FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 14, 2021
Government policies “structurally adjust”
Canadian agriculture: effects on farmers devastating
(OTTAWA) The term “structural adjustment” is most commonly
used to describe the onerous “free market” programs imposed
on highly-indebted developing nations by the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund as conditions for receiving further loans. But a new
CCPA study finds that Canada’s agricultural industry has also
been structurally adjusted, with the same disastrous results that
similar programs have inflicted on poor countries around the world.
Written by Darrin Qualman and Nettie Wiebe, the study—The Structural
Adjustment of Canadian Agriculture—concludes that “two
decades of structural adjustment have devastated farm families and
rural communities.”
The authors describe the various ways that Canadian agriculture has
been transformed to meet market demands and promote the interests
of large agribusiness corporations at the expense of farmers and farm
communities.
“Many Canadians think that the IMF and World Bank impose their
structural adjustment programs only on debt-ridden Third World nations.
But the Canadian government has restructured agriculture and rural
Canada by using policy tools remarkably similar to those of the IMF/World
Bank. These tools include the WTO, NAFTA, deregulation, privatization,
cuts in government subsidies, increased foreign investment, and a
much greater emphasis on production for export.”
The study finds that these policies are almost identical to the main
components of an IMF-style structural adjustment program, and that
the intent is also the same: to accelerate the transfer of wealth
from local farmers to transnational corporations. Each of these policies
is examined, and their detrimental effects on farmers and their communities
starkly detailed.
“Structural adjustment programs around the world have served
to concentrate wealth in fewer hands, drive small farmers into bankruptcy,
and force migration from rural areas to the cities. All of these effects
are discernible in Canadian agriculture.
“Between 1981 and 2001, the number of farms in Canada declined
from 318,361 to 246,923, a drop of 22%. In just the past five years
(1996 to 2001), Canada lost 11% of its farmers. The farm income crisis
has decimated many rural communities. The profits in the food production
system are increasingly going to transnationals with head offices
in distant (and mostly foreign) cities.
“The farm crisis in Canada and around the world is caused by
the corporate-driven extraction of wealth from the rural areas. Structural
adjustment removes the barriers to such extraction and accelerates
the outflow of profits and wealth.”
Qualman and Wiebe accuse the Canadian government of using the tools
of free trade agreements and other neocon policies to “turn
the country’s farm families over to the market. Since the 1980s,
Ottawa has systematically imposed a radical restructuring on Canadian
farmers and rural Canada. The result has been a seven-fold increase
in exports, a transfer of the agri-food processing sector to foreign
transnationals, the decimation of rural communities, and the worst
farm income crisis since the 1930s.”
The study warns that the toll of this structural adjustment goes far
beyond the impoverishment of many farm families and the loss of their
communities. “It includes human, cultural, and environmental
costs which all Canadians, no matter where they may live, must pay.
Structural adjustment of this magnitude forces everyone to adjust
to greater economic instability, less democratic control, depletion
of natural resources, and an increased dependence on a few corporate
giants for jobs, investment, and even food.
“For Canadian farm families—as for peasants and farmers
everywhere—structural adjustment often means being adjusted
out of their way of making a living by growing food. It’s an
adjustment right out of their way of life.”
Darrin Qualman is executive secretary of the National Farmers’
Union (NFU) and a research associate with the CCPA. Nettie Wiebe teaches
at the University of Saskatchewan and is a former NFU President.
The full text of “The Structural Adjustment of Canadian Agriculture”
may be accessed on the CCPA’s web site— www.policyalternatives.ca—and
printed copies at $10 each may be obtained from the CCPA’s National
Office.
For more information:
Kerri-Anne Finn 613-563-1341 x306