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8 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Who's paying the piper?
The American challenge to
Canada's import tariffs on dairy and
poultry products under the North
American Free Trade Agreement has
apparently failed and the supply man-
agement system is safe for a while. It
brings to mind, though, all those
experts who
said Canada
should negotiate
with the U.S.
rather than risk
a win-all/lose-
all NAFTA
hearing.
The argu-
ment from
certain agricul-
tural economists
and academics
was that sooner
or later the high
tariffs were
going to come
Is academic
independence
obsolete?
down so if we negotiated, we might
get a better deal. If we lost, the
Americans would dictate the terms.
This argument was put forward
even though the U.S. protest was
ridiculous. The Americans, after all,
had used GATT tariffs to replace
their own import quotas on cotton
and peanuts but they now claimed
GATT tariffs were illegal in
Canada's case. If the NAFTA panel
had agreed with the U.S., the whole
GATT deal would have fallen apart.
But these experts, many of whom had
been critics of supply management
for years, said negotiation was best.
Everyone, from magazine
columnists to farmers in the coffee
shop to academics, has a right to
voice an opinion. The difference is
that we've always accorded
academics' opinions a little more
weight because they were: (a) educat-
ed specialists, and (b) they were
independent of commercial interest.
However, as government funding
dries up and universities turn
increasingly to corporate funding
perhaps farmers need to become a
little more skeptical of the
independence of academics.
Certainly universities will try to
guard the independence of their
programs but professors are human.
If you know that Global Food Corp.
is funding your research project, it's
hard to completely forget as you are
design the questions to ask. The
questions you ask, determine the
answers you get.
Watch, for instance, those polls
carried out by professional polling
companies: the results tend to
confirm the interests of the people
who commissioned the poll. Those
"think tanks" like the C. D. Howe
Institute and the Fraser Institute,
funded by corporate donations,
invariably tend to express opinions
that support the views of occupants of
Bay Street board rooms. There aren't
many donations to be had from the
poor or unions.
Similarly, despite the resources
that Stable Funding has given groups
like the Ontario Federation of
Agriculture and the Christian Farmers
Federation of Ontario, they don't
have the millions to support academia
that huge corporations dealing in the
agri-food sector have. How then,
does a farmer know if advice on the
benefits of a new herbicide is
independent or has been influenced,
however subtly, by the support for
the university by a major chemical
company. When a university
professor calls on government to
change a farm policy, is this in the
interest of farmers, or is itin the
interest of the food processors who
support university research and who
want to buy farm products under
more advantageous conditions?
Privatization of our academia is a
fact of life. Under the circumstances,
farmers should be pooling their
resources to try, to match the muscle
of the corporate world. From
membership in farm organizations to
more checkoffs to fund research,
farmers should be looking at ways
they can work together. Strangely,
the opposite seems to be happening
as a minority of independent -minded
farmers try to pull down co-operative
ventures like the wheat board and
various marketing boards.
Once on their own, they may find
themselves naked in an alligator pit.0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. He
lives near Blyth, ON.