The Rural Voice, 1981-09, Page 28FARMERS
We are ready to handle your 1981
Wheat Barley Corn
• fast, efficient service
• truck hoist
• buy, sell, store or custom dry
We can now provide
trucking from the farm
J.DITSCH
FARMS
R.R. 3 Brussels
ATWOOD 356-2292
RESIDENCE 887-6824
seg°- `s Listowel
07
Newry
PG. 26 THE RURAL VOICE/SEPTEMBER 1981
VOICE OF A FARMER MOM
Farmers should form
a common front
BY ADRIAN VOS
Are officials of the ministry of Consumer Affairs and the
Canadian Association of Consumers blind? Studies by the
Economic Council are undisguised attacks on agriculture
marketing boards. The academics would
either abolish them or make them useless.
What these learned men (if all are men) fail
to see is that the cost of food going up from
one month to the next is almost invariably
attributed to the escalating cost of imported
food. The cost of Canadian produced food is
either lagging behind the inflation factor, or
keeping even with it.
The much maligned egg producer has
been able to sell his eggs at less money, in
real dollars, than he did before this
inflationary spiral began.
The dairy producer is even lagging behind
his approved cost of production because the government at
various times refused to let these farmers pass on their cost of
production to their customers, while the customers in many
rases have been allowed indexed wages and salaries.
Canada's cheap food policy should be warning to all farmers. In
effect the government has used the farmer for short (sighted)
political gain to appease the voting public. And as usual, the
public, who get its information from the editorial pages of the
daily newspaper, doesn't know it's being hoodwinked.
Farmers are reluctant to establish a working relationship
with labour unions, but unless they do they will never get across
to the processing unions and the teamsters' unions, and the
grocery store workers' unions, the fact that unless the whole food
chain begins working together, jobs will be lost together with the
farms.
The reason for this reluctance to work with labour unions is not
hard to find. Strikes! Farmers abhor strikes. They go against the
rural grain. But there may also be some jealousy here. Most
farmers can't strike. The dairyman would have to dump his milk.
The eggman would soon run out of storage. The hogman would
be penalized for overweight pigs and then bring the same
amount of pork on the market. The broilerman has new pullets
waiting. And if any one of the aforementioned went on strike, it
would be to no avail because consumers would switch from one
product to another, until U.S. products could be brought in.
Even if the OFA for example called a strike, for
all commodities, how many farmers would participate?
However, if farmers formed a common front with the various
unions and with the small independent business associations, it
would be a political force to be reckoned with.
Och, mon. Ye're dreamtn'.