The Rural Voice, 1982-05, Page 23KEITH ROULSTON
Forfeiting our freedoms
While from a strictly economic point of view those red
meat producers who have turned down the idea of a
marketing board would seem to need to have their heads
read. I can sympathize with their decision. For these
farmers at least, the solution to their present loss of income
isn't worth it if it means a loss of freedom.
The affluent North American society has bought one kind
of freedom, a freedom from want and back -breaking labor,
by giving up many other freedoms. We talk in this country,
on this continent, about our freedoms, but we have forfeited
many of those freedoms for a supposedly better lifestyle.
How many people, for instance, work in high paying jobs
they really hate (such as the workers on auto -plant
assembly lines) just because of the supposed freedoms they
get in their expensive homes, with their expensive toys,
cars, boats and cottages which fill up what hours they have
left when they're not at their boring jobs. We have traded
freedom from worry about many of the problems of life,
worry about what happens if we get sick, worry about being
ripped off by this or that unscrupulous businessman, worry
about unsafe foods, by building a huge bureaucracy that
itself has stripped freedoms from us.
Once upon a time farmers were essentially free of all
outside pressures except those of natural origin. The farmer
worried about his house or barn burning down. He worried
about the weather. He worried about sickness in his animals
and his family but he went out and worked long.
back -breaking hours to cope the only way he could.
In his endless search for greener pastures, however,
rural man soon started thinking there had to be a better
way. Many young people. tired of the stress of the farm.
headed for the city. Those who were left envied the urban
lifestyle and began to want change from what they saw as an
inferior way of life. Why should they work long hard hours
while the city people made more and had more flours for
leisure?
And so farming has undergone its radical change since
the second World War. Following the advice of experts
(many of them the former farm boys who sought a better
urban way of life) farmers got more machinery, got more
land to make the machinery more economical, borrowed
more and more money to finance the expansion and turned
to specialization because they could afford to have the latest
equipment for everything.
Once the farmer had felt like a slave to his cows that had
to be milked twice a day, every day of the year. He felt a
slave to the weather, working day and night to get the crops
planted and harvested while the weather was right and
worrying in between that the rains wouldn't come. or
wouldn't stop. Today the farmer may not feel so much a
slave to the weather or his animals thanks to newer
equipment and techniques but he feels a slave instead to
government, marketing boards, banks, feed companies and
machinery dealers. He sought more control over his life and
today feels he has perhaps even less.
What is the sense of doing something if you don't enjoy
what you're doing. even if you- do make money at it? The
most precious thing left in the world today may be real
freedom. The red meat producers may not have freed
themselves from slaving for government. banks, feed and
machinery companies. but who can really blame them for
wanting to add one more body to take a bit of their freedom?
HOEGY
FARM SUPPLY LTD.
Brodhagen, Ontario
Tel. 345-2941
After hours 345-2243
*BARN WASHING
AND DISINFECTING
*CATTLE SPRAYING
For Lice and
warble control.
CIL FERTILIZER
• Accurately spreads impregnated fertilizer
• Spreading Capacity 20 tons per hour
PIONEER & PAG SEEDS
Cereals - Grains -Small Seeds
•Seaforth •Brodhagen
•Dublin
*Mitchell
l 0 i
THE RURAL VOICE/MAY 1982 PG 21