The Rural Voice, 1990-04, Page 26PCY PCP
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SOCIETY
Need a Few Chicks
for Around the
Barnyard
This Spring?
Try our famous Brown Egg Layer,
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519-356-2222
22 THE RURAL VOICE
Guest Column
HAVE YOU SEEN
THE ENEMY?
Bob MacKenzie is the owner and
operator of the consulting firm
MacKenzie and Associates
Many people say that the times are
as bad as, or worse than, the 1930s in
agriculture.
When in 1989 the Farm Credit
Corporation owned 622,000 acres
west of the Ontario -Quebec border,
and a chartered bank has been reported
to be the largest landholder in Alberta,
it is plain that something far beyond
the cyclical downturn in an industry is
at play. Indeed, it is increasingly
evident that in many ways and places,
what is happening is at least as bad as
in the 1930s. One of those places
today would include Saskatchewan.
But that's another story ..
Some people are led to wonder
aloud if agriculture can be so dev-
astated without major influences
working against it. Rural Canada is
being dislocated and dispersed, and in
the process dispossessed — with the
help of government agencies (the
Farm Debt Review Board) and crown
corporations (the FCC) — on a scale
that historically usually only happens
in a bloody revolution.
It should not be surprising, then,
that one mainstream political organi-
zation is, I am told, preparing a paper
on "How to Effect Constructive
Change in a Society where the Gov-
emment is the Enemy." Whether or
not the government is the enemy, its
blind enslavement to the "ideology of
the marketplace," at any cost, can be
argued to be a major contributor to the
damage felt in rural Canada today.
There is an old saying: "We have
seen the enemy, and it is us."
Ata time— 1. When it appears
that as much money is being spent by
the federal government on the FDRB
process as the FCC is actually dis-
pensing in concessions to farmers via
the government "restructure" fund;
2. When confusing information
advertises "success" rates in the
FDRB process at 80 to 85 per cent,
but FCC's statistics show that the two
restructure -type concessions granted
are only 9.9 per cent and 16.5 per cent
of cases (as of October, 1989);
3. When it appears that general
farm organizations attack and attempt
to discredit those who try to bring
constructive changes to this situation
for the benefit of the farmers involved:
— then it is fair to ask, "have we seen
the enemy?"
Fifth columns, questionable loy-
alties, questionable competence, or
simply the self-serving personal or
political agendas of elements in their
leadership have doomed many peoples
in history before. Just ask the ances-
tors of many of the immigrants who
populated rural Canada in the past 150
years, people who came here to once
again get access to land.
History has also demonstrated
that when a group's rights or property
is being usurped, that group has often
contributed to the success of its foes.
It has been observed recently, for
example, that 70 per cent of all
Palestinians being killed are now be-
ing killed by Palestinians, not Israelis.
The lesson and parallel to farmers
are clear.
And farmers who refuse to unify,
refuse to support each other, refuse to
recognize that their individual future is
tied to their collective future, may also
refuse to demand the type of leader-
ship required to protect them.
Perhaps the farm community does
not wish to demand that those purport-
ing to represent them agriculturally or
politically represent their interests as
a community. Yet while we can and
do save some farms from financial
destruction, I fear that if individual
survival is the paramount concern, the
family farmers of this country are
indeed collectively in danger, as one
country singer puts it, "of going the
way of the buffalo."0