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Times Advocate, 1999-10-06, Page 6Wednesday, October 6, 1999 ACUP Editorial&Opinio TIMES -ADVOCATE PUBUCATIONS MAIL REGIS [RATION NUMBER 07511 Jim Bodeen Publisher and Editor Don Smith Deb Lord General Manager Production Manager Published by J.W. Eedy Publications Limited 424 Main Street South, P.O. Box 850 Exeter, Ontario NOM 1S6 • (519) 235-1331 EDITORIAL Back -to -school plan could backfire .badly The province is sending young teenage welfare moms back to school - no options, no excuses, no arguments for 16 and 17-year-olds. At first glance, this looks like an excellent plan. Statistics on poverty have long shown a correlation between education and employment prospects. A teenager who gets pregnant at 16 and drops out of school stands little chance of getting off welfare, unless she has a lot of help from family and friends, and a tremendous amount of determination. If she can stay in school, she qualifies for all sorts of training and apprenticeship programs, college courses, even university. And those mean a chance at a decent job with a future. Sadly, many teenage mothers do not have the kind of supports that will let them stay in school. Caring for an infant means sleepless nights, fre- quent trips to the doctor, mountains of laundry, and chicken pox. Being a parent is a difficult enough job for a mature adult with a spouse, a secure income, a comfortable home and a well- established support system in place. What must it be like for someone who is little more than a -child herself, and trying to cope on her own? Her friends are concerned about getting a date for the dance Satufday night; she is afraid of runs ning out of formula before the next cheque comes in. Her friends are panic stricken about tomorrow's math test; she might be, too, when the province's plan goes through. The idea of writing a Grade 12 geometry exam after having been up all night with a colicky baby is the stuff of which nightmares are made. There are questions which must be answered before this plan gets our whole -hearted approval. Is there any sort of requirement the young mother has to succeed in school - pass that geometry test - dr will she be allowed to merely put in the class - 'room hours? The latter seems like a waste of time for the student, and a waste of educational resources. Will there be a stipulation the young mother must attend school daily? What happens when her baby is sick? Unless there is a very supportive and unemployed family member willing to provide nursing care for a sick baby, the teenage mother has no alternative but to care for the child herself. Chicken pox lasts at least a week. That means a lot of missed classes. And who takes the baby to doctor's appoint- ments? Even if the baby is perfectly healthy, there are immunizations and check-ups..Eachi visit means a half-day. More time is involved if the baby has problems which require a specialist's attention. Forcing older welfare recipients to babysit is a simple plan which could backfire badly. One must assume applicants for such babysitting jobs would have to be screened - very carefully screened. Would the mother be allowed to participate in the process, or would she be forced to leave her baby with the next name on the list? What if the person turned out -to be no Mary Poppins, but a chain- smoking soap opera addict whose oldest son got expelled from grade school for molesting other children? Both types of babysitters do exist, and both can surely be found on the welfare (and work- fare) rolls. There is an old proverb, "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink." It applies to people as well as horses. You can make welfare recipients work for their cheques by babysitting. You can force teenage parents to attend school. But unless the welfare recipients want the plan to work, it will fail. This is one situation where the province might be further ahead offering people opportunities instead of using opportunities to beat them into submis- sion. Something to chew on atThanksgiving We're in the midst of Ontario Agriculture Week and it's fitting the week the provincial legislature has desig- nated to celebrate agriculture includes Thanksgiving weekend. For our family, Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate our farm heritage. The driye through rich, farmland to Hanover, the bountiful array of food and the reminisc- ing about growing up on the farm are a real treat. There are some things we can all count on. We will all eat too much, we will play crokinole and we'll com- plain we ate too much as we drive home. To me, farming is about family and family is about farming. The two. go hand-in-hand. My brother now farms the land that has been in our family since our ancestors immigrated from Germany in 1855. It's an idyllic view held by many rural and urban people. As consumers, we expect a pas- toral, scent -free way of farming. At the same time, we expect farmers to produce the highest quality, safest food in the world for the lowest price. When I grew up on the farm, our family made a good living with about 20 sows, 100 ,cattle and 50 chickens on 250 acres. Today, a farmer wouldn't even be in business with those kinds of numbers. A 300 head sow operation is barely enough for a farmer to make a liv- ing (and that's when pork prices are respectable). So don't expect to see the little red barn with a few chickens running around in the yard unless the family is earning the bulk of theirincome off the farm. As a percentage of income, the food we buy in the store is cheap compared to what the rest of the world pays. A dozen eggs costs $1.79 and a four -litre bag of mills is $3.49 and those are commodities produced under a quota system. Commodities outside a quota system such as pork, beef and grain are leaving the farm gate below the cost of production or with a very low profit margin Cash receipts or gross revenues for farmers are down for a third year in a row. Crop receipts have declined 5.1 per cent. Prices for most grains and oilseeds have dropped to their lowest levels since 1994. Livestock receipts slipped 0.9 per cent from the first half of 1998, due mainly to lower hog prices. Consequently, farm equipment sales to the end of August continue to show a severe downturn. Tractor unit sales overall are down -by 8.8 per cent compared to August last year. The lack of disposable farm income has an impact on the rest of the economy as well. What would Exeter's downtown be like with- out the spending of farm families and the peo- ple who work in agri-business? What would Hensall's skyline be like without the eleva- tors? Farmers are excellent for the local econo- my, plowing their profits into equipment, housing, vehicles, clothing etc. - If our economy is going to be healthy, the family farm has to survive with the profits staying in the community rather than leaving for Toronto or the U.S. That being said, there are ways for the family farm to survive and thrive. It requires the same entrepreneur- ial skills that make family businesses successful. Find the niche market, produce a product people want and produce it better than anyone else. But that's a whole other column. We are blessed in southwestern Ontario with excel- lent farmland and the best farmers. As you sit down to your Thanksgiving dinner give thanks for the food -you eat and the people who produce the food. KATE MON KATES TAKES About the Times -Advocate Address & Office Hours Times -Advocate, 424 Main Street South, P.O. Box. 850, Exeter, Ontario NOM 1S6. 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