To You, Citizens and Politicians,
The following text is a cry from the heart of an organic market gardener who has seen several of her colleagues fall in battle. It is also the report of a sociologist who, over the past 15 years, has observed a major trend in our agriculture. Farmland changes vocation almost as often as it changes hands. Here, an orchard is razed and replanted with vines. There, a field carefully cleared and weeded by a market gardener has become an orchard.
The central question is: do we still have the leisure to waste so much time and resources to give free rein to free enterprise in agriculture?
Economists agree: the price of farmland has clearly outstripped the profitability of farming. The farmer-owner model no longer works on paper. In this context, farm subsidies for agricultural enterprises, like other forms of support for the purchase of farmland, are destined to maintain a model in which only the most privileged, innovative, resilient or relentless among us persist. Many sacrifice their quality of life, their financial, physical and psychological health. Some even lose their lives…
The signatories, the organizations that have expressed their support for this text and myself are not the first to say that many of the foundations of our agricultural model need to be reviewed. Our observation is that even small-scale, local farming, in which we place so much hope, is in crisis and too often hanging on by a thread.
If you feel strongly about our collective food autonomy, I invite you to read the following text with an open mind. Many such initiatives already exist elsewhere in the world. Now is the time to plan our change of course before we hit the wall for good.
We hope to contribute to advancing the thinking on how we can together lay the groundwork for the establishment of perennial farms in Canada, dedicated to feeding future generations.
Perennial Farms for Now and the Future¹
On making farms permanent and perennial for the future
To all those
Who have and will make it their life’s mission
To create ecological food systems and farms
That leave the land better, permanently for future generations
By Stéphanie Wang
How many generations
Of people of the land
Stretched to the limit
Will have to pay
The banks
For the same land
Until it is finally removed
From the speculative
Real estate market?
Agricultural lands
Are a common good
That must be used exclusively to feed communities and
Not enrich individuals and banks
As is the case nowadays.
Behind our beautiful vegetables,
Our dreamy social media posts
And beaming smiles at the market,
Small-scale agriculture is faltering.
Injuries
Financial difficulties
Illnesses
Burn-out
Fed-up-ness
Divorces and inheritances that end up in court.
Our individual human conditions
More than often crush our initial enthusiasm.
Then we stop commercial production
Withdrawing farmland from its primary function.
The farm gets sold;
We fire-sale equipment on marketplace,
Sell the land for big bucks
To those who can afford it.
For sure not to students who have just graduated from agricultural schools.
But we have not lost it all
For much of the equipment and buildings
Have been subsidized by taxpayers
Through the Ministry of Agriculture
And mainly the Quebec Agricultural Fund²
For example
There are grant offered at 20 to 50 thousand dollars to young people
Who start an agricultural business.
Even if it is well-meaning,
It’s obvious that these monies given to an “individual”,
Are no guarantee that the resources bought with them
Will keep on being used within the agricultural production system in the medium to long term.
What if these grants paid to individuals who start a business
Were also given to perennial farms when they welcome new farmer members?
Farms whose land
Would be held in an agro-ecological social utility trust
So that their purpose
Would be legally registered
In perpetuity.
On these lands, workers could belong to cooperatives
Or not-for-profit organizations
That would be entitled to surface rights
Rights that could justify long-term investments.
Each successive generation would bring its colors, methods, marketing
But there would be no need to purchase new tractors, machinery, equipment, trucks, cold rooms,
Install drainage systems,
Bring water and electricity to the farm,
And erect greenhouses and buildings
Each time the farm changes hands.
Each new agricultural generation would decide if it wants to join an existing farm, one that excites them, or start their own perennial farm – if need be.
As working members of a perennial collective farm,
The next generation would keep its entrepreneurial spirit
Through their voting rights
And by taking on roles and responsibilities within the farm.
These days
All farms will need
Mechanics to repair machinery,
Gardeners to take care of flower beds,
Cooks to transform surplus production and feed the team
Early childhood educators who mind the children,
Bookkeepers who record financial transactions and issue invoices,
Administrative office staff,
An operator who ensures competent management,
Communication and social network professionals,
Union representatives to ensure worker’s rights are respected,
And, of course, agricultural workers.
When all these roles fall on 1, 2 or even 3 people on a farm
There will be weak links.
And more often than not 12-hour days
From May to October without a day off.
Ironically, today’s pioneer cooperative farms are penalized
Because just 5 members are eligible for start-up grants
But many coop farms have more than 5 members.
We need diversified perennial farms
With chicken,
A bread oven,
Flowers,
Fruit trees.
That’s what most dream of when farming land
But that rarely happens in a lifetime.
Possibilities are limitless
If only
We could switch
From an individualist to a collective model
From a temporary to perennial system
For agricultural businesses.
