Ontario farmers have heard the rhetoric of globalization for many years.  They’ve been told to "get larger, market globally, or get out."  Trade deals have dictated the inevitable elimination of all barriers to international trade with more than one expert informing farmers that they need to be prepared to take on the world.

This message hasn’t fallen on deaf ears.  Ontario farmers have adapted, often unwillingly. Farms have become bigger, more production is exported and many farmers have hung up their coveralls.  But what the preachers of global agriculture didn’t let on is that not many farmers would benefit from this change.  Even most of those who got bigger wouldn’t.  The long term downward trend of major commodity prices has accelerated and many commodities are in oversupply. 

 The rhetoric and practice of globalization is unsettling because it violates many farmers’ view of their vocations.  Size does matter: bigger is not always better.  New technologies and greater efficiencies don’t always produce better returns.  Many believe that the consolidation of input suppliers, food processors and retailers, have made them servants of large faceless corporations. Farmers have watched as their local communities crumble, including the disappearance of the local implement dealer and feed mill.

 A consequence of the trend to global markets is that for most of the last 10 years, Ontario farmers in various sectors have received a negative return on their investment, not to mention an unprecedented level of stress.  Only government subsidies have brought income into the black.  In other words, many farmers have had to "farm the government" to survive. 

 Since 1995, the CFFO has held facilitated workshops for farmers across Ontario.  In this year’s sessions, amid the accumulated pessimism and gloom of the farm economy, we saw signs of change, perhaps some rays of hope.  Farmers saw a way of taking back lost market clout and even began balking at the experts preaching globalization.     

Participants were presented with a series of solutions from four major reports dealing with the current crisis in agriculture.  After discussion, they voted on their preferred solutions to the crisis.  Of the 15 solutions offered to the loss of farmers’ market clout, trade and export issues were dead last.  Farmers’ comments showed that they were no longer accepting the rhetoric of global markets.  Much higher on the list were options that strengthen their relationship with the local and regional marketplace: with consumers, processors and retailers.

 Time will tell if this is the beginning of a major trend in Ontario agriculture or only an expression of frustration with the current state of affairs. But it does show that not all Ontario farmers are buying the globalization rhetoric being marketed to them.