[BCFSN] Capitalism for Farmers is Broken

Thu Apr 30 01:56:14 EDT 2020

Hi Gerardo,

You ask some very big questions!  Which I suppose I brought on myself.  
I'll do my best to answer where I think I can comment intelligently.  
Hopefully there are others who are more knowledgeable on this list who 
can jump in as well!

Are capitalism and farming incompatible in BC?

    I think this is too black and white (and I acknowledge that my own
    headline statement has this problem).  I think the problem goes
    deeper than land as well, but land is certainly the crux in BC.

    What I would say is that the profit motive isn't sufficient to
    stimulate investment in farming.  I know some farms that are
    successful businesses, but they are virtually all have motives other
    than profit that keep them going.  I don't think a bottom-line
    approach to farming is viable, and I can tell a story of some
    Toronto investors who lost their shirts trying start "the world's
    biggest wheat farm" on that basis.

    Because the profit motive doesn't work for farming, it's sheer folly
    to expect that "the market" will give us anything resembling a
    secure food system.  I realize this is probably preaching to the
    choir, but I think it's necessary to say, because we live in a world
    where many / most policymakers believe that assumption.

What are the fundamental contradictions?

    Farming is, at its core, a cyclical, ecosystem-oriented activity. 
    Farming is intimately concerned with growth, but also deeply aware
    that limitless growth is fundamentally impossible. Growth and decay
    are cyclical; farming takes advantage of this knowledge to produce
    food.  Capitalism is based on the gamble that growth is limitless,
    or at the very least, that decay will not set in before the return
    on investment is realized.  If there are costs involved in achieving
    that growth, they can be externalized.

Can a medium-sized farmer be viable in BC?

    Yes.  I know a couple.  In a couple months I'll be filming with
    Klipper's Organics, with a particular focus on how they have solved
    the land access issue.  They are definitely entrepreneurs, but I
    wouldn't call their approach capitalist — I don't think the two are
    the same thing.  I'll also be looking at their labour issues,
    including temporary workers, which I imagine will be quite a
    delicate situation.

2.5 Quebeckers = 1 Guatemalan

    This was a headline-grabbing statement, but I don't think it's
    particularly true.  The farmer in question was comparing an
    unskilled 19-year old's labour after a few days on the job with a
    veteran 15-year employee.  I'm sure given time and experience,
    Quebeckers would close the gap.

    The real challenge is, as Gerardo noted, the fact that wages are so
    poor that Quebeckers / Canadians aren't going to stick around long
    enough to get 15 years of experience, and our society doesn't value
    the skills or status of manual labour to the degree that it probably
    should.

    I think the real tragedy of Temporary Foreign Workers is that we
    maintain the myth that they are "temporary".  We should be granting
    full citizenship (and definitely full labour rights) to any and all
    that want it.  They are "temporary" because it's assumed that any
    Canadian could do their job, and therefore they aren't worthy of
    being considered "desirable" immigrants with useful skills.  The
    fact that we've been unable to attract full employment within the
    Canadian labour market for decades (and continue to experience
    shortages even importing labour) should make short work of the myth
    that any Canadian can do their job.

    Canada was built on the back of immigrants who were willing to work
    the land.  We threw open our doors to the world to find people to
    farm on the prairies.  There's plenty to be ashamed of in our
    colonial history, but respect for the immigrants and the labour they
    put in to the land is something to be proud of.  We should remember
    and revitalize that history.

The issue of living wages for farmers as well as farm workers is hugely 
complex — I've spent the last three years trying to figure out how to 
tackle it intelligently.  It's the major theme of my whole project.  
It's made more complicated by the fact that farmers are more 
self-sufficient than most, and their lifestyles are completely 
different.  It's unreasonable to expect that any farmer would live the 
same kind of life that most urbanites do, and the kind of lifestyle that 
farmers aspire to tends to be different from conventional images of 
success.  This changes what success looks like and how wealth is 
measured for farmers, and ultimately ends up looking very much like an 
issue of class as much as it is one of money.  In our class-blind 
society, that's an uncomfortable truth.

On top of that, our entire modern, urban economy is based on making food 
cheap.  The less we pay farmers, the wealthier the rest of society 
becomes (another class issue).  Because farmers are more able than most 
to survive on little money, our economic system is able to squeeze them 
financially in ways that simply wouldn't be possible in other professions.

