Carbon, food security, and making agriculture a priority — Q&A LIVE! with Lyndsey Smith and Kelvin Heppner

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Part of the RealAgriculture gang is here in this Wednesday episode of RealAg LIVE! Host Shaun Haney is joined by Ontario field editor Lyndsey Smith, and Manitoba field editor Kelvin Heppner, to discuss carbon tax, (crappy) rural internet, and more.

You’ll have to excuse some of our technical difficulties, but listen on and send us your feedback —and check out the summary below.

Tune in tomorrow at 1 pm Mountain for a LIVE! Q&A with Anne Wasko! 

  • We’ll all agree that today’s technical issues are the result of Lyndsey being involved
  • Minister Bibeau said yesterday that a carbon tax assigned to grain drying is too insignificant to warrant the tax exemption
    • what farmers are paying on grain drying is not a significant enough amount of their operating cost to warrant an exception
    • drying could be the difference between taking crop in and not at all
    • would this not have been an easy win for the government to take?
    • if it’s considered an insignificant cost, why wouldn’t the government take it on as a benefit to farmers?
  • This goes back to Shaun’s point of just saying ‘no’ if the answer is and always was going to be no
  • Dr. Kerri Holland: food security coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic
    • this isn’t new information, but it has to be a whole country approach and the onus can’t only be on agriculture
  • Rural Canada has always had issues connecting with this federal government
    • where can agriculture and the rural community find and exert leverage, then?
    • we are often upset that no one understands agriculture, but the same is true for any other industry
  • When we talk about the potential of agriculture and the investment needed, we still have to figure out where the money comes from
  • Farmers are always going to farm, and there will always be a crop in the ground; revenue is guaranteed, regardless of how agriculture votes and what they get in return
  • How much of our own agriculture land are we comfortable to be foreign-owned (see: airline bailouts)
    • as a country, what do we value and what do we want to see agriculture look like?
  • Is awareness of the food production system one of the few benefits of COVID-19?
    • whether it’s a conversation of how meat goes through the processing chain, or more people preparing food at home, getting back to basics is important
    • depending on how relaunching the economy goes, it is possible to keep the awareness and momentum going?
  • What if we had more rural lobbying organizations? Would that make us more effective?
    • we need to look into cities and find more urban allies
    • we also need to look ahead to where the trend is heading and if the power is moving west (Vancouver? Calgary?) to get onside with those populations now

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