Crafting a refined strategy to help Ontario agriculture prosper involves blending together opportunities, advantages and an assessment of the competition. At the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, we’re hosting a seminar series to work with our members and friends to start carving out a strategy that assesses and evaluates all of those factors.
A key aim of this year’s CFFO Seminar Series is to understand the strategies developed by other countries to gain market share for farming and food products. Although Ontario has natural advantages of good soil, temperate weather, access to water and lots of customers within a day’s truck drive, it will be increasingly important to develop a strategy to deal with changing consumer trends.
Here are a few examples of how other locales have created strategies to leverage their natural advantages and/or address societal goals:
Alberta spent time analyzing trends, assessing the province’s natural advantages and figuring out the various roles that government, farmers and the agricultural industry each had to play. Five key industry sectors were identified as having great opportunities for growth, with government providing targeted assistance to both farmers and the larger agricultural industry. Now nearing the end of this particular strategy, a goal was set of achieving $20 billion in value-added agricultural products and $10 billion in primary agricultural products.
Great Britain has set out a food strategy that will take it 20 years into the future. The main thrust of the strategy is to ensure that the British agriculture and agri-food industry are set to work on addressing broad social goals. For example, functional foods are being touted, as well as other potential solutions like paying farmers to support biodiversity, or using bio-digesters on farms to produce electricity and reduce emissions.
Brazil has no formal strategy for agriculture but the orientation of the sector is clearly on exports, with a focus on becoming a world class supplier of protein to the world. The Brazilian government reduced subsidy support, deregulated domestic markets and privatized state-owned enterprises. There has been aggressive expansion in ethanol, along with government investment in improved ports, railways, roads and waterways. Agricultural output throughout these changes has grown aggressively.
Given that other countries and locales have adopted strategic approaches to steward their farming and food resources, it makes sense for Ontario to develop a plan to help the domestic agricultural industry thrive into the future. Join us at a seminar in a location near you and contribute to the CFFO process of crafting a strategy. You can log on to www.christianfarmers.org to find more details on the times and locations for our seminar series.
Editor's Note:John Clement is the General Manager of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario. The CFFO Commentary represents the opinions of the writer and does not necessarily represent CFFO policy. The CFFO Commentary is heard weekly on CFCO Chatham, CKNX Wingham, Ontario and is archived on the CFFO website: www.christianfarmers.org/index.html. CFFO is supported by 4,300 family farmers across Ontario.