The Rural Voice, 1986-04, Page 13with seven others including present
well-knowns, Gordon Hill of Huron
County and John Phillips, editor of
Farm and Country. It brought together
Union and Federation leaders. It drew
on the expertise of many industry
leaders and engaged the professional
services of Hedlin, Menzies and
Associates, management consultants,
and of Dr. Roger Schwass, project
director.
The committee's report was detailed
and extensive and dealt with almost
every aspect of agriculture. It recom-
mended one general farm organization
to replace the various voices speaking
for farmers at that time. It came down
firmly on the side of marketplace solu-
tions as far as farm income was con-
cerned. I quote directly from the
report, under its heading General
Marketing:
"The Committee is convinced that
an organized method of production
planning in agriculture on a con-
tinuous basis is absolutely essential and
unavoidable. It is a logical develop-
ment in the steady commercialization
of agriculture. It is also basic to a
realistic market orientation by farmers.
We wish to make abundantly clear
what the real issues and choices of sup-
ply management are. In most sectors
of the economy, managed production
is the normal practice. Production is
geared to market requirements at pre-
determined prices, to ensure a desired
return to resources. Wages in most in-
dustries are established through
negotiations with labour unions.
Management makes the decision to in-
crease or decrease employment and
production to suit its objectives. Socie-
ty has been prepared to accept
whatever costs are associated with this
practice of supply management.
Agriculture has been the only large
sector of the economy without real
production management.
The real question with respect to
supply management in agriculture is
not whether it is needed or feasible.
Supply management will be a fact of
life. The question to be decided is:
Who will do the management?"
This last sentence should be
pondered carefully.
Then came the prosperous seventies.
It is said that adversity is good for the
soul. In any case I believe that there is
little doubt that the prosperity of the
seventies played a large part in slowing
the development of strong, effective
Cameron MacAuley, Ripley,
Ontario, is a former president
of the Bruce County
Federation of Agriculture.
marketing organizations, which seem-
ed imminent in the late sixties.
Established farmers saw their equity
increase each year and prices returned
a healthy cash flow. Under these cir-
cumstances, the prosperity toward rug-
ged individualism overcame that
toward co-operation in far too many
cases. True, egg producers and turkey
growers got their act together, but the
red meat giants went into hibernation.
They truly believed that we had arrived
in the promised land and all that we
had to do was produce and produce.
Farmers were not the only ones who
misread the future. When 1 hear
wiseacres decrying farmers for expand-
ing their operation in the seventies
with unfortunate results, I am remind-
ed that OMAF, banks, OAC, and FCC
were all likewise amiss in their judge-
ment. The difference is that farmers
were more likely to pay the economic
price for these judgements than were
the spokesmen for the institutions.
As the seventies drew to a close, so
also ended prosperity for those sectors
without good marketing systems. The
beef industry was already in depression
and the pork industry was about to
follow, with only one year of pro-
fitability (1982) in the eighties. The
average market price of pork in 1985
will be not much above the average
price of ten years ago. In the same
time -frame, milk prices to producers
have almost doubled.
The tragedy is that when the
economic crunch came, our leaders
disregarded the lessons painfully learn-
ed by past experience. Instead of forth-
rightly latching on to a marketing
strategy and thereby stemming the tide
of depression, they did an intellectual
somersault. They went from being rug-
ged free enterprises, with nothing but
disdain for government involvement,
to the other extreme of putting their
highest priority on government sub-
sidies.
Government subsidies are justified,
especially to bridge temporary situa-
tions until permanent marketplace
solutions are put in place. However,
subsidies pose problems. The record
clearly shows that governments at any
level have no intention of allocating
the many hundred of millions of
dollars that would be needed to solve
farm problems through subsidies.
Also, past experience has shown that
government -subsidized floor prices
have a propensity, after a few years, to
become ceiling prices because they lead
to continued overproduction. On the
other hand, either the free market or
supply management, each in its own
way, would restrict overproduction.
The most hopeful trend of the past
year is that more farmers are saying
APRIL 1986 11