All the best,

Devon Cooke
The Hands that Feed Us
604-321-9706
devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca <mailto:devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca>

On 2020-04-28 23:12, Gerardo Otero wrote:
> Very good points Devyn. It would be great if other people with 
> pitching in to these debates. Are capitalism and farming incompatible 
> in British Columbia at least? What are the fundamental contradictions 
> of mixing these systems? Can there be a medium sized farmer that 
> becomes a viable entrepreneur in British Columbia? This would require 
> of course being able to pay decent living wages to any wage workers 
> employed.
>
> Another grim reality that has been uncovered by the pandemic is the 
> entirely inadequate wages paid to farmworkers: mostly temporary 
> foreign workers. It remains to be seen with all the International 
> travel obstacles for them coming to perform their work can we 
> overcome, or whether farmers can get alternative workers from Canada 
> at the current wage rates. Farmers in Quebec are saying for instance 
> that they required to hire 2.5 Quebeckers to substitute one worker 
> from Guatemala. Recognition must be made in Canada that farm workers 
> perform complex, difficult, dirty, dangerous, devalued and underpaid 
> manually-skilled labor. You probably need two or three times the 
> current levels of wages to attract Canadian workers for the same kind 
> of work performance. Otherwise there will be a big drop in 
> agricultural production in this country followed by a hike and food 
> prices. It would be fine to pay higher prices if these were to 
> guarantee fair wages were paid to workers. Currently Canada is about 
> the third cheapest country and its cost of food. This is measured by 
> the share of household budgets devoted to food expenditures. About 
> 10%. Surely we can pay more for dignified working conditions and pay.
>
> But then there's also the issue of market structure. A highly 
> oligopolistic structure in the inputs industry coupled by a highly 
> oligopolistic structure in the buyers and processing sectors in the 
> food industry.
>
> And in the lower mainland there is competition with urbanization and 
> real estate developers. The whole thing would have to be rethought 
> from the grand scheme by the provincial government.
>
> Hope that everyone is staying safe. Best regards.
>
> Dictated so please excuse errors
>
> Professor Gerardo Otero
> Simon Fraser University
>
> On Apr 28, 2020, at 9:32 PM, Devon Cooke <devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca 
> <mailto:devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca>> wrote:
>
>> I want to share a blog post I wrote that was inspired by an interview 
>> I did last week for my film /The Hands that Feed Us/.  One of the 
>> questions I asked in the interview was about the startup costs for a 
>> farm.  An obvious cost is land, and land is very, very expensive. 
>> It’s so expensive, in fact, that in some regions (especially in 
>> B.C.), it could take a lifetime to pay for the farmland from the 
>> proceeds of the farm. I’ve written about this before 
>> <https://mailer.thehandsthatfeedus.ca/lists/lt.php?tid=LEVfV1FTVlQLBB4OWA0HSVAEAw8fA1UCBxVQVQ8EWlECDF8FBQdJBQkCAAMDWwNJUwAGVx9VVg0BFQNTAgBPU1AIClcEBlACDAcKSwJYUQJUUVAPH1JdBAAVVVJSVk8ABghdS1IFAVQNVgUOWQFUUw>, 
>> but I wanted to unpack what this means from a business perspective.
>>
>> In Canada, we take it for granted that starting a business, including 
>> a farm, involves a little bit of capitalism.  Starting a business 
>> typically means finding investors willing to put money into the 
>> business as it gets established, and it’s expected that those 
>> investors eventually see a return.  The problem is, the price of 
>> farmland basically guarantees that this model doesn’t work — the 
>> startup costs are too high, and the expected returns too low.  
>> Capitalism for farming — at least farming as an independent business 
>> simply doesn’t work.
>>
>> My latest blog post explores this theme in more detail 
>> <https://mailer.thehandsthatfeedus.ca/lists/lt.php?tid=LEUOAgYFBQBbUR4OB10DSVBWUQcfAAcHVBVQA1IGBFtQCg1XClRJBQkCAAMDWwNJUwAGVx9VVg0BFQNTAgBPU1AIClcEBlACDAcKSwJYUQJUUVAPH1JdBAAVVVJSVk8ABghdS1IFAVQNVgUOWQFUUw>.  
>> It spells out exactly why we can’t expect capitalism to invest in 
>> farming any time soon.
>>
>> -- 
>> All the best,
>>
>> Devon Cooke
>> The Hands that Feed Us
>> 604-321-9706
>> devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca <mailto:devon at thehandsthatfeedus.ca>
>>
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