The Rural Voice, 1996-11, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
water wells"
96 YEARS' EXPERIENCE
Member of Canadian
and Ontario
Water Well Associations
• Farm
• Industrial
• Suburban
• Municipal
Licensed
by the Ministry
of the Environment
,•
I
id Ell
- li■al. r ,� 1��
l• t;
DAVIDSON
WELL DRILLING LTD.
WINGHAM
Serving Ontario Since 1900
519-357-1960 WINGHAM
519-664-1424 WATERLOO
• CABLE • ROPE • CHAIN
pJj;flf
Plus!
mr d co, 23 -In -rour-910
-
CABLE
• Galvanized Aircraft
Cable 1/16" to 3/8"
• Wire Rope 3/8" to 3/4'
• Stainless Steel Cable 1/16" -1/4'
• PVC E. Clear Coated Cable 1/8" - 3/16
ROPE
• Polypropylene - 1/4" to 1/2"
• Nylon 1/4", 1/2", 5/8", 1'
• Hemp 112", 3/4', 7/8', 1"
CHAIN
Grade 30, 3/16" to 1/2"
Wide range of thimbles,
shackles, cable clamps, etc.
Above are stock items
Other sizes and grades
available by order
ideal
Paint Supplier!
519-524-9671
Fax: (519) 524-6962
84 Kingston Street,
Goderich, Ontario N7A 3K4
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Is it me ... or the millenium?
A recent book by a Canadian
professor looks at the weird things
that happen when people approach
the change of a millennium. I wonder
if he looked at agriculture.
Is it just me, or do people in
agriculture seem to be running to
change just for
the sake of
change? People
are rushing to
pull down old
institutions that
have worked on
farmers' behalf
for decades, and
replace them
with — well,
nobody seems
to know with
what.
The trends in
agriculture
remind me of
passengers in an airplane deciding
they simply must jump out of the
plane,'but not checking until they've
leapt to see if they have a parachute.
People are pushing to get rid of
marketing boards yet the only thing
they have in mind is the hardy
individual against the open market.
Take a look at the campaign
against the Canadian Wheat Board
out west and you may see the pattern
for what's ahead for other marketing
agencies. A relatively small group of
wheat and barley farmers, who see
themselves as able to take advantage
of their special position either
through size or through proximity to
the U.S. border, want to pull down
the entire system for all the other
farmers who feel they have an
advantage by having the Wheat
Board negotiate for them from a
position of strength. They say what
they really want is dual marketing,
being free to sell to the Wheat Board
or on their own, but nearly everybody
recognizes that dual marketing is the
beginning of the end for the Board.
Wheat Board critics like Alberta
Agriculture Minister Walter Paszk-
owski say they don't want to kill the
Board, they want to change it. But at
the same time, he says one of the
changes he'd like to see is to make
the Board "more volatile". That, I
suspect, the the one thing many
farmers wouldn't like to see. The
wheat board was created to give
farmers a little stability and a little
control over the markets.
Change, of course, is essential
since conditions never remain the
same. We're going through changes
now that are greater than any seen
since the last great depression in the
1930s. It's fair, then, to expect our
marketing boards to change. They
must, for instance, take into account
the need to create niche products as
the Dairy Farmers of Ontario did in
allowing separation of milk from
organic farms. One of the complaints
from the West is that everything must
go through the same channels and
there is no way for people who grow
organic grains to market separately.
As Paszkowski says, it's no
longer in the best interest of farmers
to market bulk commodities. They
must have the mechanism to
differentiate products for special
markets. This is where the growth is.
Perhaps, realistically, it is also
only through pressure from people
like Paszkowski that changes will
come in bodies like the Wheat Board.
Ontario Pork, for instance, adopted
new marketing options after pressure
from both farmers and packers.
Surely it's in the interest of farmers,
however, to bring about more flexible
marketing options without killing the
whole marketing structure. If the
marketing boards are destroyed, the
situation will leave thousands of
individual farmers dealing with a
handful of manufacturers and traders.
Such an imbalance of power has
always been a recipe for helplessness
for the individual.
In reality, despite the fact individ-
ual rights are always the rallying cry
of these changes, the end result of
everything from globalization to
municipal amalgamation has
generally been to make the individual
feel more powerless.
So why then are we rushing
toward these changes? Is it
millennium madness? 0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. He
lives near Blyth, ON.