The Rural Voice, 1981-05, Page 5the rural
Voice
The magazine for the whole farm family
Special features
Agriculture and Agrominiums 6
Do they mix?
Severances: a land divided 10
Each county has its own rules
Licence No. 1990 13
A licence to farm -not a popular concept.
Farmers can't afford to farm 15
Farmers are losing their equity year after year
Guest Column: Prof. B.R. Christie 17
A look at alfalfa seed recommendations
It must be Spring 24
A photo feature
Guest Column: Robert Forrest P 27
Test your soil's atrazine level
Regular features
Letters . .5
Voice of a farmer 19
Advice on farming 20
Mail box of the Month 23
News in briet 28
The rural family 33
Gisele Ireland 35
The Young farmer 37
Up and coming 39
Rural Voice want ads 41
Grey federation 43
Perth Pork Producers 45
Bruce Federation 47
Huron Federation 48
Cover by Alice Gibb
Marion, Mary and Sandra Hunt
The high cost
of farming
All over Western Ontario it's the same. You talk to a farrier
who's been in business 30 years. He can't afford a hired man
now. and works longer hours than he did five years ago. When
he started in farming and things got tough, he had the option of
taking an off -farm job and using his earnings to get the farm over
a temporary slump. He worked a double shift but he and the
farm survived.
Now. he points out, young farmers don't have even that
chance. For where are they going to get an offfarm job that
would put a dent in a $50,000 per year interest bill?
Times are tough, and at the heart of this Rural Voice issue on
the farmer's right to farm is the question: can farmers afford to
farm? Gisele Ireland reports on a big Bruce County meeting that
tried to come up with answers, and help. on page 15.
What a farmer who's going under a little more each day might
understandably see as a side issue. . . new furmlund ownership
concepts like the agrominium, severance policies, and licences
for farmers. . . we at Rural Voice think can be linked directly to
the economic problems individual farmers are having.
A society that values its food, and the contributions farmers
make, should be willing to listen to the farm community's views
on land use and ownership legislation and to pay farmers a fair
price for the food they produce.
A society that doesn't value either will ride roughshod over
farmers' opinions and pretty well ignore their economic
problems. The responses from government, from the big banks,
and from groups representing our urban counterparts in the next
little while should tell us which way it's going to be.
EDITORIAL BOARD: Bev. Brown, Alice Gibb, Sheila Gunby, Rhea Hamilton, Herb Shoveller, Adrian Vos and Susan White. Bruce
Correspondent Gisele Ireland, Perth Correspondent Donna Thiel, Staff Reporter Debbie Ranney.
ADVERTISING: Matt Adamson, Barbara Consitt. Telephone 527-0240
NATIONAL ADVERTISING: Matt Adamson (519) 527-0240, Box 10, Blyth, Ontario NOM 1H0
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registration number 3560
THE RURAL VOICE/MAY 1981 PG. 3