I am a small market gardener cultivating 30 to 40 varieties of vegetables and fruits on an area of one hectare which I rent from a neighboring farmer. I am lucky to live where I farm because I bought the house on an old farm, which was opened up from its lot when the law for the protection of agricultural land came into effect in the 1980s.
It was the time when small, surviving farms were encouraged to cease operations and sell their plots to more productive neighboring farmers.
By renting a hectare behind my house, which is a piece of the old land of the house I live in, and by having a farm operator’s license from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPAQ ), this house has become a farm again. I can sell my cultivated products at the kiosk set up next to my house, which is on the 132 between Le Bic and Rimouski.
I consider myself extremely lucky, compared to many other small producers in diversified cultivation on a small area who do not have the possibility of living where they cultivate.
Complex agriculture
This new agriculture – of proximity, intensive and diversified on a small area – requires daily monitoring and very closely, because it is complex, given the variety of cultivated products, because it involves several dozen sowing each year and transplants to be carried out at well-chosen climatic times, and because it can require hundreds of harvests, between June and November.
Not being able to inhabit the land where all these operations take place is hardly viable in the medium and long term.
Not being able to own this land, but only rent it, is not a viable solution either because this diversified agricultural model requires a lot of investment in ecological configuration of plots, soil preparation, installation of permanent crops, windbreaks, irrigation, etc.
In short, we are a thousand miles from dairy farms which, on their land, will harvest three fodder crops, one or two seedlings of cereals and their crops at the end of the season. These farmers, if they have large quotas, they can rent land and move away from their homes, even several kilometers away, with their large equipment to go and do these few sowings and harvests; for them it is viable. But go and suggest that they don’t live near their dairy production facilities, that they don’t own it. Let’s say they wouldn’t find this solution very presentable.
A “hay spit” solution
So we, small local producers, diversified and on a small area, consider that the solution that is too often offered to us, either to rent small plots, fallow land or in devitalized regions, with the impossibility of living there, c t is an inadequate solution, because it is not knowing or understanding our farming practices.
It is also an unsustainable solution, which does not demonstrate much interest or value in this new agriculture. Sometimes we wonder if it’s because we just need small lots and little large equipment that we feel less respected as a farmer.
That our agricultural practices are among the healthiest, that we are almost carbon neutral and that our contribution to food autonomy is very concrete, it is as if it remains negligible; we are no match for it. It’s craftsmanship.
With all due respect to the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) and other groups, to the experts and to the opposition parties who are offering us this solution of “just renting” rather than going ahead with a certain fragmentation. agricultural land as proposed by law 103, for us, it is a hay spit solution. The new agriculture deserves much better.