OTTAWA — The solution to the farm income crisis across Canada is too elusive even for our federal farm leadership.

"The fundamental problem, the lack of market power, is one that I admit I don't have the answer to," Wayne Easter, the parliamentary secretary to federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell told a group of reporters at a Regina farmers' symposium.

Easter crossed the country speaking to farmers and farm leaders and completed a report last summer listing 48 recommendations for agriculture.

Easter expanded on the problem at the National Farmers Union annual meeting Nov. 18 in Ottawa.

"Every indicator in farming is positive except one: farm income," said Easter.

Farms are producing more and are well-managed and efficient with cutting edge technologies, he said.

As he sees it, farmers need two things. 1) a short term market revenue stabilizer and 2) change the profound structural problems that eliminate the farmer's power in the market place. The truth of the ugly matter is that "economic power, not efficiency, predicts survival in the system," he said.

He notes that the federal government has introduced changes to give the competition bureau some teeth.