Recently, I attended my local Union of Agricultural Producers (UPA) meeting. An increase in the annual contribution was on the agenda. I was a little apprehensive about the reactions around me. Farmers are struggling. Inflation, the increase in interest rates, it hit them like a overload in a trail of four wheels.
Left without knowing it?
Only one producer questioned the increase. For others, it was self-evident. The challenges in agriculture are enormous. Those who hold decision-making power and the purse strings are increasingly disconnected from agriculture. We will have to give ourselves the means to make representations, research and support.
One of them was quick to recall this maxim: “alone, we go faster, together, we go further”.
That signaled the end of the discussion. The increase went like a letter in the mail.
In this small moment, I experienced this long tradition of the importance of collective action and solidarity that I often feel in rural areas. The pooling of resources and knowledge, the importance of grouping together, working together, is part of the DNA of agricultural producers. The UPA is also celebrating its centenary these days. One of the oldest union organizations in Quebec which has left deep traces from Gaspésie to Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
Conservative regions?
However, everywhere in the world, at the moment, it is rather the right which attracts the rural electorate. The right which wants deregulation, which undermines solidarity, which abandons the population to the free market, which puts a price on health…
The left fails miserably to win over these supporters of the collective scattered from village to village when the ground is so fertile. This determination to sacrifice a small part of one’s income in the name of our collective means is a legacy that permeates our campaigns. It is imperative to save him.
