Here's why N.B. farmers say the problem of food prices runs deeper than a boycott

As some Canadians boycott Loblaw stores, farmers in New Brunswick say systemic issues with our food system run much deeper than just one company. We don’t have enough farmers, we don’t have enough producers in the province to to feed everybody, and which is really sad because we could have. But unfortunately there hasn’t been a big drive to encourage young people to farm. New Brunswick self-sufficiency and vegetable production hit 9.1% in 2022, up slightly from 7.3% in 2018. But at the same time, potential farmland in New Brunswick is decreasing. Fewer than one in every 10 New Brunswick farms have a succession plan, according to the 2021 agriculture census, and there was an 18% decline in total farms in the province from 2016 to 2021. If you go out and you buy land and you buy tractors and you buy equipment, you’ve invested a lot of money and you’re not going to make a lot of money in the first five years. One farmer says the rise in cost of living is also impacting her CSA sales, which is where someone pays a lump sum at the beginning of the summer and in exchange receives a basket of fresh produce every week until the end of the growing season. That there’s conversations between farmers of like us being the 1st to go when people are looking at their budget and where they can cut. Four years ago at this time, our CSA was already full. According to the Department of Agriculture, New Brunswick did have record cash receipts and exports in 2023. It means that, you know, New Brunswick farms are more profitable than ever, but the farmers aren’t keeping that money. It’s going to pay their bills. It’s going to, you know, they’re pay off some of their debts. That’s why it’s so difficult to rebuild the food system. It’s not as simple as boycott Loblaws buy from the farmers market. It’s not that simple. You have to build something. So what we really need to do is transition, you know, transition away from supermarkets, transition towards local food and enable the farmers or the farmer wannabes to kind of to help to meet that need. Otherwise it’s going to. It’s going to kind of crash and burn and we don’t want that to happen.