There was just one announcement on day 28 of the New Brunswick election campaign.
The Green Party unveiled a five-point plan on Wednesday to support farmers and family farms.
“Agriculture is in crisis in New Brunswick. Farmers are living in poverty and their debt is increasing. It takes leadership to fix this crisis,” said Deputy Leader Kevin Arseneau.
Their plan includes setting local procurement targets for public institutions to prioritize locally grown and produced food and developing food import replacement strategies to increase food self-sufficiency.
The Greens also committed to providing financial help to remove barriers to small and medium-scale food production, processing and distribution and to providing income insurance and extension services to support farmers transitioning to ecological and regenerative farming practices.
In addition, the party said it would undertake an agricultural reform focusing on farm diversification and value-added processing.
“Small-scale farmers can’t pay bills with passion. We need strong, independent farmers in New Brunswick rather than a concentration of our farmland from a few big corporations,” said Arseneau.
The Greens noted that New Brunswick lost 20 per cent of its farms in the last five years and only grows three per cent of the vegetables that are consumed in the province.
The Progressive Conservatives and Liberals did not make any announcements as they prepare for the CTV leaders’ roundtable on Wednesday night.
