The 'Productivity & Competitiveness' Trap
Agriculture in Canada is redefining success. Big and cheap are out; people and health are in.
Now Trending
There are signs across the food industry that GLP-1 drugs are changing consumer food buying patterns, impacting corporate earnings more and more each quarter. Anyone who’s witnessed the dietary and physical transformation that comes from taking drugs like Ozempic can attest to the sudden need for nutrients to replace junk food.
Similarly, more and more grain and livestock producers are turning towards low-cost farming systems to build long-term resiliency. The smart ones are abandoning the chase for big yields that just flood export markets, and cost more and more money every year to achieve.
Whether in grain or livestock, making farms healthy again requires a fresh and independent perspective. Real solutions can only be applied in the absence of sales people and biased advice.
Out With the Old
Someone please forward this to the new Canadian Ag Minister:
There is a fundamental problem with commodity agriculture’s approach to taking money from farmers at every possible opportunity. The industry has educated the business of farming in the same way the pharmaceutical industry has educated the health care system.
Sales reps rely on short-term reactions to problems, which tend to be expensive, and that fail to address core issues. Their solutions are designed to be needed over and over again, in the same way that some medications suppress symptoms but don’t cure the problem.
The Ozempic of Agriculture
Low-cost farming systems translate directly into healthier farm businesses and long-term financial resilience, which is why many thousands of farmers across Canada have already made the switch. But mostly, they do so very quietly and off the highways, so their neighbors don’t make fun of them.
Just like in high school, the popularity contest that is commodity agriculture in Canada today relies on widespread coordination of half-truths and greenwashing. It’s so powerful, fueled by corporate wealth and legislated farmer checkoff payments, it scares people who think differently into silence and hiding their important wins.
Nothing is stopping the increase of low-cost farming though; expert practitioners and their money are just moving into different spaces. You won’t see them at manicured corporate plot tours this summer - they’ll be checking out multi-species pastures and intercropped grain fields talking about new tactics for seeding biodiversity back into their lands.
Community Benefits
As far as agriculture industry goals are concerned, ‘productivity’ and ‘competitiveness’ are traps and must be understood by policymakers as buzzwords that translate into wealth extraction from family farms. Witness the disappearance of rural Prairie communities in recent decades, where only the largest-scale operations can afford the tools of commodity agriculture.
Yet quietly, in groups and at events that the lobbyists ignore, more and more farmers are showing up to network with like-minded, low-cost producers, and to learn about increasingly popular systems like holistic management. All the energy that big agriculture pours into glorifying yields, is spent instead on helping people to farm successfully.
When we recognize the currency of life is relationships rather than money, the importance of glorifying the people on our farms and in our lives takes top priority. From that point on, healthy communities grow naturally.