The current model is declining
As we lose thousands of people and farms
gone from census to census
We want an exponential model
Animated by a vision of food sovereignty.
What if the funding programs awarded to export production were
Also directed to perennial food-producing farms – feeding the
People who live nearby?
We want perennial agro-ecological farms
For, with the ecological crisis at our doorstep,
We cannot even think of dumping
Synthetic products and sewage sludge
On top of soils and in rivers
Feeding the plants and farm animals
That we eat.
It is absolute folly to keep going in this way.
Why are we playing ostrich?
Do you not feel
Each spreading of contaminants
As a stab to the heart,
A thorn stuck in your sock,
An hourglass that has been upended
Ticking away the days we have left?
We want perennial farms in space-time
That we can form infinitely,
To build our soils uninterruptedly
Without fearing that they will be turned into a shopping centre
Parking lot or subdivision.
Isolated on its rang³
Folded up on an individual or a couple
Left to its own devices
The family farm
Seems old-fashioned
The last standing unit in a disjointed world
Where our carrots have to compete with those sold at WalMart and Costco.
In our postmodern, just-in-time, world of
Flexibility,
Continual change,
Shattering of traditional roles and values,
Emerging crises,
There remains one certainty:
As long as there will be humans on earth
We’ll all have to eat every day.
Doubtless science will come up with caplets or IV infusion foods.
But we who love and defend the right to access real foodstuffs
Grown in our soils,
Irrigated with rainwater, and water from our lakes and wells,
Will be thrilled to be able to rely on perennial farms nearby.
Yes. We want perennial farms locally,
Throughout the inhabited areas,
Just like hospitals and schools
That can be found within a reasonable distance
From all our communities
Because eating is as much an essential right
As access to healthcare and education.
While the price of food in grocery stores increases exponentially,
A handful of large retailers reap record profits daily.
Capitalism’s spirit
Is leading us to hunger
Unless the Providence State
Intervenes
And redefines the rules of the game.
It’s rare tale
That of how Louis-Alexandre Taschereau’s government
Finally managed to abolish the seigneurial system
Almost 200 years after the English conquest
Through the creation, in 1953, of the National Union for the Purchase of the Seigneurial Incomes⁴
And guaranteeing it
A loan to redeem all remainder rent charges of the last seigneurial rights holders.
This is how Quebec municipalities and towns came about,
With the State as lender
Enabling roughly 60,000 farmers to purchase their land
Not by paying the Seigneur an annuity anymore but by paying municipal taxes.
What if we allowed history to repeat itself
In order to retake control of our agricultural land?
But this time
By unshackling them from private property
So that in each
Municipality, town, region
Would blossom
Farms, resilient to changes,
Made up of a diverse collectivity,
Regenerating soils,
Financially prosperous,
Evolving, transforming
But permanent
To the end of time.
Text translated from French by author Stéphanie Wang and Young Agrarians Executive Director, Sara Dent.
Taking action
* All documents are available at www.lerizen.ca/politique
- If this text appeals to you, you can add your name to the list of signatories*.
- Circulate the text* among your networks and invite them to sign.
- Send or read the text to your municipal, regional, provincial and federal elected representatives, asking them to support and set up initiatives to build perennial farms.
- Print and post the text in your workplace.
- Get involved by volunteering your time, donating money or buying products from a perennial farm near you (cooperative, NPO, land trust, etc.).
About the author
Stéphanie Wang was born in Montreal to Cantonese parents who grew up in Madagascar. She holds a MA in Sociology from UQAM. Her thesis focussed on the administrative and legislative framework for agriculture in Quebec, with special emphasis on joint plans. She worked for The National Farmers Union, for the Peasant Union and La Via Campesina. She then started Le Rizen, an agricultural enterprise specializing in the growing and processing of organic Asian vegetables. Le Rizen leases its land from Les Cocagnes, a not-for-profit agro-ecological collective farm that saw the day after a large community-based bond fundraiser. She has co-authored Légumes Asiatiques : jardiner, cuisiner et raconter, published in 2022 with Parfum d’encre, and Asian vegetables: gardening, cooking, storytelling, published in 2023 with House of Anansi. She received the 2023 Producer of the year Quebec gastronomy award.
Footnotes
1. We use the term “perennial farms” to stay close to the original French concept “Fermes pérennes” that was advanced by the author to describe an alternative agricultural model where a legal mechanism is used to effectively ensure the long term vocation of farmland, for example via an agro-ecological social utility trust where farmland is no longer held privately, but placed at the service of the common good in perpetuity.
2. Financière agricole du Québec
3. A typical Quebec land parcel, a rectangular piece of land perpendicular to a river or road.
4. Syndicat National du Rachat des Rentes Seigneuriales