The Rural Voice, 1999-02, Page 10H&R BLOCK
•
Keith Roulston
Will governments rethink ag policy?
So, now that the federal and
provincial governments have pledged
more than $1 billion to bail out
farmers facing bankruptcy, will the
tide begin to tum in the politics of
agriculture?
From ag economists to industry
leaders to government politicians and
bureaucrats the trend for most of the
decade has been to promote export
markets as a way of having our cake
and eating it too. By focussing on
exports, governments could save
money in price supports, could give
food processors and manufacturers
what they wanted (unregulated access
to as much raw material as they
sought) and keep farmers happy by
leuing them produce as much as they
want and find a ready market for it.
In the face of such optimism, the
leaders of commodities that insisted
on supply management looked like
old fuddy-duddies who just wanted to
keep their comfortable world.
While the federal government
gained some protection for supply
management in the GATT talks, it
has seemed to be backing away over
the years since. It urged various
boards to get into the export business,
at least on a minimal basis.
Some provincial governments
have been open
in their efforts to
undermine the
ability of
producers to gain
control in the
market.
Manitoba,
seeking to please
big pork
processors and
large, integrated
farms, cancelled
the right of its
marketing board
to exclusively
market hogs.
Now Manitoba
has threatened to withdraw from the
Canadian Egg Marketing.Agency
unless large companies arc allowed to
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build barns to produce eggs for
export, unregulated by the supply
management system.
One wonders if the Manitoba
government, and other provinces,
thinks the unfettered market is such a
good thing these days. All
governments are going to have to dig
deep to pay for the cost of the
collapsed dream of unlimited export
markets for pork.
Meanwhile those backward
people in the dairy and feather indust-
ries quietly go ahead without govern-
ment support, paying their bills, sup-
porting their families, asking nothing
but a fair return on investment.
The pendulum in agriculture
seems to swing back and forth
between farmers trying to get more
for their product and farmers accept-
ing that they can't get more so they
have to produce more product and
they have to expand. Farming has just
come through a period of embracing
expansion and many are suffering
because of it. Perhaps the tide will
now flow toward helping fanners get
more from their product so the
government won't have to keep
bailing farmers out.
The genius of people like former
Ontario Ag Minister Bill Stewart and
former Federal Ag Minister Eugene
Whelan was that they gave farmers,
through supply management, some
control in the market place. They
realized that farmers could either get
their money by charging a fair price
in the market, or it would come
through periodic binges of govern-
ment support. They, and the milk and
feather industries, chose fair prices.
Today's political leaders want
dairy, egg, chicken and turkey
farmers to give up their control in the
local market for the dream of exports.
There's an old fable about a dog
that is carrying home a bone when he
crosses a log over a stream. Looking
down he sees another dog with
another bone. Wanting both bones, he
opens his mouth to bark at the other
dog and his own bone drops into the
water. He returns home with neither
bone. Sound familiar?0
Keith Roulston is editor and
publisher of The Rural Voice. He
lives near Blyth, ON.