After $150 million invested in Olymel, plus $1.2 billion paid in support programs since 2009, including $240 million this year alone, the pork sector is still sick. Despite direct and indirect support for Olymel, the closure of its Vallée-Jonction slaughterhouse mainly affects independent farms. This massive state support is swallowed up by multinationals owning all the links in the chain, from inputs to processing, including battery farming of pigs.
Export-oriented, the pork sector has generated agricultural pollution problems that we are still struggling to manage. With the closure of the Vallée-Jonction plant, the work, both in production and in processing, will now be done largely by temporary foreign workers. Considering that the fertilizers, pesticides and wages paid are all capital injected into pork, which weighs negatively on the trade balance, what about the economic benefits of this industry for Quebec?
The Farm Income Stabilization Insurance Program (ASRA), through which the majority of support is paid to the pork industry, continues to exclude a large number of agricultural productions. Small-scale livestock farming and market gardening, for example, nevertheless face the same globalized market context as the beneficiary farms of the program, without being able to benefit from these state services covering the difference between the globalized price of foodstuffs and production costs. real in Quebec.
It is rather ironic, even scandalous, to note that a program initially designed to maintain productions economically disadvantaged by our northern climate and deemed necessary for our food sovereignty is now used to massively support an export industry, while we refuse to offer the same type of support to the farms that feed their community.
When we know that one-third of current pork production would be enough to meet pork consumption needs in Quebec, we have to wonder about the direction that our agricultural policy is taking and the amounts that we are investing in it. ASRA, like supply management, nevertheless has the immense quality of including in its principles the fair remuneration of farmers’ work in the calculation of the cost of production.
Why does this become an illegitimate request, a whim, when it comes to other production models? Why is diversified local agriculture, which is the best equipped to respond to the challenges of our time in a cross-cutting manner, still being set aside?
It is possible to transform ASRA to preserve its qualities and make it our best tool for transforming the agricultural model towards practices more in line with environmental and social requirements. This is what the Commission on the future of agriculture and agri-food in Quebec proposed (Pronovost report) 15 years ago.
But the work cannot stop there. We have the power to anchor our agriculture in a system of collective values rather than letting it be tossed about by the ups and downs of the market. The magnitude of the social and environmental challenges shaking our agriculture (and our society!) requires the development of a solid vision and an ambitious approach. To build ethical and sustainable food self-sufficiency, which relies on the resilience of communities, it is necessary to develop agricultural policies that promote it.
Reallocate the sums already allocated to agriculture in programs that rely on the resilience of diversified local farms, the promotion of agricultural work, social and environmental innovation. Get out of the supply chain approach, which has shown that sitting around the same table suppliers, producers and distributors does not participate in the equitable sharing of risks and income from the food industry. Support short circuits, promote them and adapt the regulatory framework to make them conducive.
With the colossal sums already available to MAPAQ, we can offer other options to farmers who see no future in the form of agriculture they currently practice. We can make room for a new generation of farmers and a population that thirsts for nourishing and meaningful agriculture. Minister Lamontagne, what are you waiting for?