The Rural Voice, 1987-11, Page 24GREY COUNTY
FARM
EQUIPMENT
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22 THE RURAL VOICE
Fuller," do we suggest that it should
be?" Certainly, markets and income
may simply not be sufficient. Profes-
sor Fuller notes a study carried out
with fellow professor George Brink-
man, which showed that more than 60
per cent of farm family incomes that
come from different sources are
collectively higher than those incomes
derived directly from farming. And
the statistics say that two-thirds of
farm tax -filers sell less than $25,000
worth of products.
Perhaps, Professor Fuller suggests,
we must distinguish between the farm
operator and the farm family. The
commitment of some farm operators
to full-time farming can remain
workable, but may entail, in terms of
the larger family unit, that income be
Europe, on the other hand, "is a
very healthy place to be right now,"
Professor Fuller says. "People are
looking for solutions." While it is
likely that there will be a "fairly
imminent" decrease in commodity
support in Europe — otherwise the
EEC is going to go bankrupt —
Europeans are testing approaches
which include anything from diver-
sification and "agrotourism" to direct
income supplements.
The desire to farm full-time is a
"perennial problem," he notes, espe-
cially in North America where the
commitment to full-time farming
appears to be greater than in Europe,
but the Canadian government is
unlikely to find it possible to subsidize
the agricultural sector indefinitely. "I
Farm families 50 to 70 years ago were diversified, whether
through selling trees, building roads, or exchanging labour
within the community. "Multiple job holding today," says
Professor Tony Fuller, "isn't really that much different."
supplemented by a spouse or other
family member.
Professor Fuller was recently
appointed research advisor to a $5.4
million investigation into how 7,500
European farm families have managed
to survive the poor fortunes of the
industry. The study, commissioned by
the European Economic Community,
will look at diversification on
European farms — 87 per cent of all
European farm families earn more
income from their non -farming efforts
than from farming.
Diversification is one way farmers
can cope with an international agri-
cultural situation in which production
capacity has been increasing steadily
for years, and most notably of late in
the Third World.
What Canadian farmers and
agricultural policy -makers should be
doing, Professor Fuller says, is eval-
uating the situation and assessing the
alternatives. "We're hoping that
there's going to be a return to normal
... and there's absolutely no evidence
that that's going to happen," he says.
"The crunch is coming. And I
don't think the policy -makers in
agriculture are even worrying about
what the different alternatives are."
know," Professor Fuller adds, "that the
federal Department of Agriculture
would like to see at least half the far-
mers removed from the land." How-
ever, he says, opting for that sort of
"solution" is simply working on the
old model, the same model that pro-
duced today's agricultural problems in
the first place, the same model that has
forced farmers to push their resources
to the point of endangering their land
and themselves — through the use of
pesticides, for example.
What is crucial, he says, is that
new models be considered. In Europe,
for instance, the environmental lobby
is "massive," and while it can seem a
nuisance, "in the long run it's to the
farmers' own good." We must be
considering, he adds, how the next
generation is going to stay on the land
— and that may mean that some farm
families will have to diversify the
family economy.
Certainly the subject of agricultur-
al policy is a complex one, not only
for rural communities, but for nations
and the world. When you add part-
time farming to the mix, solutions
become even more elusive. As Huron
County agricultural representative
Don Pullen remarks, "For years