Loading...
The Rural Voice, 1994-08, Page 10Adrian Vos Swan song for a columnist There is an opportunity for organic growers to find a huge market in the U.S. CanadaExport, a publication from the Canadian government, notes that export ready manufacturers of natural Canadian products are invited to exhibit in the Canada Pavilion at Natural Products Expo (East), to be held September 9 to 11 in Baltimore. This market exceeds sales of $10 billion annually. * * * Much is said about "the way of life" farmcrs enjoy and city people read farm stories about lifestyles with a nostalgic longing for the good old times. What they don't know, and even many farmers do not realize, is that the lifestyle of farmcrs is little different than that of non -farmers, whether they live in urban or rural areas. Lifestyle/family farm, it has diffcrent meanings for different people. The old perception of the family farm was that of a closely knit family where the work was shared among all members. This is still the way on a very few farms but more and more a family farm is defined as one where the family owns and manages the operation, even if the family employs 50 people. The divergence between the old and the new perception began with the school consolidation. When the little red school houses closed, the children were bused to towns and cities to mingle with children of various backgrounds. They quickly learned that the city kids were paid to cut the lawn while they, in many cases, were expected to slop the hogs as part of the family. Thcy soon began to sec the hard labour on the farm as child labour and before long they, too, had to be paid to work in the barn or on the field. While in the cities it was already accepted that both spouses worked outside the home, the greater demands of the children were partly responsible for the farm spouses emulating their city counterparts and one spouse finding outside employment. That hallowed rural lifestyle doesn't exist any more, except in 6 THE RURAL VOICE some rare cases. This may be regrettable, but is a fact that cannot be denied. * * * Thcre comes an end for everything in life. Now the time has come for me to end 22 years of farm writing. It began with a small column in the local newspapers which I called "Agricultural Tidbits". It soon appeared in 11 weeklies from Mount Forest to Dresden. This was aimcd at the non -farmer to make him better understand what farmers were up against. Encouraged by the publisher, Keith Roulston, I took a number of writing courses and broadened my market. I wrote articles in Ontario and Western Canadian farm magazines and sold articles in England and in the U.S. I am particularly proud that at least one of my efforts was translated into Spanish for the Latin American market. My main interest remained with The Rural Voice in which, in the beginning, I wrote extensively, so extensively, in fact, that one of my colleagues at the Pork Board used to call it "The Rural Vos". This was also the time that I won six national writing awards from "The Canadian Farm Writers Federation" in competition with farm writers across Canada, an accomplishment of which I am very proud. When I retired from active farming nine years ago, I gradually have attended fewer farm meetings until at present I hardly attend any. This leaves most information I receive to come from the farm press. This second hand information is not satisfactory. I have enjoyed the opportunity and Reflecting back on 22 years of writing the trust by the various publishers of The Rural Voice. I am extremely grateful to you, the readers, for the support and criticism you have given me, the odd time in a letter to the editor, sometimes by telephone, but mostly when I met you at a show or a meeting. I also appreciate the letters critical of my opinion. A writer of a column is, by necessity, arrogant, or he couldn't write it. The letters have helped to keep me from getting too conceited. I will miss all of this. I dug up some old issues. In the October of 1975 issue, I opened the debate on foreign land ownership in an article, when an ad by Canada Permanent Trust, in The London Free Press asked for 100 to 1,000 acres of land for cash money. In the same issue I wrote in my column about the dangers of absentee ownership. We all know what happened since. Maybe it was a needless alarm. In November of that year I bemoaned the fact that so few farm women attended farm meetings, despite the fact that Gerry Fortune was the president of the Huron County Federation of Agriculture. I wrote that even when they do attend, many leave it to their husband to speak for the farm. This has changed to some extent as more women are willing to take on positions of leadership than when I wrote that column. In August 1980 I commented on the fact that many European and American corporate farms went out of business because of low profits. I figured that the end of these moneyed giants was near. Now we know that this has not happened, at least not in the U.S. Giant chicken and hog farms prosper. When they will choke on the manure they produce is anyone's guess, but they may find a way to process the stuff. In July of the same year Gisele Ireland began her column. Being younger than I by a considerable margin, we likely will enjoy her wit for many years to come. I was fortunate that I could see both the farmer's and the consumer's 1