Agriculture is in crisis, here as everywhere in the world. The soils are turning to dust, degraded by decades of intensive exploitation, biodiversity has been decimated and no longer plays its role in ecosystems. In the North as in the South, international competition will have produced only losers. The women and men who dedicate themselves to producing our food are no longer able to make ends meet. Many break down, some take their own lives, others close their doors. How many farms are we losing each month?
The incessant search for the lowest cost has a human, social and environmental cost that we must pay collectively. Emergency aid will be necessary to enable farmers to compensate for their losses, or even avoid bankruptcy, but above all we must act upstream.
It is in this spirit, Minister Lamontagne, that you launched the Sustainable Agriculture Plan (PAD). An expected and necessary measure aimed at rewarding good practices to regenerate our soils, make them more productive and more resilient, and thus contribute to our food security.
The amounts allocated to this plan are, however, far from being up to the current challenges. What’s more, since the aid is calculated per hectare, it leaves market gardeners operating on small areas in the lurch. They are not entitled to anything, even when they check all the boxes of good practices, or even exceed them.
This is the case of two emblematic farms whose achievements I would like to introduce to you… before they disappear. I’m talking about Bontés de la Vallée and the Cadet Roussel farm, two Montérégie businesses whose owners, at the end of their rope, are considering abandoning everything.
Cadet Roussel is a biodynamic farm established since 1974. It was Équiterre’s first family farm in 1995 and, in 2010, the first agricultural social utility trust in Quebec; the agroecological vocation of the land base is protected in perpetuity. The owners Anne and Arnaud received a medal from the National Order of Agricultural Merit in 2023. A medal, but not a penny.
The vegetable farm Les Bontés de la Vallée is considered by its peers to be a model of an organic farm in regenerative agriculture. For 15 years, Mélina and François have made it a paradise of biodiversity, developing wild corridors, planting thousands of trees all around the plots, even reintroducing around twenty native fruit and nut species.
These farmers are more than producers of “foodstuffs”, they are guardians of the soil and living things, protectors of groundwater and surface water; their soils, real carbon sinks, moderate the climate. They also force us to think about the human-nature relationship, to reimagine the profession of farmer. To dismiss them constitutes an injustice and a great loss for all of us as they chart the path for tomorrow’s agriculture and have until now personally borne the costs.
You have just announced the addition of $34 million to the PAD. Wouldn’t it be time to create a component intended to support small farms and recognize the immense work accomplished by the most innovative among them?
Équiterre and the Cooperative for Ecological Local Agriculture have also repeatedly proposed other forms of support, such as a policy of aid to hospitals, CHSLDs, CPEs and schools so that they serve healthy food while offering new outlets for local organic market gardeners.
It is not ideas that are lacking, but political will, a sense of urgency, a broad and bold vision. We are witnesses to the failure of the agricultural model of the 20the century where apparent prosperity was possible at the expense of the environment, other nations and future generations. Together, we must rethink the way we produce our food, making agroecology our great collective project.
The inspiring humans behind Les Bontés de la Vallée and Cadet Roussel passionately love their work, but can no longer bear on their sole shoulders a responsibility that they exercise for the good of all. They are attempting a (final?) season by calling for the formation of a community of support which embraces the mission of the farm, which asserts itself as co-responsible for these small pieces of land and a stakeholder in “a nourishing project which makes sense.”
Does he have any for you, Mr. Minister?