The Rural Voice, 1991-07, Page 12Otto.
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
FARMERS ARE NO ANGELS
ENVIRONMENTALLY SPEAKING
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth,
is the originator and publisher of The
Rural Voice.
I saw the light at a couple of recent
farm meetings.
The blinding light seemed to be
coming from the haloes worn by
farmers in the room and farmers in
general. The topic of the meeting was
the dreaded Environmental Rights Bill
proposed by Ontario's minister of the
environment, Ruth Grier.
Farmers are justly concerned about
the implications of the as yet unpub-
lished bill. There is a universal fear of
thc unknown and since the govern-
ment has been so tight-lipped about
what's in the legislation, imaginations
have run rampant. The fear is greater
because the government has such thin
representation on rural interests be-
cause the members from rural areas
are generally urban -oriented. So
many of the government supporters
seem to be urban idealists, the kind of
people who support animal welfare
and environmental causes, that far-
mers aren't sure there is any sense of
thc realities they have to work with,
and so they fear the bill may make
their lives more complicated.
I can understand and sympathize
with those fears, and yet I had to chuc-
kle a little whcn I hcard the arguments
on the other side, that all farmers are
environmentalists. Why wouldn't
they want to look after the environ-
ment, because their future depends on
it. If they don't treat the soil and the
water and the air properly, their live-
lihood will be endangered, so there
isn't a need for them to be regulated.
Sure! I suppose those times liquid
manure was dumped into farm drains,
it was done by marauding urban crim-
inals. I suppose those craters in corn
and bean fields that I had always taken
for erosion were actually left by
UFOs. Come on folks, farmers are
like everybody else: there are some
who care about the environment and
some who don't, and a lot who don't
believe there is any problem at all.
It'seasy to blame all pollution on a
few big bad guys, a few profit-seek-
ing unscrupulous owners of smoke-
stack industries, pulp mills or chemi-
cal valley industries. Then the rest of
us can get off scot free.
But the fact is, we're all guilty of
adding to the total pollution problem
and we all feel we have to make com-
promises in order to carry on our bus-
inesses and our lives.
Those of us in the print media of-
ten carry stories about environmental
issues and sound pretty simon-pure at
times, but we're part of the problem as
well as part of the solution. Newsprint
is currently a big part of the headache
municipalities have in waste disposal.
I would guess farmers have the
same problem. Very few will take on
the extra bother and expense of con-
servation tillage, look at reduced
spraying, or improve their manure -
handling facilities, unless they can
either save money or have to meet
new regulations. Even those with the
best intentions will be apt to say
they'll just have to wait until they
have more time or more money to
make the changes.
There is the tiny minority of far-
mers who don't care. Their answer
to getting rid of excess manure is to
let the overflow run off into a drain.
They can't be bothered with the long
term implications.
Finally, there is the larger group
of farmers whodust can't figure what
all the fuss is about. They might care
more about environmental problems
if they could be convinced they are
real.
Farmers, in short, are just like
everybody else: few of us are angels
when it comes to the environment.
Environmentally, we are our own
worst enemies. It won't be conscious
acts of environmental vandalism that
destroy our planet, it will be the acts
of compromise and ignorance.0