HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-05-24, Page 5International Scene
mo Can
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 24,1995. PAGE 5.
Mixed farming,
a quaint idea
in this century
How ya gonna keep 'em down on
the farm
After they've seen Par-ee?
Old song title
When I was a kid growing up in — I
confess, Toronto — one of my favourite
getaways was The Farm.
It was a couple of hours drive west of
Hogtown, out in the southwestern Ontario
bush north of Fergus. A hundred acres of
pasture, wheat fields and woodlot, and it was
home to my Uncle Roy and my Aunt Belle.
No TV. No stereo. Oil lamps for
illumination.
It was what is referred to nowadays as a
"mixed farm". Which is to say my Aunt
Belle and Uncle Roy raised a little bit of
everything — chickens, cattle, wheat, barley,
apples, potatoes, onions, turnips, beets, hay,
straw...and incidentally, 10 kids.
Not to mention the by-products of same —
extra-large eggs with yolks the colour of a
Bahamas sunset; creamy, warm milk right
out of the bucket; beefsteak thick as a land
developer's billfold and homemade bread
steaming fresh from the oven.
It was a wonderful way of life — and as
doomed as the Ojibway and Huron ways of
Saving a virtue
When I was young, it was drummed into
me that saving was a virtue second to none.
When one of my relatives gave me money
(an infrequent act), it was assumed without
any word being spoken, that it would go
directly into my savings account.
If it was spent at all, it would not be until
well into the distant future and presumably
then on something important. Had I
expressed the wish, however slight, to go to
the nearest store and spend it on something
frivolous such as candy, I would have been
considered as just another bad example of
the younger generation.
If you were born during the Great
Depression and grew up during World War
II as I did, I think you can understand how
such thinking came to be prevalent. Maybe
that is one reason why I went into the field
of Economics: I wanted to fmd out what the
real truth was about saving.
At any rate it was not long before some
professor spoke lovingly of something called
the Paradox of Thrift. This was taken to
mean, as I recall it, as the fact that savings
was fine up to a point but, if a country saved
too much, it would contribute to a drop in
economic activity. People would be
hoarding their money in savings accounts
and other similar vehicles instead of
stimulating the economy with spending.
When you realize that this was the time
when the teachings of John Maynard Keynes
were at their height it is easy to understand
how such thinking made the rounds.
However, there is more than meets the eye
in the above statement. In a recent study
released by the International Monetary Fund,
the same organization that might be called
life it replaced generations earlier.
The idea of a mixed farm is impossibly
quaint here on the doorstep of the 21st
century. Today, farmers are...well, not
farmers, for starters. They call themselves
beef producers or soybean specialists or
poultry raisers.
My uncle Roy kept a herd of six Holstein
milkers he called by name. Modern
dairymen lose that many cows in a bad
month.
Specialization is the name of the game
today. My aunt used to send the kids on egg
hunts around the barnyard. We'd try and
figure out where Flossie or Pansy had
decided to lay their eggs this week.
In a modem egg operation, the hens have
no place to hide anything, including
themselves. They live hi wire cages piled in
tiers. Their vitaminized, anti-biotic-ed,
hormone-goosed food pellets come by on
one conveyor belt and their eggs leave on
another.
Increasingly, it seems that modern farms
aren't farms at all. They're protein/
carbohydrate factories run by chart-
watching, computer-punching biological
engineers.
There's just one small problem with the
Brave New Agricultural World we've
created. The managers of these hi-tech
operations aren't much better off than the
farmers of my uncle's era. They're still
working twice as hard as most folks, still
getting bushwhacked by bad weather, worse
markets and predatory bank managers.
And they've been demoted from farmer,
upon to bail out Canada if our federal deficit
gets out of control, the fear was expressed
that, far from saving too much money under
the Paradox of Thrift concept, we are
actually not saving enough. The IMF goes
on to say that this failure to save may be the
prime reason for the abnormally high
interest rates which we are being forced to
pay for money borrowed.
Let's take a look at where the money goes
that you save and, by saving, I mean in the
generic sense of the word, not just what you
put in a savings account. Savings is the
source of investment capital which is needed
for the economy, be it of Canada or the
entire industrialized world, so that it can
expand.
By saving today instead of spending too
much money, the savings which are used by
investment can result in higher income and
consumption tomorrow. The IMF also
reports that some economists believe that the
aging population in the western world are
going to start running down its savings just
when the investment requirements of
emerging nations start to increase,
A look at the world's saving rate shows
that it reached its peak in the early 1970s and
has fluctuated downward since that time.
While private saving in most countries has
remained stable, the biggest culprit has been
governments which have run sizeable
deficits since the 1970s.
The IMF calculates that each one per cent
increase in the ratio of government debit to
Gross Domestic Product (the sum total of all
spending in our economy) adds 14/1 00 per
cent to long-term interest rates. The IMF
goes on to suggest that the same deficit-
prone governments (such as Canada) are the
cause of 4/5ths of all the increases in real
interest rates since the 1970s.
The IMF even goes so far as to suggest
husbander and custodian of a plot of
land...to foreman of a branch plant in an
uncertain economy.
It makes for a pretty depressing prospect —
or it would if I hadn't happened to see the
results of a survey recently published by the
Trends Research Institute of Rhinebeck,
New York.
