according to one syrup producer.

“Our government appreciates the resilience and determination of maple syrup producers throughout Ontario and how they have continued to build a solid market for their maple syrup products,” said Lisa Thompson, Ontario’s minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. “This investment … will drive increased production, supporting specific growth targets.”

To be eligible, Ontario producers must have had 1,000 taps in operation since April 1, 2023. The money can be used for the purchase and installation of upgraded production equipment, like reverse osmosis or remote monitoring systems, which help reduce boiling time and save on fuel costs.

Funds from the initiative can also be used to cover a portion of certain woodlot management activities, including tree marking and the development of a forest plan to assist business operations.

Federal Minister of Agriculture Lawrence MacAulay was on hand for the announcement, which took place in Toronto on Sept. 26.

“Ontario’s maple syrup producers continue to deliver exceptional products that are enjoyed here in Canada, and around the world,” MacAulay said.

While the initiative will be administered by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association, it has not yet been disclosed how much of the support money will be provided by the federal government and how much by its provincial counterpart.

Sizing up the competition

The Maple Production Improvement Initiative shows Ontario’s ambition to capture a more significant portion of the maple syrup market. Currently, Canada produces 71 per cent of the world’s maple syrup — and 91 per cent of that is produced in Quebec. 

“Ontario has a tremendous opportunity to grow its maple syrup sector,” said Randal Goodfellow, president of the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association. “Whereas Ontario has the largest number of maple trees in Canada, only a very small percentage of this number is used for maple syrup production.”

But some Quebec maple producers aren’t that worried by the prospect of Ontario taking a larger share of the maple pie. As Morgan Arthur — who has been running his maple operation in Rockburn, Que., in the Châteauguay Valley since 1989 — explained, the forests of Ontario simply don’t have the same concentration of maples as Quebec.

“Yes, they have a lot of maples,” said Arthur. “But when you go there and see how spread out those trees are, you realize you’d need an awful lot of land to have a good syrup operation.”

Furthermore, the price of land in Ontario maple-producing areas like Lanark and Lennox and Addington counties has skyrocketed in recent decades due to development of the growing populations of Ottawa and Toronto.

In 2012, Arthur himself expanded into Ontario, at one point with 26,000 taps in Madawaska, just east of Algonquin Park. But he realized the venture could never be as profitable as his Quebec forests.

“I was an Ontario maple syrup producer,” he said. “But, in the end, it made more sense to sell my land. And the people who had the cash to buy it were multi-multi-millionaires.”

Today, Arthur’s operation in Quebec boasts 26,000 taps — 19,000 owned and 7,000 leased. And while he acknowledges that Maple Production Improvement Initiative gives Ontario producers some support, it won’t be enough to tip the balance in today’s market.

“The fact is $20,000 doesn’t go very far in getting set up in the maple business these days. I have a neighbour who just got into production and putting in 2,200 taps cost him $180,000.”

Since the initiative is part of Ottawa’s Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, which came into effect April 1, Ontario producers seeking funding can retroactively apply to have costs covered as of that date. Program applications close Nov. 9.

Eligible costs run the gamut from purchasing sap collection pumps, coolers and evaporators to generators, filters and packaging and labelling equipment.

Andrew McClelland
The Advocate

The Canadian government will pay out $333 million over the next 10 years to dairy processors and producers to offset market losses resulting from international trade deals.

Newly re-appointed federal minister of agriculture Lawrence MacAulay announced late last month the creation of the Dairy Innovation and Investment Fund, a compensation package designed to “help the Canadian dairy sector adapt to new market realities.”

Through the fund, for-profit dairy organizations can apply for financial support for a whole host of activities, from purchasing new equipment to constructing new facilities.

“This fund will help the sector manage the growing surplus of solids non-fat, create more opportunities for dairy processors and farmers, and build a more sustainable dairy sector,” said MacAulay at a press conference held in St. Hyacinthe on Sept. 29.

Canada is facing a growing surplus of “solids non-fat” (SNF), the remaining component once cow’s milk is processed. The fat is removed for use in products like butter and cream. Canada’s limited processing capacity for SNF has meant that dairy processors and farmers are losing out on turning the component into a money-maker.

The new fund will be managed by the Canadian Dairy Commission on behalf of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

“The Canadian Dairy Commission is committed to addressing the challenge of structural surplus of solids non-fat,” said Gaspé-based dairy producer and CDC chair Jennifer Hayes. “By supporting innovation and investments into medium to large-scale projects to add value to SNF, the Dairy Innovation and Investment Fund will help improve the competitiveness and sustainability of the Canadian dairy sector.”

The federal government hopes the injection of $333 million into the dairy industry will help operations take on large-scale projects that will “modernize, replace and/or increase processing capacity for SNF and minimize skim milk that is not marketed.”

“The dairy sector is an integral part of Canada’s economy and rural landscape, supporting strong and vibrant communities across the country,” said Francis Drouin, MacAulay’s parliamentary secretary. “This new fund will drive innovation and increase processing capacity, enabling the sector to stay competitive by maximizing the full value of solids non-fat.”

Trade losses

The launch of the Dairy Innovation and Investment Fund comes hot on the heels of Canada losing a dairy dispute with New Zealand.

Both countries are signees of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Eighteen months ago, New Zealand filed a complaint with the agreement’s arbitration panel claiming that Canada was not allowing access to its dairy exporters. Just last month, the panel ruled in favour of New Zealand.

The fund also builds on the compensation packages announced by then-minister of agriculture Marie-Claire Bibeau in November 2020, intended to support dairy, poultry and egg producers after those supply-managed sectors lost certain protections in the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement.

“We will always stand up for the supply management system and we have delivered on our commitment to compensate our hard-working producers and processors who have been impacted by recent trade agreements,” said MacAulay last month.

Dairy industry satisfied

Nonetheless, the Dairy Innovation and Investment Fund was welcomed by representatives from Canada’s dairy industry, with the Dairy Farmers of Canada stating that it “is pleased to see the federal government honouring its commitment” to compensate dairy producers after trade agreement losses.

“These investments will not only benefit the dairy industry, but, ultimately, the entire Canadian economy,” said Phil J. Vanderpol of the Dairy Processors Association of Canada.

Applications to the fund are being accepted until Nov. 3, and costs are retroactive to Nov. 17, 2022. Only dairy products made from cow’s milk are eligible at this time.

The program will support eligible costs of capital assets and contracted services, including:

1. removing and disposing of existing equipment
2. purchasing, shipping, installing and commissioning of new equipment, software and production lines
3. installation of new, or expansion of existing, milk reception and milk storage areas as required to meet the objectives of the project
4. retrofits/renovations of existing facilities related to the installation and operation of eligible equipment
5. construction of a new facility
6. training necessary to operate eligible equipment, and
7. translation of materials related to training on the new equipment

Costs related to the purchase of land or research and development are not eligible.

To apply, visit: https://cdc-ccl.ca/en/dairy-innovation-and-investment-fund-what-program-offers

Cutline: Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced the creation of a fund to inject $333 million into Canada’s dairy production and processing sectors in St. Hyacinthe last month.