The Rural Voice, 1991-03, Page 7COMMUNICATING
Congratulations on the quality and
liveliness of The Rural Voice, Decem-
ber 1990. I discovered it recently and
enjoyed it from cover to cover.
I was interested to see how frustra-
ted some of your writers are. Mervyn
Erb, fed up with that dreadful Mon-
treal Gazette article by William John-
son; and Adrian Vos with his "health
freaks who would rather use LSD."
I'm a frustrated farmer too, and I
think the common cause is the low
market price for our products and the
high cost of our farm inputs. This is
more the result of government policy
than the fault of the consumer. Willi-
am Johnson was simply taking the line
of the classical economists who con-
trol policy and equate agriculture with
any other industry.
I believe farming is unique; it is the
"bottom line" syndrome that govern-
ment tries to apply that is destroying
us. Maybe the Europeans do have the
right answer; they certainly support
their farmers. Our government simply
wants to throw us into equal competi-
tion world-wide. We have been taught
to over -produce, and the result has
been to drive prices down to a point
where we can no longer make a living.
However, if farmers are to regain
clout, I think we have to start commu-
nicating more with the people who
have far more voting power than we
do; the urban consumers. Let's ex-
plain our problems to them; but at the
same time we have to listen to their
worries. We have far more in com-
mon with them than we have differ-
ences. We don't get anywhere by
calling each other names, or indulging
in one-way communication. We are
all concerned about health; it is the
farm families that are most at risk
from pesticides, but toxic run-off from
our farms can affect large numbers of
people.
If we concentrate more on satisfy-
ing domestic markets and less on
dicey exports, and work to make the
price of food better reflect the cost of
producing it, we might get the needed
recognition of a job well done.
Barbara J. Guard
Ridgeville, Ontario
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MARCH 1991 3