The Rural Voice, 2005-12, Page 12BARN
RENOVATIONS
• Renovations to farm
buildings
• Concrete Work
• Manure Tanks
• Using a Bobcat Skid Steer
w/hydraulic hammer,
bucket, six -way blade &
backhoe
BEUERMANN
CONSTRUCTION
R.R. #5 BRUSSELS
519-887-9598
or 519-887-8447
CANADIAN
CO-OPERATIVE
WOOL GROWERS
LIMITED
Now Available
WOOL ADVANCE PAYMENTS
Skirted Fleeces
Well -Packed Sacks
For more information contact:
WINGHAM
WOOL DEPOT
John Farrell
R.R. 2, Wingham, Ontario
Phone/Fax 519-357-1058
8 THE RURAL VOICE
John Beardsley
Government needs a hard dose of realitg
John
Beardsley is
a freelance
journalist '
and crop
specialist
with Huron
Bay •
Cooperative.
What a great crop year this has
been for southwestern Ontario farmers.
Christmas decorations are
starting to adorn farm and rural
businesses and Christmas carols are
starting to hit the airwaves. As I write
this column in mid November,
harvest is completed and fieldwork is
finishing up in The Rural Voice
coverage area of Grey, Bruce, Huron
and Perth Counties. (I'm hoping it is
also finished in Rainy River and other
areas of Ontario, which receive this
magazine).
While yields of crops have been
above average in most cases,
commodity prices are the lowest in
recent memory. As one farmer
explained to me, when his father
was farming a car could be bought
for 800 bushels of corn; today yoti
would need 10,000 bushels (and that
wouldn't be a Hummer!).
Election rumours are reaching
fever pitch, and the Liberal
government in its death throes is
handing out money like a drunken
sailor trying to buy Canadians' votes
with their own money.
This should be welcome news for
farmers who took the extreme step of
rallying in downtown Toronto last
spring to try to let the public know
about their plight. Speaker after
speaker said that they wanted
recognition by all governments that
long-term, stable funding for
agriculture was needed, not just a
one-time investment. Surely the
government's election -oriented
economic update would include some
signal, if not some actual figures, of
what the government intends to do
about the farm income crisis. After
all, the crisis has been caused in large
part by the Federal government's
failure to address adequately the
trade -distorting subsidies of the
European Union and especially the
U.S. farm bill. But there is not a jot or
tittle of assistance in the document
despite record federal surpluses.
In 1993 Paul Martin balanced his
budget on the backs of farmers and
rural Canada, cutting more than $8
billion in federal agriculture
spending, reducing it to the less than
$2 billion earmarked today.
Agriculture Canada doesn't even
actually spend that much because the
CAIS program was designed to save
the government money rather than
actually help farmers — but it allows
the government to make grandiose
statements of the billions of
dollars it will spend to help farmers.
The really ironic fact that the
program has to deal with each farm
situation individually has meant that
many civil servants who joined
government to help farmers are
frustrated that the program takes so
much time and money to administer.
If it were a simple formula like the
Quebec ASRA program or the
proposed Risk management
program, less money would be spent
on administration and more money
would flow to rural Canada.
Huron -Bruce MP Paul Steckle
publicly chastised Andy
Mitchell for his inaction. Andy
Mitchell's response is that he needs
proof that there is a crisis not just
anecdotal evidence. Now that's what
I call leadership: instead of listening
to farm leaders and your own
bureaucrats, why not wait until the
crisis deepens?
Ask farm suppliers what their
accounts receivable are like, Mr.
Mitchell. Or better still pay yourself
and your staff in bushels of corn and
see how little you can now buy.
Let there be no mistake,
agriculture in Canada will survive,
but at the cost of many other
businesses in rural Canada. The 12
young farm families meeting for the
Outstanding Young Farmer
Competition in Nova Scotia say their
biggest frustration is that the
general public just doesn't understand
the complexities of modern
agriculture. Ontario's representative
Philip Lynn from Lucan says farmers
are not a bunch of whiners in a dying