Townsman, 1991-11, Page 25are exacting on the rural communities.
"I never know what to expect when
I pick up that phone. Sometimes it's a
farmer at the end of his rope and con-
templating suicide," says Brian Ire-
land, a counsellor with the Queen's
Bush Rural Ministries, a help group
set up by the United Church in Huron
and Bruce Counties. He fields calls
daily from farmers who have fallen so
far in debt through a lethal mixture of
poor prices, high interest rates, and
escalating input costs that their lives
have disintegrated.
"When I go to visit them, some-
times I find his wife has become sick
of the situation, has left with the chil-
dren and the furniture, and he's trying
to cope with the farm and an empty
house. It really is tragic," says Ireland,
who's been through the pro-
cess of having to stop farming
himself, rebuilt his life, and
now offers his experience to
help others.
"Farmers really never came
out of the 1982 recession, and
when you add on the 1990-91
recession, it's having devas-
tating effects," says Dr. Gary
Davidson, head of planning
and development for Huron
County.
For instance, there are 17
vacant stores in Exeter this
fall, and Mayor Bruce Shaw
said it's been caused by the farm cri-
sis, combined with the recession.
Usborne Reeve Pat Down, who
farms in partnership with her husband
Bob, says that for the first time in her
lifetime, farmers are falling behind in
paying their municipal taxes. The
township has always been considered
to be one of the most prosperous and
stable farming. "Even with the (farm
tax) rebate they have to pay their taxes
first, and they just can't come up with
the money first
Welfare rolls in Huron have more
than doubled in the last year, and
many farmers would qualify if they
were eligible.
"It's pretty sad when you could sell
your farm, go on welfare, and see
your standard of living improve," says
Jack Wilkinson, first vice-president of
the Ontario Federation of Agriculture,
and second vice president of the
i'
Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
According to federal government's
Agriculture Canada, Canadian farmers
will only take home $3.3 billion after
expenses in the crop year just ended
September 30, 23 per cent less than in
1989 and down a stunning 39 per cent
from 1988. Prices have dropped in all
commodity groups — grain, oilseeds,
cattle, hogs, and poultry. Even the
bumper crops harvested here in mid-
western Ontario and on the prairies,
combined with a small decline in the
cost of inputs, were not large enough
to offset the decline in farm income.
Because of the dismal market condi-
tions this year, farmers have turned to
the federal and provincial govern-
ments to bail them out, but even a 27
per cent increase in government subsi-
some control of their prices through
farm marketing boards. But they're
getting nervous too as they're faced
with a double threat from prices that
only increased half the rate of infla-
tion as well as the trade negotiations
currently under way for the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Should the new GATT agreement
lower border controls, there could be a
flood of cheap imported dairy and
poultry products coming into Canada
undermining the supply -managed
marketing board system.
The intense competition would
bankrupt many dairy and poultry
farmers, says Gordon Hill of Varna,
who was president of the OFA for
seven years in the mid sixties. Since
his retirement from farming he sells
real estate in Clinton. "I
dies — to $2.7 billion — has done lit-
tle to stem the hemorrhaging on
farms.
Farmers say that prices are lower, in
relative terms, than in the heart of the
Depression in the 1930s. Farm costs
have risen 31 per cent since 1981,
according to the Ontario Corn Produc-
ers Association, but corn prices have
dropped by $27 a tonne, soybeans by
$58 a tonne and wheat by $81 a tonne.
Beef farmers are in no better shape.
In 1982, for instance, they received 91
cents a pound for steers, while this
summer, the price sagged as low as 78
cents a pound. Hogs are no better,
with farmers ending up with less than
$100 for a finished hog, the lowest in
five years.
The only farmers who have
remained relatively unscathed so far
are the dairy producers and the so -
can't see how dairy and
poultry farmers can survive
without it (supply manage-
ment). They'd be in the same
)oat as the grains and
oilseeds farmers.
"Canadian society is being
misled to think that the Unit-
ed States and the Europcans
are prepared to cut subsi-
dies. They'll just subsidize
differently," says Hill.
Hill says the farm service
industry in the arca is almost
in as difficult position as
farmers. "It's not a prosperous indus-
try. Farm machinery dealers are clos-
ing all around us. Thcy and fertilizer
and chemical suppliers arc on shaky
ground too as they've given credit to
farmers and are depending on them to
sell their crop to pay their bills.
Gordon's son Bev, who heads up a
large commercial farming and eleva-
tor operation near Varna, was one of
the organizers behind the grass roots
farm protest movement "Line in the
Dirt" that drew to over a thousand
farmers to a protest meeting in Luck -
now in September. A saying Bev
coined "fields of dreams to acres of
anguish" caught the eye of the urban
media, and resulted in extensive cov-
erage of the farm problem in major
newspapers such as the Toronto Star
and TV networks CBC and CTV.
Crop prices have fallen so badly that
called "feather farmers", who have some farmers who had stored the
TOWNSMAN/NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1991 23