The Rural Voice, 2001-11, Page 31r
offering tours and skits on the story
of coffee production.
Bananas are usually grown in large
plantations owned by large
companies but even the major
international companies are looking
at organic production for part of their
crop to get a higher return. In one
case chicken manure was being
packed up the hillsides in bags and
applied at a rate of 300 bags per
hectare.
There were some more familiar
forms of farming, however. The
group visited a good range of dairy
farms from one cow up to large
freestall operations.
Tariff barriers on milk are coming
down and soon will be eliminated
and the industry is restructuring
because of it. The class visited an
automated milk processing facility
that would be as modern as anything
in North America.
They also visited a farrow -to -finish
pork farm with 600 sows. Anwender
learned that while a hog farm in
Ontario might pay $40-$45 a square
foot to build a new barn, this farm
News
required just a roof. Manure was
disposed of through a number of
channels that ran down hill from the
barn.
Yet manure is also used as a
valuable resource to produce power
through the use of digesters to
produce bio -gas. One sugar cane
factory required no electricity, using
plant waste to produce gas to power
equipment.
Other ecological efforts include
planting trees very close together in
hedges to produce "living fences".
However there's an abundance of
water in Costa Rica and there seems
no sense of urgency about conserving
it, he said.
Anwender said there was a wide
range of incomes from the plantation
owners to the workers. The pork
producer, for instance, paid workers
$1 US per hour. Free trade zones have
been- set up which allow large
multinational companies to set up
large factories to take advantage of
the cheap labour. Anwender saw
flimsy houses no bigger than his
kitchen back home but shared by 5-6
people.
Still, everyone in Costa Rica gets
an education because the country has
no military and spends the money
saved on schools.0
Ontario's
ombudsman
a part-time farmer
Clare Lewis, Ontario's
Ombudsman, part-time farmer and
former Grey County resident spoke
about his job to members of the Grey
County Federation of Agriculture,
then absorbed criticism from two
questioners not satisfied with the
work his office had done on their
behalf.
Speaking in Durham, October 12,
Lewis, who has been Ombudsman
since January 2000, said his office is
not empowered to be an advocate on
behalf of farmers (OFA can do that,
he said) but it is empowered to assist
those who are mistreated by a
provincial government agency.
HE
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