The Rural Voice, 1982-06, Page 9me the day is long gone when a farmer can
think he is going to start here today and
twenty years later he is going to have it all
paid for. 1 think that's folly. If we do that
the system won't operate. So if you can
build some sort of a stable marketing
system, the individual has some conf-
idence that he's going to have that market
there and he can make some long-term
plans."
McKinnon feels confident about the job
he's doing now. He says that comes with
time and experience. If his sons had not
been interested in helping at home he not
likely would have been a board member,
certainly not chairman. But now, if he
wasn't the chairman (he says he's
prepared to run for at least one more
term), he's not sure he'd get back into the
farm operation. "I don't think the boys
would probably want me," he adds with a
smile. "They call him the weekend
farmer, the city help," says wife Freda.
A couple of things are fairly certain,
though, for Ken McKinnon when he
leaves the board. He plans to remain in the
Port Elgin area and re -involve himself in
the community, perhaps from a municipal
government point of view. "Being away a
lot you get out of touch with what's going
on in your local area," he says. "When I
come home now I don't have as much
feeling that I'm part of the community and
I miss that. I think people who live in a
community should take an interest in that
community. There are all kinds of things
you could do."
But until then, Kenneth G. McKinnon
remains chairman of what seems to be an
efficiently -run marketing board. His
critics say he is not expeditious, a rap he
acknowledges and accepts: "1 de-
liberately take the position that the world
wasn't made in a day. Neither was the
milk marketing board, and it's not going to
go away in a day. One thing you must not
do is get all excited and make decisions for
short-term reasons that may in the long
term be wrong. That frustrates some
people around our board.
"That takes time and it costs money and
it sometimes bogs the system down. But in
the end 1 think we get a much better
product and it's much more acceptable.
Some people will say that we spend far too
much time on Tong -term planning but I
just can't sit around a board table where
you're reacting all the time. If you are at a
point where you have to react, in many
cases you're too late. What you ought to
be doing is planning."
It seems that ever since his father's
untimely heart attack, Ken McKinnon has
spent a great deal of his life planning. And
most people would agree that he does it
extremely well.
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THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1982 PG. w