The Rural Voice, 1978-03, Page 6board but like any other tool it can be used a right way or a wrong
way. An axe can be used to good use or it can be used to split the
head of someone. Similarly a marketing board can help the
industry or it can be used to split the head of some people in the
industry.
Farmers, he says, must be continually on their toes,
questioning the use of the "tool". Thus the CFF is upset when
quotas are allowed to gain a high monetary value in themselves.
It is upset about the recent egg board decision to sell or lease
quotas which is to the advantage of "certain people in the egg
board" who already control a large segment of the industry. His
organization agrees with the need for quota transfers, but not on
a one-to-one basis. Quota transfers should involve a considerable
amount of decision making on the part of the boards or some
other body as to who is going to produce. If there is going to be
production planning, there must also be planning as to who the
holders of the shares of a market are. Thus, he feels, quotas
should revert to the board for transfer, free of charge, only after
careful consideration as to who is going to get the quota in order
to allow young farmers in and keep control of the industry out of
The hands, of a few large operators.
Mr. Van Donkersgoed was critical too of the Ontario Milk
Marketing Board in its failure to come up with a solution to the
problem of the Amish refusal to use bulk milk tanks powered by
electricity. A proposed solution of community bulk tanks
powered by gas motors was not accepted until the provincial
cabinet stepped in. Mr. Van Donkersgoed was in on the early
negotiations.
"The present concept of production planning," he says,
"seems to be that there is only one way to structure the industry.
We don't like that. We have to be prepared to plan options into
the system. We couldn't understand why the board couldn't
accept the community bulk tank system."
The CFF is also at odds .. tth the marketing board officials in
the chicken industry. "If there's room for more chicken
production," Mr. Van Donkersgoed argues, "there should be
more people in chickens. Unless there is some decision making
body (to decide who gets quota) there will be fewer producers,
not more." Individual quota transfer arrangements bring more
and more centralizing of production, he says. "If we want to turn
the chicken and egg business over to large enterprise then we
should turn the entire thing over to the producers in Georgia."
But that is a proposition that the CFF just won't accept, Mr.
Van Donkersgoed says. Canada's food must be produced in
Canada, even if it costs more. "We can't consider ourselves an
independent nation unless we're basically self-sufficient in
food," he says.
The present trend seems to be simply that if big business takes
over farming, it takes over, he says. The CFF can't however,
endorse big business taking over the food production industry
and thus maintains that either the industry must maintain and
improve .control of who produces the food or forget about
marketing boards.
This policy, he says, goes against the practices of even some of
the members of the CFF who are expanding ever larger. The
organization feels, however, that the needs of the total food
industry must be taken ahead of the individual enterprise on this
question.
Mr. Van Donkersgoed has thoughts on nearly all aspects of
farming today, thoughts that in conversation, show he's spent a
good deal of time thinking about the industry and its problems.
This continued growth of the use of technology worries him. The
whole trend of agriculture in the last couple of decades has been
toward improved production and today the problem is not
production but marketing of what is produced.
He sees the oncoming crunch of high energy costs as
something that could beneficial by making people take a second
look at the high-technology, high-energy method of food
production we've fallen into. He fears, however, that the
..tdustry is so hooked on energy that there will be a tendency on
the part of government to subsidize energy.
Drayton seems a strange place for the headquarters for a farm
PG. 6. THE RURAL VOICE/MARCH 1978.
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