The Rural Voice, 1987-11, Page 16let
CARE
• Upholstery
• Drapery
• Rug Cleaning
Serving Huron County
Doug Gavin
519-524-2440
Big
Bear
SERVICES
INC.
WET BREWERS GRAIN
or
WET CORN DISTILLERS
can help your feeding
program by:
• providing a protein
supplement
• extending roughage
supplies, protein and
palatability to stover diets
• an excellent rumen
stimulant
• available in full and split load lots
BOOK NOW
for your fall and winter
supply of distillers corn
—Better Feed—
Healthier Livestock
—Lower Costs—
For furthur information on
these and other feeds, contact:
BIG BEAR
SERVICES INC.
FEED DIVISION
50 Westmount Rd.,
Waterloo, Ontario
N2L 2R5
(519) 886-4400
14 THE RURAL VOICE
GETTING RADICAL
I have always been contrary and I
guess I'm getting more contrary with
age. For instance, back in the 1960s
when being "radical" was in with the
college crowd, I was still just a con-
servative farm boy. Now, when all the
radicals are driving expensive cars and
wearing three-piece suits, I'm finding
myself more radical.
I guess it comes down to the fact
that I've always been sceptical. It's
just that while it was fashionable in
the 1960s to be sceptical of the author-
ities, I was sceptical of the sceptics.
Today I'm feeling more radical be-
cause the sceptics have been proven
right so many times that I'm starting
to believe them.
Take, for instance, that CBC tele-
vision series "The Politics of Food,"
which aired late this summer. Now a
sceptic might wonder why such an
educational and controversial show
was buried in the late -summer dol-
drums of television when everybody
was out picking tomato worms or
listening to the Blue Jays on the radio,
but we'll leave that for the moment.
Now I've heard talk about how the
big banks or the big grain -trading
companies manipulate world food
production before, but since it always
came from bleeding-heart liberals or
socialists, I've tended to be sceptical.
And so when the program began by
talking about the famine in the Sudan
and its causes, I was on the defensive
in case I was going to be fed propa-
ganda. My defences remained up as
the commentator told how the Sudan
faced a debt crisis and so turned to
cotton to try to bail itself out.
The program explained that Sudan
has the largest irrigated tract of land
anywhere in the world, the remnant of
British colonial days when the desert
was irrigated to grow cotton. But after
independence, governments were
more concerned about growing food
for their people than cotton for export.
Sudan suddenly could feed itself.
But along came the debt crisis
and Sudan found itself in hock to the
World Bank, which put pressure on
the government to turn the area back
to cotton production.
The result was that when the fam-
ine hit, hundreds of thousands starved
to death. Even where people worked
in the irrigated areas, their children
suffered from the diseases of malnutri-
tion because they weren't allowed to
use the land to grow their own food.
Well, I said to myself, it's certainly
tragic, but the best plans do go wrong.
But then, fresh from pictures of dead
and starving people comes the image
of an executive of the World Bank,
well-dressed and fat, sitting at his
spacious desk in Manhattan.
The contrast of the images wasn't
nearly as startling as what the banker
said. I expected him to say that yes, it
had been a tragedy, but things had
changed. Instead he said that the
theory was that Sudan could make
more money selling cotton than using
the land for food and therefore it
should grow cotton and use the money
to buy food (and, of course, pay
interest on the loans). Not only did he
not apologize for what had happened,
he indicated that the World Bank
would continue with such policies.
People like our banker friend insist
that the system is more important than
people. They are the same as those
who tell us we musn't "interfere" in
the free market to save farmers in
trouble, that yes, people will be hurt
by free trade, but for the good of the
majority, we must go through with it.
Well I'm sorry, but the older I get
the more I think the system should
serve the people, not the people serve
the system. In the 1980s, believing
that seems to mean I'm a radical. If
so, so be it.0
KEITH ROULSTON, WHO LIVES NEAR
BLYTH, IS THE ORIGINATOR AND PAST
PUBLISHER OF THE RURAL VOICE.