Here's a quote from the survey:
"A confluence of natural, social and
economic forces is sowing the seeds of a
back-to-the-land trend that will bloom into
an agricultural revival in North America."
Ironically, the current economic slump
we're going through figures to help in the
back to the land revival.
All those workers being tossed out of
jobs? The Trends Research Institute says
that's going to lead to a rapid exodus from
the Middle Class. "Legions of people" it
predicts, "will be forced to change their
lifestyles to survive."
Well, if I had to choose between a lifetime
of flipping burgers for McDonalds or
watching the seasons change on a farm, I
know what I'd go for.
The forecasters at the Institute say that the
trend back to the farms is now only in its
infancy, but will flourish throughout the next
century "as Industrial Age factory farms are
supplanted by kitchen gardens and
microfarms."
Microfarms. Sort of like...the one I
remember visiting north of Fergus 413 years
ago.
My Uncle Roy and Aunt Belle. Just
slightly ahead of their time.
that there is a virtuous circle whereby
growth and savings are connected: faster
. growth contributes to higher savings and
higher savings spurs on faster growth_
What does this mean for spendthrift
countries such as Canada and the United
States where savings rates are below the
world average? If government debt is
responsible for 4/5ths of the increase in real
interest rates, the best thing to be done is to
eliminate this debt at the earliest possible
moment. That, more than any specific fiscal
or monetary policy, will contribute to greater
growth.
People should also not be encouraged to
depend on governments for their benefits.
Setting up RSP plans could, for Canadians,
be one of the wisest moves available. The
Americans would also be advised to give
serious consideration to yet another
Canadian measure worth imitating.
The Paradox of Thrift may still be worth
teaching in Economics classes and I
certainly have not neglected it. However, it
would be wise to emphasize just how much
of a virtue saving really is.
Premier's wife
to speak
at family forum
The Huron County Museum, Goderich,
will be the site of a special guest speaker,
Arlene Perly Rae, wife of Premier Bob Rae,
on May 24.
Rae will speak at a Family and Women's
Issues Forum, discussing issues to which she
and her husband are committed.
The public is welcome to attend the 3 p.m
gathering. for more information, call 1-800-
881-8673 or 524-5444.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Hand him the vacuum
Baby sneezes, Mommy pleases, Daddy
breezes in. So good on 'paper, so
romantic, but so bewildering.
"Coming Around Again" — by Carly
Simon
Well said Ms Simon.
I know I have always found the
relationship between husband and wife to be,
to say the least, a bit confusing. Yet, this
seems especially true in the 90s, when the
role of each spouse has become a little less
clearly defined.
This past week, I overheard some of my
friends getting some laughs while discussing
a newspaper article concerning how. to
please and keep pleasing your husband in the
50s. The June Cleaverish pearls of wisdom
about such things as keeping up with the
vacuuming, brought some hearty chuckles
from these 9 - 5 gals.
We have indeed come a long way, at least
with regards to our role in the family and the
household, but sometimes I can't help
thinking that the path to here could use some
clearing. There's a lot of ground cover and
too many people still haven't found what
they're looking for. But do they really know
what that is?
Forty years ago the roles of husband and
wife were clear, though not necessarily fair.
Dad was the warrior, the breadwinner, good
for, as comedian Tim Allen says, lawn care
and car maintenance. Mom on the other
hand, ruled the roost, while letting Dad think
he did. The outcome was, in a house where
the domestic engineer had all the cogs
running smoothly, Dad usually didn't think
she did much, because when he got home
everything was the way he wanted it.
With such specialization, both sides knew
what they were looking for in the marriage
market. The men wanted someone to raise
their family, be supportive and make their
house a home. Women wanted a protector, a
good provider, who didn't interfere with the
household duties or the kids unless asked.
Maybe not an equal partnership, but if we
look at the couples married then, who not
only have a long and lasting marriage, but
seem content with their life partner, it does
raise points to ponder. Has the liberation of
women made it more difficult to be content?
And better yet, has there really been
emancipation for housewives?
Women of the 90s are often juggling
career and family, still doing most of the
housework, but now trying to survive in the
competition of the work world, as well.
Though most guys are doing their best, the
studies and reports are showing that it is still
Mom who is the organizer, chief cook and
bottle washer as well as principle child
caregiver.
And rumour has it that it is making today's
gals a little resentful, and maybe a bit hard to
please. Just ask a single woman today what
she is looking for and you will hear
definitive descriptions riddled with
contradictions. They want a man who is
strong, yet sensitive. He has to support her
but not cling, be solid without being boring
and take her seriously, but not too seriously.
Women are looking for men who are
confident, but self-effacing, aggressive, but
gentle.
The ideal guy is a man's man, brawny and
beautiful, but not afraid to wipe a dish or a
baby's butt. I could almost feel sorry for
these fellows, except men don't seem too
sure of what they want either. Ideally, the
girl who married dear old Dad would be a
pearl, but given all the stuff I just talked
about, 'Good luck!'.
Loving someone is not about them being
what you want, but accepting who they are.
The person we choose may not be
everything we'd hoped but should be most of
what we need and missing what we can live
without. When he complains about the house
not being clean don't get upset. Smile, then
hand him the vacuum. He may surprise you.
Arthur Black