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The Rural Voice, 2003-05, Page 10"Our experience assures lower cost water wells" 103 YEARS' EXPERIENCE Member of Canadian and Ontario Water Well Associations • Farm • Industrial • Suburban • Municipal Licensed by the Ministry of the Environment it Pr NI epi: 4011. , 834 ill 111 Ilei► ?' DAVIDSON WELL DRILLING LTD. WINGHAM Serving Ontario Since 1900 519-357-1960 WINGHAM 519-664-1424 WATERLOO DRAINAGE Specializing in: * Plastic TOe Insb n * BRIM & mer Sere * Septic System dation Traditional & Alternative System For Quality, Experience, & Service, call: Wayne Coo Q59 9D 23 © 7390 R.R. M2 Zurich, Ont. NOM 2T0 • ra • tow PARKER ®PARKER Limns -rem www.hay.net/-drainage 6 THE RURAL VOICE Keith Roulston Battling the iron rule of perception Keith Roulston is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice. He lives near Blyth, ON. A perception is an invisible thing, but it has the power to change our entire way of life for good or ill. Farmers have been learning that hard lesson for the last decade, as the entire industry has been turned upside down to deal with the perceptions of urban consumers. For instance, consumer preference for a uniform product triggered the revolution in the pork industry which has seen single -desk selling replaced by contracts and smaller -scale individual producers becoming rarer while larger farms, contracted to meet the specifications of the packer, take more and more of the market. There was nothing really wrong with the pork being sold 10 years ago. It wasn't bad tasting let alone unhealthy, but consumers decided it was important that colour, texture and size of cuts all be uniform, and so it must be. The biggest political issue of the day, the Nutrient Management Act, deals in equal parts with a real problem and perception. There have always been cases where surface water was fouled by manure but our perceptions have changed from the extreme where we felt manure runoff in a stream wasn't a problem to the extreme where manure is seen as a danger the public health, not a valuable resource. Critical urbanites often point out that human waste must be processed in a treatment plant while farmers are allowed to spread "raw sewage" on fields. They're sure this is a problem and the NMA attempts to deal with the issue. I recently talked to an organic dairy farmer who invites the public onto to his farm. Some accuse him of being cruel to his calves by keeping them in calf hutches. Once he explains the situation generally they realize he is not mistreating the animals but protecting their health. Some perceptions just happen, some are the product of companies investing a fortune to change consumers' thinking. After this kind of brainwashing, a majority of people prefer the "expected" med-iocrity of a McDonald's hamburger to risking the unknown while searching for a far superior hamburger in some small unfamiliar restaurant. Our main streets are dying because we rural people have accepted the perception life isn't full unless we can shop in a store with huge selection, even though our local towns and villages offer more selection than our parents could have dreamed of — or did until we starved them of business to the point any stores remaining probably shrank inventory to survive. Changing perceptions make me worry about the future of our rural lifestyle. The ideal of getting "back to the land" gave rural living a fashion- able actractiveness from the late 1960s through the '70s and '80s. But in the past decade the urban media has turned toward the "future" of urban areas and away from the rural "past". As a writer, for instance, you're unlikely to get an urban publisher to accept your work if it's on a rural theme unless you're a legend like Alice Munro. Today the perception is that life beyond Mississauga is barely worth living. In fact it often seems in fashionable media circles that living more than three blocks from a Starbucks is a hardship. This has a real effect on our communities' ability to attract doctors or profess- ionals. And while we in rural areas should have a natural advantage in processing farm products, urban processing company managers fear they won't be able to attract people to work in a plant that's in a small town farther than, say Kitchener, from Toronto, centre of the universe. We know all this is silly, but these perceptions shape our world as much as politics or weather. And we in rural areas can't spend as much money as McDonald's to shape people's thinking.0