(Montreal) The threat that climate change poses to Quebec’s food security is no longer theoretical: the Association of Market Gardeners of Quebec (APMQ) notes that its members, severely affected by extreme weather events, are producing less in less food for Quebec.
“Vegetable producers are reorienting their activities in large-scale cultivation where the capacity to operate a farm and risk management are much less important than for a market garden farm,” says the general director of the Association Patrice Léger Bourgouin. What we call field crops are grain corn, soybeans, cereals, forage crops and beans, among others.
Their desire to turn to less risky crops will surprise no one after the torrential rains of summer 2023. These had a catastrophic effect for a majority of producers in the market gardening, horticultural, small fruit, processing vegetables and root vegetables such as potatoes.
Diseases, rotten plants, uprooted
A survey carried out among 250 producers shows significant production losses, with a majority of crops affected not only by rain, but also by frost or hail.
Three-quarters of respondents have detected fungal diseases in their crops, a majority expect losses from storing waterlogged produce and half of respondents anticipate difficulties next summer due to rotten plants standing, broken, uprooted or affected by disease.
This situation means that anticipated income has melted like snow in the sun, so that there is not enough liquidity not only to buy what they need for next summer, but also to make it through the year.
Less food production
Even if the summer of 2023 was one of the worst with its fields transformed into immense lakes of mud where even the tractors got stuck, it is part of a series of difficult summers which lead these producers to look elsewhere.
What has worried us for several years is to see more and more market gardeners replacing their traditional cultivation with large crops and, slowly but surely, this is a loss of food production area for humans.
Patrice Léger Bourgouin, general director of the APMQ
This movement is also fueled by the need to ensure the next generation, a generation that is wondering about its future in market gardening with this unforgiving weather.
“It’s much easier to seek bank financing for young people to buy their parents’ farms if they have an activity in large-scale cultivation,” continues the general director of the APMQ.
Succession and risk
“For the banker, who is allergic to risk, the contribution in equipment, in human resources in the field, in inputs is much less in large-scale cultivation than in market gardening. The risk is much lower, since prices are transferred to international markets on the Chicago Commodity Exchange. There is a stability of income in large-scale farming that you do not have in market gardening and when the time comes to think about succession, often the stability of income to be able to achieve your financing will go through a percentage of your areas which are in large-scale cultivation,” explains Mr. Léger Bourgouin.
The survey was not carried out to amplify the cry of distress launched at the beginning of August by these producers when they had both feet in the mud. The Minister of Agriculture, André Lamontagne, had at that time created a special working group with his officials, the Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA) and Financière agricole whose first task was to draw up a portrait of the situation.
In addition to detailing the agricultural devastation, the survey paints a worrying portrait of the deterioration in the financial situation of these producers. “The financial consequences for businesses are serious and worrying, even going so far as to compromise the future of several farms,” says the president of the UPA, Martin Caron, who is calling for “exceptional, rapid, and commensurate” aid. needs and outside of existing programs.
Expectations towards Quebec
It is clear, according to the UPA and the producers’ associations, that current risk management programs “do not allow companies to cope with extreme climatic situations”, affirms for his part the president of the Potato Producers from Quebec, Francis Desrochers.
Moreover, 52% of companies in these sectors do not participate in crop insurance, on the one hand because it does not cover several harvests and, on the other hand, “because it is poorly adapted to their economic conditions and current weather conditions, explains Patrice Léger Bourgouin. These programs were essentially developed 30 years ago in a context which is not at all adapted to the reality of today’s climatic events.
Producers are impatiently awaiting the economic update from Finance Minister Eric Girard on November 7. He promised that adaptation to climate change would be one of the priorities.