Red Tape Hurts Ontario Farmers

Jul 09, 2012

Ontario Federation of Agriculture Survey Reveals Farmers Concerns

Ontario’s leading farm organization – Ontario Federation of Agriculture conducts a survey of more than 700 of their 37,000 members that exposes the barriers facing farmers. The survey’s intention was to survey the top concerns facing Ontario farmers. Over 90 per cent of the respondents indicated that red tape was the key issues that they wanted the OFA to address.

The survey shed light on some of the frustrations that farmers are facing when it comes to their business. The key theme was regulation and the sense that policy is driven by urban decision-makers with little to know farmer input on how it will impact those who produce food.

The one of a kind survey reveals a bigger issue – the gap between rural and urban communities. The rural-urban disconnect first became evident in the last provincial election where the governing Liberals lost all of their rural ridings.

Is the rural-urban gap the number one issue facing Ontario farmers today? How can farmers and organizations that represent them help connect the dots for governments and consumers that agriculture and the production of food touches their lives in an intimate way more than they could ever realize?

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue – please share with us below:

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.