Farm leaders in Ottawa-Carleton and Lanark-Renfrew are the latest to leap aboard the fast-moving economic impact study train which has been rolling across Easter Ontario.
This is good, very good. We can think of nothing more beneficial which has happened to agriculture around these parts in recent years than the harvesting of financial facts through already-completed studies.
The engineer of this good-news train is Guelph’s Prof. Harry Cummings along with his research team. To date, he’s completed studies as one grouping in Stormont, Dundas, Glengarry, Prescott and Russell, and as another grouping in Lennox, Addington, Frontenac, Leeds and Grenville.
Both reports have fairly overflown with great economic news, much of it startling even the most seasoned observers of the agricultural scene. You see, agriculture is an economic sleeping giant, most often taken for granted - perhaps because it has been with us since the beginning of colonization - not only by those who know very little about it, but by those who know everything about it.
Cummings’ completed reports outline how agriculture is a growth industry, that thousands of direct and indirect jobs are tied to it, and that sales from farms and other agri-businesses account for hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
When they see the facts in black and white, politicians and bureaucrats in a given study region tend to sit up and take notice. It may be imperceptible at first, but gradually a new respect for the industry creeps into meeting rooms and municipal halls across the region.
We’re sure that Cummings’ reports out of Ottawa-Carleton and Lanark-Renfrew this fall will bring forward very similar results... both on the page and off it.
From the Archives:
Op / Ed, July 2000
