Toronto Business Reporters Starting to Get It

The Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the National Farmers Union, and other farm organizations have been trying to get the attention of the federal government that many of their members are in trouble because of COVID-19.  It took some comments from Sylvain Charlebois to give this issue some traction. He's become a go to for many in the national media. He's an academic rather than a spokesperson for farmers, does research on consumer behavior as well, and speaks about the food industry with authority. I'm glad someone is paying attention.

Posthaste: Canada could lose 15% of its farms by year end with worst of pandemic to come for agriculture

Pamela Heaven

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Good Morning!
For Canadian farmers, battered by labour shortages, processing plant shutdowns and dramatic shifts in demand, the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is yet to come, says an agricultural expert.
“Ottawa should be lauded for helping many desperate sectors of our economy. But given how urban-centric the government currently is in Ottawa, agriculture has been somewhat forgotten. The foreign worker program issue was just the beginning, the worse is yet to come. Farmers need help, and fast. Or else, Canada could lose up to 15% of its farms by the end of this year,” Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Agri-food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, said in a recent note.
Seven meat processing plants in Canada have been shut because of outbreaks of COVID-19 among workers and more are expected, he said. One of the biggest, Cargill’s beef processing plant in High River, Alberta, will reopen Monday. The plant, which accounts for about 40% of Canada’s beef processing capacity, was shut for two weeks after the virus galloped through the workforce of 2,000; 826 employees and more than 100 contractors related to the plant have tested positive for coronavirus; one has died, Bloomberg reports. Within Alberta about 1 in 5 cases of COVID-19 is now linked to the High River plant.

A near deserted Cargill Meats plant near High River after it shut due to COVID-19. The plant is set to open Monday. Darren Makowichuk/Postmedia

At the JBS meat packing plant in Brooks, Alberta, coronavirus cases have reached 200, says Bloomberg. JBS said it will try to keep its facilities open but “we will not operate a facility if we do not believe it is safe or if absenteeism levels result in our inability to safely operate,” spokesman Cameron Bruett said in a statement.
“Closures can be quite disruptive to the entire supply chain. But the ones being affected the most are the farmers,” said Charlebois.
The beef industry went into this crisis with a significant backlog, meaning that farmers are forced to keep thousands of cows longer on feedlots, increasing costs.
The crisis in the hog industry is even worse. Charlebois said some reports suggest more than 90,000 pigs will likely have to be disposed of because of the slowdown in production where there “little or no wiggle room.”
Mushroom growers are losing $400,000 a week because almost half of their revenue came from restaurants, now closed in the pandemic lockdown. “As of yet, there are no COVID-19-related programs that can help them. Many other groups are affected or will be sooner or later,” he said.
Ottawa is providing $50 million to cover the costs of quarantining foreign farm workers coming into the country and has increased the lending capacity of Farm Credit Canada by $5 billion.
But compared with the United States’ $19 billion aid to its farmers, Canada’s COVID-19 programs for farmers are “either inadequate or irrelevant,“ said Charlebois.
He said one example of Ottawa missing an opportunity to help is the new Canada Emergency Student Benefit, which would provide $1,250 per month from May through August for students unable to find a job or work because of the pandemic.
“While some provinces are desperate to get young Canadians out in the field to help farmers, Ottawa provides funding to students so they can stay home and do nothing. The students’ program only made recruitment for farmers ever more difficult,” said Charlebois. He said the risk of contracting COVID-19 on farms is extremely low, where “physical distancing is something farmers have done for centuries.”
Charlebois says the stakes for Canada’s food security are high. Canada typically lose between 5% and 7% of its farms every year, but that number could double this year, or more.
“Throughout this crisis, to fight COVID-19, the government often compared the virus to a burning house, and stated that it cannot spare any water. The foundation of that house, as it were, is agriculture. It is the foundation of our entire economy, which for the most part throughout this crisis has been largely forgotten, “ he said.