IRREVERSIBLE DECISIONS
From early February until less than two weeks before Easter, I had three friends tell me about three suicides. For two of them, they had lost a friend, however for the third, it was a relative.
It was excessively difficult to understand why. All three were agriculture related. Two were actual farmers. The third had grown up on a farm and was employed in the industry.
The third suicide resulted in a friend telephoning me and having a long heart-stabbing discussion about his friend, whom I had met only a number of months ago.
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I am sure within each person’s mind they felt it was the only solution. Two-hour telephone calls regarding this subject are very painful.
After Easter and due to the terrible weather, I decided to make the drive to my friend Al’s farm for a visit. I arrived just as he was completing his livestock work for the day.
The conversation was the normal farm, family, weather variety until the afternoon coffee break. Just after sitting down with a cup of coffee, Al truly surprised me. He mentioned how the lives of him and his wife were getting very stressed.
The poor grain movement had left him with outstanding farm bills unpaid. His health had taken a hit and the doctor was visited.
The wife has a 9-to-5 job and her income is for her, the house and some small frills. However, to avoid borrowing to pay the farm bills, they had decided to divert her savings plus her regular paycheque to “save the farm.”
He told of how he felt like a failure and had seriously contemplated suicide. He also told me of how one night he began crying and could not stop, even with her consoling him.
So I just have to wonder about those three suicides. Politicians making dictatorial decisions in a democratic country can cause so many life alternations. I just question our present democracy in agriculture.
Delwyn Jansen,
Humboldt, Sask.
Power imbalance
(Agriculture) minister (Gerry) Ritz’s bill on “grain marketing freedom” has created a wonderful opportunity.
This year alone, increased profits related to his legislative changes for marketing farmers’ grain is in the billions. The market has decided and the market is never wrong.
Unfortunately for farmers, the grain companies have won the Ritz Freedom Lottery, and they will continue to win it from now on. Will they thank Ritz and (prime minister Stephen) Harper for an annual windfall of billions? The least they could do is send a thank you card.
If they do, the card should look something like this: “Thank you Ritz and Harper for not giving farmers a vote on your change to the way their grain must be marketed.”
The grain companies knew that if farmers were allowed to vote on the change, they would have voted against it.
Just like their grandparents, today’s farmers understand the reality of a market where a power imbalance exists between the key players. That’s why the pioneering farmers created the Canadian Wheat Board and that’s why their descendants wanted to maintain it.
The market is never wrong. It rewards those who have power. The grain companies now have the power.
Eric Sagan,
Melville, Sask.
URBAN IMPACT
I just finished reading your article in the May 15 edition titled “Province blamed for farmland loss in Alta.” It’s a great article.
There is one primary cause of farmland loss that no one in the province or advocacy groups is addressing: how do we interface the urban sprawl with the rural? How do we keep the urban from affecting the rural across the fence? Let me explain.
The photo included in the article shows a photo of the town of Cochrane with our ranch in the background. We have all sides of the large hill in the middle of the photo.
The town of Cochrane is building over 2,000 houses right across the fence from our ranch. They want to put a walking path with minimal fencing between the development and our fields.
It has taken over six years of meetings and negotiation with the town and the developer to get them to agree to a fence that might keep people from traipsing all over our hay and pasture land.
To make a long story short, we as landowners don’t have a leg to stand on. The town and developer can do whatever they want.
We already have had problems with garbage, trespass and vandalism from the few houses they have built.
It’s going to continue to get worse until we will consider selling and moving, and they will build more houses and put more pressure on the next landowner.
Landowners are being driven to sell their land because their operation is so badly impacted by having urban sprawl right across the fence. This happens around the perimeter of every urban centre in the province. Think about the size of that, the thousands of acres impacted.
Unless the province acts and mandates things like adequate fencing, this trend is going to continue.
As we told the town planner, “I can keep my cows out of your yards. How are you going to keep your people out of my fields?”
Travis and Kara Eklund,
GOOD VS. BAD
Re: Organic vs. conventional economics.
Conventional agriculture proponent and WCWGA (Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association) director Cherilyn Nagel recently stated to the Western Producer (organic/economic benefits): “I’m a really strong supporter of science.”
In this, and subsequent remarks, she implies that supporting contemporary agricultural science trumps remaining financially solvent, and that organic agriculture lacks science.
She can be forgiven her first belief on the basis of personal rights and freedoms. However, she does your readers a disservice in suggesting that organic agriculture, which has sustained the human race for some 14,000 years, is not founded on science.
In the latter regard, I submit that organic or traditional agriculture seems to have a monopoly on “good science,” whereas conventional agriculture has cornered the “questionable” and “bad” science market.
Just one of dozens of examples of good organic science versus bad conventional science is the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere.
Organic farmers rely on the science of biological fixation of N via legumes at minimal financial and environmental cost. Conventional farmers rely on “the science of industrial fixation of N via the Haber process” at tremendous financial and environmental expense.
Organic farmers fix 90 to 150 of N per acre per year at nil net cost. Conventional farmers pay $45 to $75 per acre for the same product, which they must transport and apply.
My son and I have several degrees in agriculture from two of Western Canada’s top agricultural colleges. We use all of the “good science” gleaned from those institutions and a whack of traditional agricultural science and common sense to grow organic flax, oats and alfalfa seed.
Organic consumers show their appreciation for our good science and good sense by paying us $35 per bushel for the flax, $6 per bu. for the oats and $3 per pound for the alfalfa seed. Thanks to their good sense, and to good science, we net some $250 per acre annually for our time and investment in organic food production.
Our neighbours, who rely on the other science and seem to lack common sense, net 50 percent of what we do per acre and spend twice as much as we do.
Ms. Nagel, what can I say except that on our farm near Saskatoon, good science, common sense, financial solvency and organic agriculture are part and parcel of a sustainable future.
We would love to debate this issue with you and any number of your peers in a public or private venue at any future time — except during seeding or harvest. The topic of the debate might be: organic or conventional science, which will feed the world?
Given that organic science has a 14,000-year track record and conventional less than 100 years, I would understand your refusal to accept this invitation-challenge.
J. Wallace Hamm, M.Sc., P.Ag.,
Saskatoon, Sask.
