I’m fed up with farm leadership. Or the absence of it.

You don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to figure out that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has lost its way and the new Memorandum of Understanding is more proof of the pudding. The MOU, which slipped through the annual convention last year, basically orders the counties to clam up and speak the party line. In most cases, the county groups are like lambs to slaughter and they’ll do whatever they’re told. But Lanark and Prescott-Russell haven’t signed the MOU and shouldn’t. The MOU is the makings of a top-down organization but it should be the other way around. The OFA was and is supposed to be bottom-up. They tell us it is to make us more like the UPA in Quebec, which is great, but I can’t see our leadership standing up like Laurent Pellerin of Quebec’s lobby group. When Pellerin says, "let’s go on strike, they go on strike."

We need fresh ideas from the grassroots, not head office putting the thumb on us all the time. Farmers who have to eat all of this awful legislation coming at us should lead the way and the OFA should serve our needs. But that doesn’t happen, even though we’re paying them.

For instance, the OFA said prime agricultural land shouldn’t be used for solar farms. But that’s what is going to happen east of Ottawa, near St. Eugene. The OFA is not backing those farmers fighting the solar proposal. They’re using excuses like this is a municipal issue and we can’t get involved. They’re starting to sound like bureaucrats. They use the ‘can’t’ word, left, right and centre. Every second word out of OFA now is ‘can’t’ when it comes to actually helping someone.

The toughest stand the OFA takes today is writing a letter. Look at the provincial cosmetic pesticide ban. What did the OFA do? They wrote a so-called tough-worded letter. And when it is ignored what will the OFA do? Nothing. And that’s the problem. Governments have to realize there is a downside to not paying attention to farmers. We’ve got the population on our side. We can demonstrate. We can close highways. We can close down food terminals. And we’ve done that. But it was a grassroots movement of farmers that did that, not the OFA. I was waiting five or six years to get the OFA to deal with the Ministry of Natural Resources on getting hunting tags to go after nuisance deer eating my crops. The OFA would still be working on it if a group of grassroots farmers hadn’t stepped in. On two separate days we barricaded the doors to the Kemptville office of the Ministry of Natural Resources and we held two well-publicized "illegal" Father’s Day hunting parties on my farm. Mind you, it was stressful when the MNR came after me in a helicopter and a swat team with dogs and hauled me in to court. But now, I get hunting tags whenever I want them. The MNR is only too happy to give them to me. We got hunting tags for all farmers. I didn’t just do it for me.

When teachers want more money, they go on strike and they get what they want. Farm leaders have to be willing to do what it takes to get the job done. Former OFA president, Geri Kamenz, was willing to work with grassroots farmers. He wasn’t afraid to use us as a hammer. But for the most part, farm leadership is like a big, bulky ship, slow to change direction. Meantime, agriculture’s problem will only get worse because the farming community is getting smaller, farms are getting bigger and farmers are getting busier.

Leadership is lacking with the commodity boards too. I’m on the wheat board. So, when I want to fix a problem we go in to this in-camera meeting to discuss it and I find out they don’t want to fix the problem. They want to fix the person. Prior to the last federal election, some of us wanted to demonstrate to get the federal government to support the Risk Management Program. But the Grain and Oilseeds Safety net committee asked us to stand down because they were paying a lot of money to the Daisy Group, a lobby outfit run by hard core Liberal Warren Kinsella. So far, the Daisies got us nothing, which is understandable. Who in their right mind hires a Liberal strategist to lobby a Conservative government? Now the Daisies tell us if farmers don’t do their job lobbying nothing will happen.

To be fair, the commodity boards do excellent crop research and market development and deserve credit for it. But when it comes to politics, wrong-headed lobby groups and timid letter writers don’t cut it. The short-term answer is that any farmer willing to stick his neck out, can get a lot more done working without the boards and lobby groups. I can get a lot more done talking to the politicians directly and talking to a small group of grassroots farmers willing to make a lot of noise. If we need to, we’ll call around and get the tractors back on the road. The politicians know we can do it, although I have to admit I’m sick of rallying and it’s expensive.

In the long-term, it will take the blood of visionaries, new and true leaders, willing to sacrifice those invites to posh political wine and cheese galas and perhaps, sacrifice their reputations in some circles, to go the distance. That spirit of sacrifice is sorrowfully lacking in agriculture today. But sacrifice is true service and that’s what’s needed when you need to git ‘r done.