HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Rural Voice, 2006-03, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
water wells"
106 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Member of Canadian
and Ontario
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• Farm
• Industrial
• Suburban
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Licensed
by the Ministry
of the Environment
DAVIDSON
WELL DRILLING LTD.
WINGHAM
Serving Ontario Since 1900
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519-664-1424 WATERLOO
CANADIAN
CO-OPERATIVE
WOOL GROWERS
LIMITED
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WOOL ADVANCE PAYMENTS
* Skirted Fleeces
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For more information contact:
WINGHAM
WOOL DEPOT
John Farrell
R.R. 2, Wingham, Ontario
Phone/Fax 519-357-1058
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
A matter of choices
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Blyth, ON.
I was driving along with my low-
end Chevy Cavalier one day, meeting
all these people with SUVs and cars
worth twice or more the value of
mine. I was thinking these people
must be making a lot more money
than I do to be able to afford such
expensive transportation. But then I
realized that wasn't necessarily so.
Some of the owners of those
expensive vehicles may not have
more money — they simply put more
importance on having an impressive
vehicle. They may be like my
daughters and their spouses who,
newly married, shelled out big
monthly payments to lease SUVs.
There are economists and
commentators who claim we have
less disposable income today than we
had 20 years ago — a claim I tend to
discount when I see how quickly
people acquire the most recent toys
like digital cameras, Ipods and big -
screen TVs. Still, some people tell
me, people are simply financing these
toys by going deeper in debt.
The reality remains: these people
are making choices in how to spend
their money. There are few real
necessities in life. We need air, which
is free. We need water, which used to
be free. We need food, which is
getting to be freer as food costs
remain stagnant while incomes go up.
We also need a shelter from the
extremes of the weather, though this
quickly becomes a matter of choice
too. Some people survive in make-
shift shacks in a barrio while others
feel they simply must have a multi-
million -dollar mansion — or two.
Nearly all of our money is spent
on choices. We create our own
reality, our own set of lifestyle rules
that, for instance, makes driving that
SUV become a "necessity".
Those choices are shaped by our
culture including what we see on TV
and the movies. And of course that
culture is shaped by the billions spent
in advertising, in particular television
advertising, that convinces us we
simply must have that product. So we
only need shelter to keep us warm
and dry, but we convince ourselves
that we must upgrade our basic need
to have luxury on our floors and
walls, in our furniture, in our kitchen
and bathroom. In Canada most of us
must have transportation, but we
could get by with my Cavalier or
something even cheaper. The
majority of people, however, feel
they must have more — including
farmers with four-wheel-drive, club -
cab pick-ups that seldom have
anything dirty the back box.
Which makes me think that the
people who do the marketing of food
haven't served themselves, food
processors or food producers very
well. If you can convince people they
simply must spend twice or three
times as much as they could for trans-
portation, why has food become
something where low price is a
deciding factor in choice? Why has
paying more for a necessity like food
become a luxury we can't afford, yet
people can be convinced they. must
have a 3,000 -square -foot house with
a luxury kitchen in which they hardly
ever cook?
Farmers are told over and over
they must live within the reality of
the prices they are offered by a food
system in which consumers will only
pay so much money for food. But
what we should realize, looking
around us, is that reality can be
shifted by clever marketing.
Farmers are regularly told they're
part of the value chain in food and
they must do their part by providing
the product their processors want. If
the "value" chain were really work-
ing then the marketers of that food
should be returning the favour by
changing consumer reality in a way
what allows farmers to receive the
income they need to serve their cust-
omers. It hasn't been in the interests
of food marketers to spend the money
and effort to change consumers
attitudes so farmers continue to be
asked to get by on less.0
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