Farmers Forum: You’ve just completed one year as president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture: What has been accomplished?

Kamenz: I reported to the annual meeting that the list of accomplishments this year was a fairly long list and I tried to summarize them in my annual report. When you get into it — it’s a long list. It includes provincial funding for the three-year RMP (Risk Management Program) — I know people have mixed feeling on that. When the feds announced cost production payment program, early in the spring, they were unsure how to distribute that money, so we went right off the bat and told them the mechanism to get it out into people’s hands in time for spring inputs. Then we went right after the province as well for the matching, and that all came into producer mail boxes before the planting season.

One of the more controversial ones: We were that lone voice out there calling for the value for money audit of Agricorp. Initially, though the provincial minister was not pleased with our call for the audit, she heeded what we had to offer and that audit is underway.

We’ve seen the RST (Retail sales tax) exemptions broadened and increased, which is going to have a very positive impact in the horticulture sector.

We asked for a follow-up program to NISA, the Agri-Invest. We now see $600 million that was supposed to be provided as seed money into producers’ Agri–Invest accounts shortly. Life-time capital gains had been increased to $750,000. Anaerobic digesters: $9 million. I mean, it is a really long list. Is it OFA’s doing? Certainly not. But it was what we had on our agenda. These were the issues that we raised with both provincial and federal politicians on a very regular basis.

FF: What is the OFA top priority now?

Kamenz: I would like to say it’s something else, but the reality is: it is the farm income issue, as it is impacting the red meat sector and horticulture sector.

F.F: There have been a lot of ups and downs in farming over the past five years. What are the main issues facing farmers now?

Kamenz: Society has these expectations that they want clean air, clean water, bio-diversity – all these wonderful things. At the end of the day, it is 50,000 or so farm families that manage the developed landscape in Ontario, on behalf of 14 million people.

And if society demands any kind of improvements, then they have to recognize that there is a cost. Those are public services, public benefits and as such, there are public costs to it. And now you get into a whole lot of issues that sort of stem from that, or are peripheral to that: everything from farmers being adequately represented on source protection committees to making sure that there is adequate funding within the Clean Water Act or Species at Risk legislation that recognizes any type of farm impact has to be offset and fully compensated.

FF: The OFA has discussed changes within the organization. What are the most significant changes that farmers will see?

Kamenz: Well, I don’t know that farmers on the 8th concession are going to see a whole lot. But the organization voted to reduce its size of board of directors from 105 to 18. We looked at a lot of different business models and I think this provides us with that model of efficiency that says we can react very quickly. So, I think a little more streamlined approach to doing business is what people will see, if they see anything at all.