Farming the System: How Politicians and Producers Shape Canadian Agricultural Policy

George Jackson is a retired professional agrologist.

Wilson started collecting the material for this book in 1977, when he
was covering agriculture politics in Saskatoon for a weekly newspaper,
The Western Producer. Farming the System began to take shape and focus
in the early 1980s after he moved to the paper’s Ottawa bureau to
cover federal politics and policy.

This book reviews Canadian agricultural policies over the last two
decades and discusses how these policies are currently evolving to meet
the challenges of the world marketplace and changing government
ideologies. The reader is shown the strategy and manipulation involved
in developing farm policies. This close look at the system provides
revealing insights into the workings of political decision-making.

Since the 1988 federal election the federal Conservatives have been
taking steps to reduce spending in the agricultural area and make this
industry more responsive to the marketplace, due to what Wilson calls
“a strong view that farmers should become self-reliant, less dependant
on government support and more susceptible to market pressures.” The
background this book provides will help readers grasp the complexity of
the problems associated with such a change.

Wilson introduces us to federal ministers of agriculture Whelan, Wise,
and Mazankowski, and provides an in-depth look at how they and their
colleagues handled such matters as Canagrex, the Crow rate policy
changes, and the free trade debate. The on-the-scene reporting of the
role played by the ministers and the buffering of their goals by other
ministers and the bureaucracy makes for very interesting reading.

Wilson has written a comprehensive and informative account of the
factors and forces affecting the development of past, present, and
future agricultural policies. Farming the System should be available in
all rural libraries and should be on the reading list of everyone
involved in the many aspects of agriculture.