The Rural Voice, 1999-05, Page 42WELLESLEY LOADING
CHUTES
SHEEP FEEDERS
ROUND BALE
FEEDERS
LOADING
CHUTES
• Heavy
Construction
• 3 Pt. hitch
(both sides)
• Ramp settings
26" - 42"
d ?,
• I,0"� '
ice"'
,, i
. oviim
!rwt.
SHEEP FEEDERS
, 5 7 i i ilittlymiTi
WOOF/AN
• Ruggedly built yet convenient feeder
• Manufactured with 1" x 1" tubing and
14 gauge sheet metal
• 32" wide trough with 3/8" rod V-type manger
Rods are 2 1/2" apart for less hay waste
• Grains and other fine particle feeds can be
fed. Sizes available: 4', 6' and 8' long.
Other sizes available upon request.
ROUND BALE FEEDERS
Ilieli
1
I;f1/.�,
_
.ail Jtt:l11108
•7'x8'
• Feeds approx. 18 cattle
• Holds 5' x 5' bales •
(and smaller) +,
• 1 1/4" tubing CRNl1ONNMNDE
• Heavy duty construction
TILMAN SHERK
R.R. #3 Wellesley. Ontario
519-656-3338 ,
519-656-3429 evenings
38 THE RURAL VOICE
purebred registration. Whcn they
returned, they began building their
purebred hcrd back up but they didn't
have enough quota because part of
the quota repurchase deal fell though.
It's been a long, hard haul to
rebuild the purebred milking
shorthorn hcrd, hunting down some
of his original herd and purchasing
offspring and buying a bull from
• Ptince Edward Island. Today, with
his herd increasing, he has only a
quarter to a third of the quota he
needs to cover his production but he
can't afford to buy more at whole
milk prices.
The solution that
O'Neill and the
Ontario Cream Prod-
ucers Association
has been promoting
is a pool from which
cream producers
could rcnt quota. The pool, O'Neill
said in a March 17 letter to Noble
Villeneuve, Minister of Agriculture,
Food and Rural Affairs, "will permit
cream producers to pay an affordable
price for the privilege of selling their
butterfat. We feel the plan could be
expanded to serve small-scale milk
producers and could even be used as
a model for other commodities on
small scale farm operations."
DFO, O'Neill says, has agreed to
the concept and agreed to provide
staff and resources to help "fine
tune" the proposal.
Villeneuve, in an interview, said
he is waiting for suggcstions from
DFO as to solutions to the problem.
There are many problems to be
worked out about a borrowers pool,
he says such as who owns the capital
value of the quota in the pool.
While DFO has offered co-
operation to the cream producers, it
will not finance the pool, so cream
producers would have to find their
own financing.
O'Neill had earlier approachcd
Jim Wheeler, assistant deputy'
minister with the idea but in a letter
dated February 2 of this year,
Wheeler wrote "You need to know
that, based on my recent explorations
with my colleagues, there is no
support in any event for the ministry
becoming financially involved in the
lenders' pool."
O'Neill says the cream producers
are waiting for a response from
Villeneuve himself. "I have the
feeling it's time he assumed some
leadership," O'Neill says. "In 1995
he said (amalgamating the pools)
would be a good thing for all dairy
producers. We don't want a hand out,
— we just want a policy that will
make it possible to keep the
industry."
Bennett says that if the
government wants to find the money
it has only to look at the
contributions the Old Order
communities have made in recent
years. For instance, when farm
registration was
A lenders'pool required in order to get
would help a farm tax rebate, the
p — Old Order farmers no
but who would longer applied for the
pay rebate. He cstimates
the windfall to the
government was $5
million, more than enough to finance
a lenders pool to solve the problem
of the small-scale dairy producers.
What's more, Bennett argues,
these families are tax -payers but not
tax -receivers. The 1,500 OId Order
families in Ontario pay school taxes
but run their own schools without
government support, he says. Bennett
estimates that with an average of
three children per family, the OId
Order colonies save the government a
minimum of $21 million a year in
education costs.
"Our point of view is that it's
payback time for the Old Order
community," Sennett says. "It's the
right thing to do. The taxpayers
would be supportive."
Ropp feels the government's
program to help create jobs for rural
youth could be put to good use to
create a pool which would help
young OId Order farmers get started.
A little bit of money put into a quota
borrowing pool would create a lot of
jobs in the Old Order communities,
he maintains.
Even if the money isn't available
there's another possible solution that
wouldn't cost money, both O'Neill
and Bennett say. They point to the
situation in the egg industry where
small scale flocks of 100 or fewer
hens (500 for producers who have
always kept that number) have been
exempt from quota. Currently,
O'Neill says, there are 700 million
hens under quota and about 350,000