The Rural Voice, 1980-11, Page 17distorted our whole economy, making
people think energy was something that
could be wasted.
We were forced into this energy reality
by the oil-producing countries but one
wonders what will force us to take a look
at doing the same readjustment of food
prices. Like petroleum we took food as
something that was cheap and would take
up a smaller and smaller part of our
incomes so we could spend more on trips
to Europe or electric dishwashers (not to
mention gas -guzzling cars). The portion
of income Canadians spend on food has
constantly dropped since about the turn
of the century. That in turn has dislocated
the economy and produced many of the
problems we face today.
Take the problem of declining farmland
as an example. A real estate agent I know
of said a few years back that there was no
real solution to saving farmland if land
continued to be worth more for a golf
course than it was for producing food.
Similarly, as long as food prices stay low,
meaning a farmer cannot afford to pay as
much for land as a developer, we will
lose farms to houses, shopping centres
and used car lots.
Foreign land buyers, who come from
countries where the price of food takes up
a more realistic part of income . see that
Canadian land is vastly underpriced in
comparison to their own country and so
There's nothing
like it on earth.
Get a Series 88 tractor and
go gangbusters on tough,
demanding Jobs.
they invest in it, causing more problems
The biggest problems with the low
price of food however are yet to be fully
met. The declining portion of the
consumer dollar spent on food has forced
the farmer into an "efficiency" that has
had many bad results. Faced with making
a smaller and smaller profit on each
bushel of grain or ton of produce the
farmer has had but one solution, produce
more. Producing more has led to a
revolution in farming practices, with
some advantages but many long term
perils.
Today, for instance, we are faced with
the fact that our soil is not what it once
was. In the days when each farmer had a
hundred acres, he loved and cared for the
land, every acre of it. But when a farmer
must have 500 or more acres he can't
given it the same care. He must get over
that land as quickly as possible. He can't
used soil building techniques like plowing
down green manure or livestock wastes.
He must use chemicals, both fertilizers
and herbicides and insecticides. He must
have large fields for his huge equipment
so away go the trees and fencelines and
with them the barriers to soil erosion. He
must grow the crop that gives him the
best return on his investment, so he crops
corn on corn until the soil gets tired and
compact.
Consumers are becoming more and
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more concerned with the way farm
animals are raised. But with the
inadequate cost of food how else is r.
farmer to stay alive producing chicken or
hogs than to pack them closely into
buildings. Perhaps if farmers got paid for
food in relation to what other things cost
(as they did at the turn of the century)
they wouldn't need to produce such huge
quan tities and therefore could worry
more about the individual animal. 1 think
not only the animals but the farmers
would enjoy it more.
Higher food prices and a consequential
de-emphasizing of volume in farm
operations might contribute not only to an
improvement in quality of food but in the
quality of rural life. It might end the drain
of people from farms and the small towns
that both serve and depend on farmers
for life.
This is what could happen if the
American farm workers got what they call
"parity". It could revolutionize not only
farming but the whole rural economy.
Read and use
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•
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'Where Hopper Goes the Water Flows'
SINCE 1915
THE RURAL VOICEINOVEMBER 1980 PG. 15