The Rural Voice, 1992-04, Page 10FARM
SAFETY
FACTS
FROM THE
WEST WAWANOSH
MUTUAL INSURANCE
COMPANY
SAFETY TIPS:
* Provide sufficient overhead
lights to ensure good lighting
in work areas.
* Use additional lights over
stationary tools or work
benches.
* Portable lights will eliminate
shadows when working on
equipment.
* Light coloured walls will
reflect light more effectively.
When you need insurance call:
Frank Foran
R.R. 2, Lucknow 528-3824
Lyons & Mulhern
46 West St., Goderich 524-2664
Kenneth B. MacLean
R.R. 2, Paisley 368-7537
John Nixon
R.R. 5, Brussels 887-9417
Donald R. Simpson
R.R. 3, Ripley 395-5362
Delmar Sproul
R.R. 3, Auburn .. 529-7273
Laurie Campbell
Brussels ....................... 887-9051
Slade Insurance Brokers Inc.
Kincardine 396-9513
Owen Sound 376-1774
West Wawanosh
Mutual Insurance
Dungannon
Ont. NOM 1R0
519-529-7922
6 THE RURAL VOICE
TIME TO WORK SMART,
NOT JUST HARD
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth,
is the originator and publisher of The
Rural Voice.
The sun is warming, the brown earth
is reappearing and the tempo of work on
the farm is picking up as planting season
approaches. The calmer times of winter,
times to read and think and learn, have
passed and for some farmers, the chance
has gone to upgrade their skills.
The winter months are traditionally
time for farm workshop meetings
sponsored by everyone from OMAF to
farm suppliers to producer groups like
the Soil and Crop Improvement
Association. It's a time when farmers
can hear speakers who might give them
new ideas of how to increase production,
cut costs and keep afloat for at least
anothcr year. Attending many of these
meetings I'm always surprised at how
much is new every year in a supposedly
ancicnt profession like farming and I'm
impressed by the number of inquiring
minds there are in the farm community.
But something said at one of these
recent sessions made me turn things
around and see a glass I'd always taken
as half full can also be seen as half
empty. One of the organizers was asking
people to hand in their evaluation forms
because attendance had been dropping at
the sessions and the group wanted to see
how they could do things better so more
farmers would come. I looked at the
room anew. I saw 80 farmers in the room
all right, but I saw for the first time all
the farmers who weren't there. I started
remembering that it's often the same
faces I see year after year, seminar after
seminar.
Nearly everything we hear about the
future these days says that it is the inno-
vative and informed people who will sur-
vive in the intense competition of the
future. Knowledge is the key to tomor-
row, yet a lot of farmers just aren't doing
a lot to learn. There are leaders who are
finding new ways to grow crops at less
cost, new ways to prevent damage to the
environment, but they're looked on at
best as tinkerers and at worst as kooks.
It has been traditional, of course, for
there to be skepticism about "experts"
and since "experts" have helped get lots
of farmers into trouble in the last couple
of decades, a touch of cynicism is
healthy. Paperwork and learning are
things some people went into farming to
escape so the last thing they want is to
subject themselves to it at seminars. But
you can listen without having to swallow
whole everything suggested by the
speakers and you can set your own
standards once you get back to your own
farm and not have to live by the rules set
down by the "experts".
While the trend of these meetings for
many years seemed to be on spending
more to get more, the trend of the
meetings these days seems to be more on
how to cut input costs through better
management. Saving money is
something farmers always like to hear
about no matter whether times are good
or bad.
What's impressed me at meetings
this year is the number of speakers who
haven't been from Guelph or Ridgetown,
but have been other farmers who have
questioned the old ways and have
developed new ways of getting the job
done, perhaps increasing production or
cutting costs (and in some cases both).
Research and development is really
what these farmers have been up to and
we hear all the time that R&D is the key
to the future. They're leaders and
pioneers who are trying, in the field, new
techniques that may benefit all farmers
in the future.
Still there's the problem of why there
aren't more farmers at these meetings
listening to them. Part of the answer may
be that many farmers these days have to
hold down day jobs so they can farm at
night. Whatever the cause, it's too bad
because farmers today need every edge
they can get.0
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