My old friend and CBC colleague — the late Mac Campbell — had a saying that should be on the wall of every newsroom: ‘What’s that all about?’ It’s the first thing that came to mind when, in late July, the province announced a new exemption, a way for some farmers to subtract up to 350 acres from their land holdings if the land is used for research.
There was a fairly detailed news release: applicants must be at or expected to reach land holding limits in the “reasonably foreseeable future”; the research must continue for at least two years; nothing produced can be sold and so on. I was still left wondering: What’s that all about?
I’m a huge supporter of on-farm research. The Living Lab program that sees Agriculture Canada scientists working on active commercial farms is one of the best initiatives I’ve ever seen. And I have great respect for farmers who have crop and soil management ideas they want to try out. However, this program only applies to less than two dozen farms which own over 2,250 acres. I’ve suggested a few times over the years that all farmers could be encouraged to “think outside the box” if crop insurance rules were adjusted to share the risk of using less fertilizer, intercropping with legumes, less use of herbicides and tillage once crops reach a certain maturity, and so on. We have to remember that financial institutions lending operating capital to farmers often require that they follow the standard use of fertilizer and crop sprays, so it’s not easy for farmers to do things differently.
There’s reference in the policy announcement to making it clear when exemptions to the Act will be allowed: “The PEI Lands Protection Act…. lacks a specific process or policy for reviewing such requests. This new policy will clearly define the eligibility to request an exemption to corporate land holding limits for the purpose of agricultural research and development.”
There have been exemptions announced before that had broad support: the Island Nature Trust for example is allowed to own over the limit for conservation holdings; environmentally sensitive land that’s unsuitable for farming (wetlands, marginal agricultural land, etc.) is not counted. This new exemption announced in the middle of a busy summer feels a little different.
Not surprisingly, the National Farmers Union, which has fought so hard over the years to uphold the acreage limits (1,000 acres for individuals, 3,000 for corporations) has stated that this new policy looks like another attempt to chip away at these limits.
With respect, there was one odd part of the announcement that came from Minister of Housing, Land and Communities Rob Lantz: “… we need to make way for this work without impacting current production levels which are critical for our food supply. This policy will let producers continue to use their existing land for marketable crops while encouraging valuable research.”
No one should think that farmers will buy land at record high prices to conduct research where the production can’t be sold. Won’t happen. Maybe there are some farms that are over the limit already that want to keep the land. Maybe it’s a way to remove land where potato wart has been discovered from being included in corporate holdings so more land could be bought.
I did write an email to the PEI Department of Agriculture asking for more background on how this new policy was developed, who was asking for it, how 350 acres was chosen (that’s almost half the size of the Harrington Research Station, and seems like a lot), and other questions. My email was acknowledged but after a week (as I write this column) I’ve had no further information.
Islanders should feel very positive about government programs (federal and provincial) to encourage best management practices and ways to limit how farms contribute to climate change. Island farmers themselves (and hats off to the policy development done by the Federation of Agriculture, executive director Donald Killorn, and Kensington area potato grower Matt Ramsay) are leading the country in acknowledging why and how farmers must do this work.
There are strict research requirements that must be done to trigger this new exemption, and if useful results emerge, I will acknowledge those too. However, at the moment, I still wonder: “What’s that all about?”
