Where is support for young and beginning farmers?

Many young Ontario farmers have regrettably fallen through the cracks instead of getting assistance from the Ontario Cattle, Hog and Horticulture Payment Program.

This Fall, I toured the 600 sow wing of Bartside Farms – a hog operation set up between Empire Corners and Sinclairville by the Bartels family. In 2004/2005, Wayne, age 35, and his brother Geoff, age 28, invested $3 million just to build the two barns. They have recently won a cross-Canada production award.

Now, as financial situations for hog farmers across the province have grown significantly tighter, they face an economic climate in which banks and other lending institutions are increasingly less likely to work with farmers in crisis situations. Meantime, to make matters worse, they have come away empty handed from the provincial support program.

Young and beginning farmers, like Wayne and Geoff Bartels, are dealing with the same lower commodity prices, the same higher input costs, the same decline in value of inventory and related financing challenges as those who have received government funding.

In the Ontario Legislature and before the Standing Committee on Estimates I asked for consideration of their plight. Specifically I questioned:

1. Is Agriculture Minister Dombrowsky making any headway now that she has been fully briefed on this shortfall in the program – a shortfall that has resulted in many young and beginning hog, as well as beef and hort farmers being missed?

2. Will Minister Dombrowsky meet with these overlooked farmers?

3. Will this Ontario Government be working on a new program to assist those farmers with little to no financial data available prior to 2007?

Both Leader John Tory and MPP Ernie Hardeman have raised similar concerns.

Before Estimates Committee, MPP Hardeman talked about those farmers who were, “totally missed” by the government program. He went on to point out that there was a $10 million discrepancy between the amount recorded in public accounts as being spent on the program and the $150 million total the Finance Minister referred to in the budget.

I have long argued that a strong agriculture industry is key to a healthy rural economy. But across Ontario there are farmers – in this case, young and beginning farmers - close to losing their farms because of the inflexibility of a government program.

Earlier this Fall, PC Leader John Tory highlighted another example of the Minister of Agriculture’s failure to get support program funding into the hands of those who need it most.

Mr. Tory visited the Oxford County hog farm of John and Tina Vehof. The couple and their four children received only $267 under the Ontario Cattle, Hog and Horticulture Payment Program, created to cushion the impact of low hog prices and high expenses.

Much of the problem with the program is that the biggest challenges for hog farmers like the Veyhofs occurred in 2007, but the program uses data from 2005 and 2006 to qualify, and data as old as the year 2000 to calculate the payments. Retired and even deceased farmers received cheques, while at least 100 young farmers who were just starting out and struggling to make it, received next to nothing. There was no application process and no appeal.

As Mr. Tory stated in September, “With the made-in-Toronto, Dalton McGuinty one-size-fits-all, don’t-bother –us –with-the-facts-formula, they end up getting shafted.”

Is it not time for this government to stand up and support young and beginning farmers?