The Rural Voice, 1979-12, Page 16Keith Roulston
Let's not pass the buck
Those of us who defend farmers against
the idiocy of consumer critics, govern-
ment bureacrats and urban media some-
times get carried away in the opposite
direction. We overlook faults on the part of
farmers. making them instead a combin-
ation of saints and long-suffering martyrs.
The game is called passing the buck. It's
always somebody else's job to accept the
responsibility. It's a game that's played by
a huge portion of the population these day
and farmers are no different.
In this thinking, often promoted by
farmers and their leaders themselves,
farmers aren't to blame for anything.
They're just poor hard -used people who
are the victims of others and not respon-
sible for any of their own troubles.
Latest screams these days come from the
threat of foreign ownership of farmland.
Angry farmers are screaming for govern-
ment action to stop the buying up of huge
chunks of farmland by people from outside
the country. To be sure the danger is great.
Large block purchases can disrupt the
economic and social structures of com-
munities. It can drive up land prices. It can
lead to a depletion of land through
improper use of the land by the ten ant
farmers. Worst of all it can lead)if allowed
to, to the kind of absentee landlord system
that drove thousands of immigrants to
Canada in the first place.
So the demand that it be stopped before
it becomes a major problem goes out. You
can't blame farmers offered a big price for
their land for selling, farm spokesmen say.
They have to look out for their own best
interests.
Well why can't you blame a farmer for
looking at his own financial benefit ahead
of the overall good of the community?
Certainly farmers are willing to blame the
rest of society for looking for the fast buck
at the expense of others. They're quick to
get upset when fertilizer companies or
petroleum companies take advantage of
shortages to get an extra profit. If they feel
a local merchant is charging too much
they're ready to scream about it. Yet
somehow it's quite acceptable for a farmer
to sell out at prices high enough to drive up
for their neighbours who want to continue
to farm and need to buy more land.
And what about the man who rents that
land from the foreign buyers? One can't
really blame him if he grows corn on corn
on corn until the land is as hard as cement
and won't grow a good crop of ragweed.
He's just trying to get the best profit he can
out of the soil after all. A lot like the miner.
A year or so ago the International Joint
Commission, the people who are in charge
of looking after the Great Lakes, decided to
undertake an investigation of the amount
of pollution in water from land use sources.
Some very intelligent farm spokesmen got
pretty upset about that. Farm chemicals
such as fertilizers and herbicides are an
important part of the farming business
today, they said , and if the government
cracked down on their use because of
pollution then it could hurt farmers. A faint
resemblance to pulp and paper companies
in that argument.
This summer in the region there were
several cases of spills of liquid manure into
streams resulting in large fish kills. The
government agencies decided not to press
charges saying the spills were probably
accidental or through ignorance.
I didn't hear too many complaints about
this from the farm community. I wondered
how the farm leaders would have reacted
though if it had been a large chemical
company from Sarnia that had been killing
fish and not getting charged for it.
The point is that farmers and those of
us who support farmers must not only fight
for their rights but accept their respon-
sibilities. Farmers aren't always the help-
less individuals they pretend to be. They
can do a good deal toward controlling their
own destiny.
Profit has become such a touchstone in
agriculture these days that anything that
goes against profit is a dirty word. Farmers
are concentrating so much on being
businessmen that they're beginning to
sound like businessmen: proper pollution
safeguards? But they'd cut profits.
Passing the buck to government, big
business, anybody but ourselves, is one of
the greatest plagues of the 1970's. Nobody
wants to accept responsibility these days.
Government has been the favourite place
for us to pass our responsibilities. Please
stop us from selling our land to foreigners.
Please stop us from ruining our own
environment by polluting. Please keep us
from killing ourselves through our stupid
driving habits or drugs or drink.
And yet we're also reacting against
government controls too much; that has
grown too big. Farmers are leaders in this
cry for government to get back to the basics
even while they yell at the same time for
government to do something about this or
that problem. The only way to solve
problems without having the government
involved is to solve them ourselves. That
means a big dose of taking the respon-
sibility for our own actions.
Guest Column by Diane Harkin
Women for the Survival of Agriculture
Ladies, this is for you
So you're a farm woman, dedicated to
a profession that provides marts most basic
need...FOOD,And yet as you perform your
necessary and vital role on the farm, you
are confronted with the most critical
audience in the world; the news media,
government, bureaucrats and consumers.
Perhaps you have become angry and
resentful because too many people look
upon you, the farmer, as a greedy money
grubbing character who takes particular
sadistic pleasure in gouging the poor
consumers of their food dollar.
Maybe you're tired of hearing
non -farmers declare how lucky you are to
be living such a "good life" that you are
PG. 14 THE RURAL VOICE/DECEMBER 1979
free trom the stress of public, political or
business pressures and that all your food is
free.
Do you feel frustrated when farmers
receive unfair criticism in the media, and
agriculture gets low priority attention from
government?
If you've read this'far then you share the