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The Rural Voice, 1981-12, Page 10be more objective in his decision making. Also, he knows the ins and outs of the income tax laws and all the complexities of farm accounting. He saves me money and he prepares an annual financial statement which keeps our banker happy. The service more than pays for itself." More and more of these farmers are hedging part of their commodity, be it crops or livestock. Those who sold part of their corn crop last spring for S4.11 a bushel are certainly reaping the rewards now. (Farmers should be careful not be become speculators in the commodity markets. However, simple hedging is a management tool all farmers should learn about.) Courses on how to use the commodity markets to protest your farm investment are becoming increasingly popular. Centralia College of Agricultural Technology will be offering a one or two day course on Commodity Futures early in 1982. You can get more information from your ag. rep. In spite of the fact that these younger farmers are using most of the modern management tools available to them, they still are not feeling all that secure. As one Guelph graduate said: "We'll be all right providing we don't make one or two bad business decisions. We've tightened our belts in all areas and we certainly aren't buying any new machinery." Although the accountants are reporting that most of their clients are staying in farming, they admit that six months down the road there just aren't going to be as many farmers. "The current number of bankruptcies is only the tip of the iceberg," one farm accountant comment- ed. The feeling is that a young farmer who borrowed money from the bank on a demand loan three years ago to build a new pig barn cannot survive the current interest rates and low commodity prices. No one Rural Voice consulted had any harsh words for the banks. After all, the banks are in the business of selling money in the same way that supermarkets are in the business of selling food. Who can blame the banks for loaning large sums of money to farmers whose land had doubled in value? If a farmer could not get a loan from one bank he simply walked across the street and got the loan from another bank. But anyone who borrowed money on the basis of inflated land values ratherthan on their cash flow and their ability to re -pay is in trouble today. One brief submitted to the O.F.A. Task Force suggested that banks should have had a central house three years ago for all One of our readers put some of his thoughts on the crisis and bad times in the agricultural business in the form of a poem and submitted it to Rural Voice. Thoughts on the bad times It matters not how hard I toil, How much I sweat on this nice soil. It's all in vain. It's all for nought. Yes. Who on earth has ever thought That we could lose, so much, so fast? We always thought, who works will last! Not now, today, not any more. I lost my farm, my all - wherefore? wherefore? It's not the drought, it's not the rain That hurt that much, that has me slain! It's the exorbitant money cost, The input rise where I got lost! I have the nicest crops, seen ever My goal - to keep my books out of the red, A hopeless fight - the ends haven't met. My knees are sore, I pray the Lord so often, My tongue is sore. The bank I try to soften, My eyes are wet - I see my sons and often. . . . My heart is sore - my past is gone, no future anymore Wherefore? Wherefore? A FARMER PG. 8 THE RURAL VOICE/DECMEBER 1981 applications for hog barns. (One bank manager said that the Combines Act would not have allowed this). Then they could have arbitrarily controlled the number of new or expanded hog opera- tions starting up, on the basis that the market can only support so many hog producers. (McKillop Township in Huron County saw thirty new hog barns go up in one year.) It would have been a form of supply management, the brief stated, but surely the bank agricultural experts knew that with the tremendous increase in pork production both in the U.S. and Canada, many of their customers would not be able to stay in business. As it turned out, the high interest rates (which cannot be blamed on the banks) have forced more hog producers out of business than the low commodity 'prices. But it's not only the new young farmer who is going under. Many farmers biting the dust are in their 40s or 50s and have twenty to thirty years of experience under their belts. Can the agricultural industry in Ontario survive without these dedicated hard-working farmers who knew more about growing crops and raising livestock than could ever be learned from a book, but perhaps lack the knowledge of modern management techniques? The fact that a farmer has little formal education is no excuse for bad manage- ment, one accountant claims. "If a farmer thinks he might be getting into trouble and realizes that he is not knowledgeable about modern business practices, then he should know enough to call on some experts for advice, while there may still be time to remedy the situation. The time is past when everyone could make money. Only the best managers can survive in bad times." Every farm family who is in difficulty should write a personal letter to Allan McEachen, Federal Minister of Finance and to Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau (be sure to ask for a reply) and to Lorne Henderson and Bill Davis at Queen's Park in Toronto. Even if it takes a whole day to write these letters it would be time well spent. Politicians will tell you that when they receive one letter on a subject it carries a lot of weight because they figure there must be hundreds of other people who feel the same way but do not take the trouble to write. Everyone has written a different ending to the farm story from the optimist ("The long range outlook for agriculture is rosy.") to the pessimist ("If something isn't done soon there won't be a viable farm industry in Ontario.") Who's to know what the ending will be? Where will You be at the end of the story?