The Rural Voice, 1989-02, Page 19we've got to be very careful of making
sure that our county structures remain
strong. Our county structure is one
that is the envy of many many groups,
not just agricultural groups either."
But as the OFA argued in a cabinet
meeting with Premier David Peterson,
"without the checkoff, nothing else
happens." OFA president Brigid Pyke
explained to Peterson, George notes,
that the OFA contributes close to a
quarter of the Canadian Federation of
Agriculture's funding — $148,000
based on there being 70,000 farmers
in Ontario, regardless of the fact that
only about 23,000 farmers pay mem-
bership dues. Without the OFA's
contribution to CFA, Pyke argued,
"things are going to start falling apart
at our national lobbying level."
"You could just see that that sunk
into Peterson immediately," George
says.
OFA HEAD OFFICE
At the same time, however, the
OFA head office has been criticized
over the past year for high staff turn-
over and its need of what is perceived
to be a large operating budget, includ-
ing a salary bill of more than a million
dollars.
"I will defend to any county
federation or individual member the
perceived top-heavyness of OFA,"
George replies, adding that staff tum -
overs, a result of the hot Toronto job
market, "were greatly exaggerated."
As for the budget, George is
similarly blunt: "Do you want a
rinky-dink, hit and miss outfit or do
you want an outfit that's going to go
in there on a professional basis?"
"I can understand that it becomes
difficult for a farmer who's struggling
to pay his bills to look at the OFA
structure and see that in Toronto we
have 16 or 17 staff people and we're
paying some of them salaries that
would probably keep that farmer and
his family for two years or three years.
But you have to have those people in
order to have an organization that can
stand nose to nose with other lobby
groups and nose to nose with civil
servants and politicians. I think that
we are by no means as professional as
we should be ... I think our new
executive director (Carl Sulliman) is
going to bring us a lot of new ideas.
He is an ultimate professional."
RURAL DEVELOPMENT
For Roger George, in short, money
isn't the bottom line. Take the special
grains program, which over the past
two years has injected two billion
dollars into Canadian agriculture.
Such "subsidy" payments may not be
"the right thing to do" from an econ-
omic perspective, George says, "But I
do believe that economic policy and
social policy are two totally different
things, and in agriculture I think social
policy has to be paramount."
"I don't believe that we can rely
only on the laws of economics to
dictate what happens to agriculture
because ultimately over time you're
going to end up with just large
farming corporations."
"There have to be social and
humanitarian considerations in farm
policy. You kind of wonder whether
politicians aren't just brokers of inter-
ests rather than makers and developers
of sound policy. Again it comes
down to a vision, not just a vision of
agriculture but a vision of the rural
community."
For George, that "vision" entails
a concerted effort by government,
industry, and agriculture "to make
sure that the towns and villages
remain strong."
"Far too much of the money that is
generated in rural Ontario, and partic-
ularly in agriculture, ends up down on
Bay Street. A farmer probably pays
30 to 40 per cent of his gross income
to the banks in the form of interest.
And where does that money go? It
whistles off down to Toronto and pre-
cious little of it comes back to be rein-
vested in any form in rural Ontario. It
goes into more concrete and steel
down in the golden horseshoe and "
then it goes offshore, it goes down to
the United States in investment, it
goes anywhere but to rural Ontario.
We've got to reverse that."
George says he would like to see a
"Ministry of Rural Development" that
would devise long-term strategies for
rural Ontario. "I'm talking billions of
dollars over a long period of time."
Those strategies would include care-
fully placed industrial development in
the province's smaller communities.
"I wouldn't be too concerned in
this area if somebody wanted to set up
a small industrial park, because to my
mind that's the only way a place like
Powassan is going to survive."
But those strategies would also
protect the family farm. There will
always be highly capitalized agricul-
ture, George says, but "if economics
dictate that the only way you can
make money is by having 500 acres of
corn, that just spells ultimate doom. I
think we've got to find a way that the
farmer on 200 acres can stay there
without having to get caught up in the
rat -race of super -efficiency and a
constant drive to do things bigger and
cheaper."
"Maybe we could farm smarter
instead of farming harder and bigger."
Farming "smarter," he adds, means
finding ways to capitalize on a farm's
assets: by marketing ingeniously, by
investigating agro-forestry, by
strengthening the backbone of the
rural community as a whole.
And farming "smarter" is some-
thing the Georges have learned by
necessity, having scaled down,
searched out profitable markets, built
up their equity, and adjusted to the
"OFA -dominated holding pattern"
which entails part-time help during
busy periods. They've managed
against the odds that have defeated all
too many farmers. And they'd like to
help make those odds far more favour-
able.
"It just isn't worth it in the name of
progress to say that we can afford to
lose thousands and thousands of small
farmers just because they're not totally
efficient," George says. "We have to
find a place for those people."0
FEBRUARY 1989 17