The Rural Voice, 2006-05, Page 14Phone: 369-5478 Fax: 360-9906
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10 THE RURAL VOICE
John Beardsley
But whose farmers
John
Beardsley is
a freelance
journalist
and crop
specialist
with Huron
Bay
Cooperative.
During most of Easter weekend.
the "Farmers Feed Cities" grass roots
movement got national attention by
bringing the traffic at several Ontario
food terminals to a crawl, if not to a
complete standstill. When grocery
chains said the protests were in the
wrong places. protestors could say in
response: "We tried protesting
directly to government. and it didn't
bear any results".
One thing which stands out from
the reports I have been getting from
the people who were actually there in
the trenches was that the public, the
police and most truckers (who were
probably the most inconvenienced by
the protests) were overwhelmingly on
the farmers' side. They recognise that
farmers are not just a bunch of
whiners who want to be given a
handout they don't deserve, but rather
the canaries in the coalmine of our
society who are telling the other 98
per cent "hey folks, we have seen the
future and it doesn't work".
I have been flattered and humbled
by the support I have been getting
from very unexpected sources telling
me to keep going and not to let the
b*******s grind me down. I believe
that there are some very fundamental
problems facing agriculture which
need to be addressed quickly, or we
will all pay the price in the future.
It is nice to see the uproar caused
by the assistant deputy agriculture
minister's public remarks. He said
that the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture expects to lose half the
farmers and that the CAIS program is
performing its function of speeding
this process up by being slow to
respond, and only paying out when
people get out of farming by dumping
will feed cities?
their assets at a loss. What he didn't
tell everyone is that the other reason
the Ontario government loves the
CAIS program is that it uses 40
percent of the money given to it by
Ottawa to pay the salaries of the
bureaucrats who are, in effect,
destroying farming and rural Ontario
as we know it. They then trumpet
how much money they are spending
on agriculture, when all the while
very little is actually solving
anyone's financial crisis. The money
has barely been paid to farmers for
2004 when we ate already seeding
the 2006 crop.
Farmers in America know before
they even go to the field how much
money they can expect and can
therefore make Tong -range plans
about purchases of machinery and
land as well as crop inputs. Canadian
farmers. in the meantime. are
planting crops that have only a slim
chance of breaking even, never mind
making a decent return on
investment.,
All the while every other level of
agriculture can budget their expected
returns. As Don Mills, the Ontario
co-ordinator of the National Farmers
Union, likes to say, "Agriculture is
great; it's just farming that sucks".
It's not that farmers want a handout
they don't deserve: it's that they are
tired of subsidising the food system
of this country to the tune of $15
billion a year in off -farm income.
I have heard it said that farmers
are like an addict who risks it all to
keep their farming addiction going.
This would be an amusing statement
except for the fact that it masks very
real hurt and despair that is
happening in the farming business.
Farmers are "getting out" of
farming. They are astute enough
businessmen and women to realise
when they should make the busines,
decision to stop the haemorrhaging
and get out.
But there are many more farmers
who can't get out because they can't
get the price they need to retire with