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The Rural Voice, 1981-03, Page 28KEITH ROULSTON Getting surplus food to the starving. Is it a hopeless case? It is one of the tragic ironies of life that farmers in Canada have been so plagued over the years with surpluses that they have had to invent marketing boards to discourage excess production at a time when millions in the world are starving. There's no simple solution to the problems of course, perhaps no solution at all given the realities of world politics. Simply killing marketing boards and letting farmers produce as much as they can isn't, as marketing board opponents suggest. going to do anything to help the poor in Asia and Africa. It will simply create more poor in Canada on the farms while providing cheaper food in the short run for the already prosperous urban middle class of North America. Even if a farmer produced all he could here in Canada and could afford to give Winthrop GENERAL STORE OPEN: Monday - Frlday till 9:00 Saturday till 7:0b Grocery it Hardware Work Boots - Rubber Boots CEDAR POSTS FENCE SUPPLIES 45 Gal. Steel Barrels -Gas- DOUG & GAIL SCHROEDER 527-1247 PG. 22 THE RURAL VOICE/MARCH 1981 away what he couldn't sell, the problem of getting the food to the needy of the third world remains. Even if someone else came along with the money to hire the ships to take it to the poor countries there's no guarantee the food would get to the people who need it. Horror stories have been told many times about food or medical supplies for the poor that end up on the black market. bringing more money for the elite of some poverty- stricken nation. There's a feeling of helplessness, frustration and anger on the part of those who would really like to do something about this mammoth tragedy of millions but can't cut through the barriers of red tape and corruption to get to the real poor. This frustration has led. according to Barbara Amiel in a recent issue of Maclean's. to many aid groups throwing their support behind revolutionary groups bent on changing the govern- ments of the poor countries. Ms. Amiel, who often provides a breath of fresh air with her crusty conservatism in a sea of words from the liberal -left writers and thinkers. claims that Canadian aid dollars are going to support Marxist -socialist groups such as the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe. Frelimo in Mozambique and SWAPO in Namibia not only through groups like OXFAM but that taxpayer money from aid organiza- tions like the Canadian International Development Agency helps left-wing governments once they are set up. Ms. Amiel's view of international aid sounds a little different than most accounts we get. no doubt because of her political perspective. True, she says, Canada now and then does support a corrupt right-wing regime, but most of our money goes to Marxist -socialists. That's a different story than many give who claim that Canada (and more so the United States), supports horrible right wing repressionist governments because it is afraid the only alternative is Communism. The frustrating thing is there seems to be no real answer to the problems of the third world. How many corrupt right wing, elitist governments have we seen overthrown by revolutionaries who then become just as repressive as their old adversaries? For much of the world there seems to be no point of moderation. no one who wants to give the people honest, equitable government with the basic human freedoms. Ms. Amiel may protest against sup- porting the Marxist -socialist rebel groups for instance but they are often the only way to get land reform in nations where a handful of landlords own most of the land and use it to grow coffee or sugar for export because the profits are highest there, while millions starve in shanty towns near the fields. And yet Marxist- socialistsunnorters have little to be proud. of in their attempts to control the hearts and minds of their people to keep them from ever again thinking of capitalism. So many communist countries such as China and Poland have learned the hard way that nothing is so productive as giving a farmer a bit of land of his own and leItin2 him earn money from what he can produce there. Yet it seems to be a lesson lost on people of both right and left wing political persuasions. The rich land -owners of many third world coun- tries think they can go on living their medieval way .treating the people as peasants forever. They use the western distrust of communism to gain military support to fight any reforms. Yet they are fooling themselves. It is only a matter of time before land reform must come in these countries. Yet the reformers who seek to change absentee landlord owner- ship to collective ownership are also mistaken. Millions can still starve because there is no sense of belonging to the land by those working it. If the millions starving are to be fed it must be done for the most part by them feeding themselves from their own land. For them to do that there must be some way of letting the people own their own bits of land and teaching them the appropriate technology to get the most out of that land. And a closing thought: with the 40 -year old movement to farm consolidation in Canada seeming to gain ever -more momentum, how many more decades before the cry for land reform echos in this country too?