The biggest mobilization took place March 2 when 8,000 farmers responded to the call for a “One Voice March” by the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). They arrived at Queen’s Park in tractors and rented buses. The OFA is the main lobby organization of Ontario’s 60,000 farmers.

“I’m only farming today because my father farmed,” Eric Hoffer, 33, a tobacco farmer from Innerkip in southwestern Ontario, told the Militant. “In today’s world I wouldn’t be able to start a farm by myself.” Hoffer said he didn’t know if he could survive because tobacco farmers—whose aid from the Ontario Liberal government remains undelivered—receive just 10 cents on a pack of cigarettes sold at retail for $7.00.

Hundreds of tractors and other farm equipment surrounded the government buildings in the bitter cold. Signs affixed to tractors and carried by farmers and their families said: “Off farm jobs are our real farm subsidy,” “Farmers need cost of production,” “Average farm income below poverty line,” “Corn prices: 1979—$3.09 a bushel. 2005—$2.62 a bushel,” “Ontario farmers, underpaid, overregulated,” and “Buy Canadian, no more imports.”

Speakers at the rally represented a range of producers in Ontario’s multi-billion-dollar-a-year agricultural industry, which is the second-largest in the province after auto parts and assembly. The industry as a whole, including food processing, employs 650,000 people, according to the OFA.

The OFA is demanding immediate emergency aid of $300 million (Can$1 = US$0.83) to ensure the planting of the 2005 crop for grain and oilseeds farmers, who the farm group says face a 25-year low in commodity prices; delivery of the promised $50 million in transition aid for tobacco farmers; improvements in the Canadian Agriculture Income Stabilization (CAIS) program; and financial aid and compensation for farmers affected by new regulatory laws like the Greenbelt Protection Act, Drinking Water Safety Act, and Nutrient Management Act.

OFA president Ron Bonnett, a cow-calf farmer, ended the rally by contrasting the Ontario government’s $400 million subsidy of Casino Windsor along with its recently announced subsidy of $235 million to General Motors to retool its Oshawa assembly plants, and its failure to “invest in 650,000 jobs in agriculture.”

One week later, on March 9, about 700 farmers were again at Queen’s Park, this time in response to the call of the Rural Revolution coalition.

“I was born in Belgium, and moved to Canada 20 years ago,” grain farmer Michel Calande told the Militant.

“Twenty years ago I could get $200 for a ton of corn. Now I get $100,” Calande continued. “I come from a family of farmers. Farming is essential. What’s happened in Canada is terrible. Knowledge is transmitted from one generation to another. School can’t replace what real experience on the land teaches you. The world needs to know the situation we are living through.”

“Because of the difficult situation we are facing, and the lack of slaughterhouses, I had to sell a cow for $1.56,” said Terry, a cattle farmer. “We are stuck with old cows because they are banned from crossing the border to the United States. At the same time, the slaughterhouse owners are lining their pockets.”  
 
Farm income drops
The depth of the farm crisis is an expression of one side of the opening stages of a depression in the world capitalist economy. Failure to receive adequate and timely aid and support from both the provincial and federal governments has generated a discussion among farmers on how they can effectively resist their deteriorating conditions.

The crisis affects whole communities, said Julien Papineau, president of the Essex Federation of Agriculture. “The entire community is getting involved [in the preparations for the March 2 protest], offering support and donations, including local input suppliers, as well as equipment dealers, manufacturers, and financial institution representatives,” Papineau told the March 1 Voice of the Farmer. “The farming crisis has a ripple effect in the community. The spin-off is tremendous. When people don’t have the money to spend, everyone is affected.”

Farmers point out that the crisis affects farmers from one end of the country to the other. For example, Statistics Canada reports that between 1996 and 2001 the number of farms in Canada dropped 11 percent to 246,293—the fastest drop between censuses since 1971. Although it is the small farm that is taking the hit—almost half the farms with less than $25,000 in total revenue counted in the last census had disappeared by 2001—small farms operated by families who work the land still comprise two-thirds of all farms in Canada.

While farm productivity is rising, so are expenses. As a result, net income for working farmers is dropping. In 2000 total farm revenue across Canada was $38.3 billion. With operating expenses of $33.2 billion, farmers had an income of $5.1 billion, which was less than the $5.5 billion they earned in 1995, when revenue was $32.2 billion and expenses reached $26.7 billion.

The farm financial survey reported last December that the 2003 average net agricultural income of $25,311 represented a 26 drop percent from the year before. According to the NFU, real average net farm income—without including government subsidies—in 2003 declined to negative $20,000 per farm.  
 
Rightists dominate Rural Revolution
Rural Revolution, spearheaded by the Lanark Landowners Association (LLA), which is a coalition of farmers and rural business owners, was formed about two years ago in collaboration with a number of Conservative Party members of the federal parliament and Ontario provincial legislature. The OFA, NFU, and the Christian Farmers Federation have taken their distance from Rural Revolution, both because of the group’s central demand for federal legislation to protect “property rights,” and its civil disobedience tactics.

The political focus of the March 9 Rural Revolution rally centered on 11 resolutions drawn up by the LLA called “legislation to be tabled and enacted on March 9, 2005.” A number of Conservative Party politicians had promised to bring the resolutions into the provincial legislature.

The preamble to the resolutions poses the struggle of farmers and rural business people in terms of urban versus rural priorities, rather than a struggle for an adequate and stable income for farmers that meets their costs of production. “Through over-regulation and excessive legislation politicians and bureaucrats have transferred rural wealth and prosperity into the hands of urban monopolies and mega-bureaucracies,” said the declaration, charging the government with “crimes against rural Ontario.”

The founding declaration of the LLA has a clear rightist tinge to it, stating: “Using taxpayers’ dollars, our governments support and promote Quebec, Native, Arts, Homosexual, Urban and Multi cultures [i.e., immigrants]. However, when it comes to the independent, peaceful rural culture in Canada, government support is stifling, suffocating and controlling.”

Many farmers are attracted to Rural Revolution’s action orientation and also to its program. Others look to the Union producteurs agricoles (UPA), the farmers’ organization in Quebec, as an example to emulate. Signs at both the March 9 and March 2 actions said, “Hats off to the UPA,” “We need a UPA now,” and “Equity with Quebec.” Farmers say that government commodity price stabilization supports are higher in Quebec than in Ontario. Farmers in Ontario often describe this as a gain won through the struggles of Quebec farmers, which they attribute to the UPA.

In recent weeks, supporters of the Militant have gotten a hearing from a number of farmers as they have presented a revolutionary working-class perspective on the roots of the farm crisis and the need for an alliance between workers and exploited farmers to fight a common enemy—the capitalist class.

When this reporter, for example, told hog farmers that he was a meat packer at Quality Meat Packers here, where workers went on a four-week strike in November for a living wage, the farmers explained their own conflict with the company, saying it would not give them a price that allows them to meet the costs of production. These farmers agreed that common action was needed by workers and working farmers to defend their interests against the huge agribusiness companies that dominate the food processing industry and the government.

Both the OFA and Rural Revolution are planning further actions.

“In 30 days you will see us closing up the major food distribution units…that distribute all the food to supermarkets [with tractor blockades],” Randy Hellier, LLA president and Rural Revolution leader told the demonstrators March 9.

A March 10 statement by OFA president Ron Bonnett said, “all of the partners in the ‘One Voice March’ continue to meet and make plans for further actions” to press both the provincial and federal governments to meet their demands.

Carlos Cornejo, Annette Kouri, Michel Prairie, and Joe Yates contributed to this article.  
 
 
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