The Rural Voice, 1999-12, Page 30Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday season.
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R.R. 2 Zurich, Ont.
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26 THE RURAL VOICE
FARM & MUNICIPAL
DRAINAGE
by strong farm organization
leadership, and I think we're being in
a bit of a hiatus at the moment. 1
don't ,,see that happening. That's not
to say that won't happen."
The Ontario Federation of
Agriculture, for instance,
"didn't make a peep" at the
last provincial election about the
reduction of the number of MPPs
who would represent rural Ontario.
"There's a certain lethargy. People
are more inward looking. They're
more concerned with their own
private lives, their own private
operations, their own ability to make
money and earn a livelihood and
they're not looking at the broader
picture. There is a whole different
attitude in rural Ontario that is not
very healthy for maintaining the
systems that we currently have in
place."
Unlike the movement toward
marketing boards in the 1960s or the
farm survival movement in the 1980s
or the Line In the Dirt movement
early in the 1990s, "there's just
nothing this time around. Everybody
is acquiescing — they're saying
'There's nothing we can do. We're
on a global economy and we have to
work through it.' If this had
happened in the sixties and the
seventies and the eighties, I think
there would have been protest groups
springing up all over the place saying
'This is ridiculous: we're giving our
products away at Depression -level
prices. This is the '90s. We should be
getting a decent living for our
produce!"
Farmers' ability to have some
control of marketing is being
undermined in a series of erosions,
Gaunt says; When the Farm Products
Marketing Commission forced the
Pork Producers Marketing Board to
allow direct packer -producer
contracts, it pulled the teeth of the
board and dramatically'shifted the
balance of power to the packers who
now buy 60 per cent of their supply
of pigs through contracts.
The same pressures are building
against supply management boards,
Gaunt says. "My worry is that in the
next round (of WTO trade talks) the
tariff will drop, the domestic access
will be easier and if you have more
produce flooding in from the States
or Europe or wherever, then it's