The Rural Voice, 1980-04, Page 21Voice of a Farmer
by Adrian Vos
It's time for a
corn marketing
board
It is becoming more and more apparent that Ontario's corn
producers, and in particular the smaller ones, would be wise to
get that long -talked -about corn marketing board off the ground,
and soon.
From the U.S.A., and even from south-western Ontario
ominous sounds are coming.
In California the small family operation is already being
squeezed out of the marketplace by the big farm corporations
and by big dealers in farm commodities.
Even if the family farmer offers his produce to the processor.
the latter can't accept it.
Our Western society's habit of always wanting more, (which is
also called ambition, and which has undoubtedly made us as
advanced in our living standard as we are) still applies to the
large, new produce corporations. That stands to reason, for how
else would they have become giants in the first place?
What has happened with produce in California and with corn
in Ontario, is that a giant supplier can force a processor to buy all
his supplies from the giant.
To do this the giant doesn't have to have stock in the
processing company. A threat to sell his large volume to a
competitor is usually sufficient. The processor can't afford to
work below capacity in the highly competitive processing
industry. So he drops the family farmers, who are then forced out
of business.
The losers are thus the smaller farmers, and the consumers
who pay more than necessary for their canned goods. The myth
that a corporation can produce more cheaply because of
efficiency of scale than the family farm has long been disproven.
In California the processors have buckled under and paid more
for produce from the giant corporation with the end result that
the family farmer has to sell his land to other giant corporations.
In south western Ontario rumors have it that last year a group
of farmers who sold corn to the Kellogg plant lost their market
because one of Ontario's largest dealers used the tactics of the
California giant producers.
The Ontario corn grower has the choice of selling to the dealer
at a lower price, or producing something else, until a corporation
decides to take. that new product over also.
The new corn sweetener plant in London is expected to need
about a million bushels of corn every month. Will they too be
forced to deal only with the big grain dealers, at a cost to the
growers?
There is only one way to prevent this! Form a corn marketing
board so the corn producers are able to look after their own
interests.
F PG. 22 THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 1980
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