The Rural Voice, 1986-04, Page 79•
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78 THE RURAL VOICE
KEITH ROULSTON
Future rests
on individuals
While concrete action to turn the
horrid economics of farming
around has been conspicuous by its
absence in the plans of both
federal and provincial govern-
ments, assistance to help farmers
get out of farming has been plen-
tiful.
The federal government helped
things out by dropping the capital
gains tax. The provincial govern-
ment set up a program of advisers
to help farmers straighten up their
affairs and get into other jobs.
For everyone who is concerned
about the future of agriculture,
these government moves create a
dilemma. From an individual
stand point, helping some farm
families get out of the business can
be the best favour we can do for
them.
Usually making the decision to
quit is the hardest. There's a sense
of relief when the decision is final-
ly over. The tension goes and all
people want to do is just tie up the
loose ends as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, by embrac-
ing the government's policies to
move off the land, we may be play-
ing right into the hands of govern-
ment and the banks who see a
future of fewer, bigger farm units
that won't necessarily be better,
but will be easier to deal with
because there will be fewer of
them. We may, in short, be helping
kill off the family farm.
We're often faced then with the
dilemma of encouraging people to
keep up the fight to get a better
deal from government and banks
at a cost to their health and family
or advising them to sell out, and
thus take the pressure off
authorities for real change in the
basic problems of farming and
perhaps just leading to another
crisis down the line.
It's a classic problem much the
same as religion once posed. For
peasants and miners and factory
workers of past centuries, religion
was a refuge from the hardship of
their daily lives. The church
preached that daily suffering
would be rewarded in heaven.
For the individual this is a great
comfort. People flocked to their
churches several times a week to
soak up this assurance that what
they were suffering today was only
temporary and they would have
ever -lasting freedom in heaven.
It was not good for society as a
whole, however. So long as the
church preached acceptance of the
current situation, people were
unlikely to get organized enough to
fight for better conditions. The
warlords, the land owners, the
mine and factory owners and the
government were free to go on
with rules that created great wealth
and power for a few while keeping
most people in grinding poverty.
It was a situation that led Karl
Marx to label religion "the opiate
of the masses" because it made
them content not to struggle, much
the way someone who had been
drugged would be. It caused Marx
to feel that religion must be bann-
ed in his new communist world.
Ironically, while Marx'
philosophy has led to the official
banning of religion in Russia and
China, our western world has seen
a decline in religion almost as
significant. The predominant role
of the church in our local and na-
tional life has evaporated par-
ticularly since the Second World
War. At the same time there has
been a great move upward in the
living standards of the majority of
the population. Is there a connec-
tion? Some sociologist will likely
get a lot of money to study the con-
nection some day.
For the modern farmer, when to
say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not
going to take it anymore" and
when to say the fight isn't worth
the personal costs anymore, will
continue to be a dilemma. The
future of our rural community
may hang on those thousands of
individual decisions. ❑
Keith Roulston is the originator
and former publisher of The
Rural Voice.