The Rural Voice, 1988-03, Page 16GMC
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14 THE RURAL VOICE
THE FARMER AS SUPERMAN
- COURTING DISASTER
There was a big fuss in the town-
ship next to ours last fall when liquid
manure polluted a fish pond and killed
thousands of fish. Everyone from
neighbours to the township council
was calling for tougher laws. But
laws or no laws, we can expect more
of the same in years to come.
As the size of farming operations
increases, we put tremendous pressure
on the ability of individual farmers to
manage areas of their operation in
which a small failure can have big
consequences. Today, we expect
farmers to be some kind of supermen.
The aim of specialization from the
day of Henry Ford's first assembly
line on has always been to break down
processes to their simplest, most effi-
cient form. But Ford made each part
of the assembly job so simple that
unskilled workers could do the tasks,
almost with their eyes closed.
In fact, the downfall of assembly -
line technology has often been that it
makes jobs so simple that they are
boring, and people look for work that
is more challenging.
But on the farm, specialization
hasn't really worked that way. I sup-
pose there has been some simplifica-
tion in that at one time a farmer might
have needed to know the peculiarities
of a variety of animals — today he
may only have one kind of animal on
his farm. But, if anything, things have
generally become more complicated.
While today a farmer may be a
specialist in one commodity, he must
also be an expert in book-keeping,
management, mechanics (with weld-
ing and machining thrown in), simple
veterinary procedures, chemistry, soil
science, conservation, and marketing.
You know those studies that break
down a housewife's work to calculate
how much it would be worth at the go-
ing labour rate? If they did the same
thing for farmers, paying them at the
rate professionals get in each field,
farmers would probably get hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year.
The difficulty is that in expecting
farmers to be good in all aspects of
farming today, we not only make it
harder and harder to find the supermen
or superwomen who can do it all and
stay in business, but we make the
consequences of their failure more
disastrous, not just for themselves but
for everyone in the community.
Every time a large new liquid -
manure facility goes into operation,
the potential for disaster increases.
The more farmers who handle large
amounts of pesticides (and the more
harried they get because of the pres-
sures of time and finances), the more
likely a mistake that could have major
repercussions. Farmers today are
probably more conscious of pollution
than ever before — farm manure was
trickling into streams decades ago.
But the big difference today is that a
manure spill can be large enough to kill
all life in a stream for a long time.
It may be a drastic comparison,
but the situation is a little like nuclear
proliferation. All countries have kept
ordinary bombs for years and some
have been stupid enough to get into
wars with them. The consequences
were bad, but of a local nature. With
nuclear bombs, however, a mistake
could destroy the whole world.
We have learned to build systems
far beyond human scale and may pay
for it by destroying our environment
and eventually ourselves. It seems
that if we're going to build a sustain-
able way of life we have to tailor our
technology to our capabilities, not our
capabilities to our technology. The
price, if we don't, will be of the same
kind as that paid a few months back in
the next township over.0
Keith Roulston, who lives near Blyth, is
the originator and past publisher of The
Rural Voice.