The Rural Voice, 1990-02, Page 12Put Metropolitan
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MARY BEDARD
John Fennell, general manager of
the Ontario Plowmen's Association is
pleased to announce the appointment
of Mary Bedard to the position of
assistant general manager.
As assistant general manager of the
Ontario Plowmen's Association, Mary's
responsibilities include general admin-
istration of the International Plowing
Match and Farm Machinery Show, the
largest outdoor farm show in Canada.
The next Plowing Match will be held
September 18 to 22, 1990 near Paris,
Ontario in Brant County.
Ontario Plowmen's Association
I 1%s., Guelph Agriculture Centre
a Box I030
s p Guelph. Ontario NIH 6NI
•.�.�° 15191'6'-3506 76'.3641
8 THE RURAL VOICE
COUNTING TRUE
COSTS IN FARMING
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth,
is the originator and past publisher of
The Rural Voice.
It stormed again the other day.
They closed the highways, and the
local economy nearly ground to a halt,
except for the utility companies that
reaped profits as we tried to keep
warm and the autobody shops that
would be making extra money.
The storm let up for a few hours,
then settled into a pattern of gusty
winds and snow flurries. I didn't
bother to ask my neighbour to blow
out my lane — the wind would just
blow it back in again. So I sat in my
house, snowdrifts piled up around, and
contemplated the vagaries of the
world, like the idea that we must be
able to compete on a world-wide level.
World-wide. Level playing field.
I wonder if the level playing field in
Georgia is piled high with snow. I
wonder if the furnace is chugging
away in Argentina or New Zealand.
Heck, while we closed down to
Mother Nature, life went on as usual
100 miles away outside the snow belt,
let alone 1,000 or 10,000 miles away.
I'm glad that, not being a farmer like
my neighbours, I'm not expected to
earn my living competing with farm-
ers in countries where, if they see one
flake of snow, people panic.
In these talks about market econ-
omics and world competition, Charles
Darwin and his theory of evolution
often get a good workout. But people
aren't getting the whole point from
Darwin. Those who would apply the
theory of evolution to economics (and
this isn't new: it was used a century
ago to justify putting children to work
in mines) emphasize the survival of
the fittest angle. But survival of the
fittest didn't mean that only tigers and
polar bears survived. The "fittest" in
Darwin's theory were those animals
that best adapted to their environment.
A tiger might thrive in a jungle in
India, but it wouldn't survive long in
the Canadian tundra, and the polar
bear wouldn't last in the jungle.
But relating to a particular envir-
onment gets left out of marketplace
economics. These pie -in -the sky
theorists would like us to believe the
whole world has the same environ-
ment. They may be right, because if
we try to compete on an equal footing,
farmers world-wide will end up with
the same result: a ruined environment.
We can see the results around us
— and we're only beginning to hear
about the "global marketplace." How
many fields near you have suffered
from compaction or erosion because
they have been used to grow cash
crops year after year when they should
have been left in pasture, or better yet,
bush? How many waterholes and
wells in your neck of the woods have
been dry because farmers trying to pry
every last cent they can out of their
farms have drained their fields to the
point that the water table has fallen?
And these are only the most visible
results. How much additional acid
rain will we suffer from as we use
more and more energy to create an
artificial working environment which
other countries get for free? For that
matter, how much pollution will we
cause shipping goods all around the
world because we've found someone
in a far corner of the earth who'll do
the job for less?
Years ago I heard an environ-
mentalist say there should be two sets
of books kept for every business: one
to record economic costs the way we
already do, and one to record environ-
mental costs. The dollar figure may
look good in the short-term, but in the
long run it's going to be much more
important to save the environment.
In the long run, creating a sustain-
able system, a system that allows
farmers (and society in general) to
adapt the best methods for their own
environment, makes more sense,
environmentally and economically.
And Charles Darwin would smile.0