Insane, you say?
Re: “Structure of ag industry insane: prof,” by Barry Wilson, The Western Producer, Sept. 29.
Professor Bell agrees with the Easter Report that under the present structure, farms are too small to have market power.
He finds that “management skills are too weak, financing often inadequate and farmers too production oriented and too unaware of market and consumer demands.”
Then, he ignores his own findings. I suggest that concentration of farm production in ever fewer hands has been a move to drive down production costs much more than to improve marketing ability.
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He suggests concentration will balance production power with processing or retailing power.
With perhaps five businesses meeting farm produce as it leaves the farmgate, he is in effect suggesting the North American ag industry should have the same number of farmers. I can’t imagine those farms being more effective on a per unit basis.
I have not seen large businesses necessarily be better aware of market and consumer demands, only try to force consumers to accept their limited choices on offer.
I don’t see how concentration of farm production in fewer hands helps today’s farmers.
I don’t see that Professor Bell has addressed the structure of the ag industry, other than to reduce the number of farmers working within the same structure.
I can’t see how Professor Bell’s speech addresses issues facing today’s farmers in a positive way.
He would have been much more helpful had he suggested meaningful strategies for removing the dysfunction of the current structure of the ag industry.
I suggest a rational approach be to start with solutions to the issues he himself identified.
– Mike Klein,
Calgary, Alta.
CAIS deadline
Yahoo, the government has extended the deadline for completing the CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization) supplementary forms for 2004 from Sept. 30 to Nov. 30. … This can only mean that the CAIS department (had) not received the majority of the supplementary forms for 2004.
How do I know? I am a bookkeeper for a number of farmers and as of Sept. 28, I was still waiting to finalize with my farm clients close to half of the supplementary forms.
Now why wouldn’t farmers get these forms into the CAIS department to access all that money the government has set aside for us? After all, the forms are only five pages long and not that hard to do. Well, let’s explore the reasons.
Maybe they are still waiting for their 2003 CAIS to be processed, reprocessed or appealed. After all, it has taken the CAIS department from my experience anywhere from three to nine months or longer to process the 2003.
Then some of them had information changed, left off or ignored so adjustments were requested. Then some of these adjustments were denied so now appeals have been sent in and are still waiting to be heard.
Maybe they had a few corporations and a personal operation. Their accountants filed the tax returns for them, but the farmers didn’t realize that when the accountant filed the corporate tax, it was not filed on a statement A, unlike his personal income tax, which was filed on a statement A, and now it’s too late because the statement As had to be filed by June 15 for individuals and June 30 for corporations and he heard from the neighbour who sent his statement A in with his form in July that CAIS won’t process his forms because he missed the deadline.
Maybe he still owes his accountant anywhere from $200 to $1,500 for doing last year’s form and because his accountant is a good business person, he is refusing to do the form for 2004 until he gets paid for last year’s work….
Or gosh, maybe farmers just don’t care anymore, and they’re busy looking for a second job or moving their families to town so the wife and kids can apply for welfare while Dad stays on the farm because after all, there’s lots of empty houses in small rural towns and the city people think we’re all getting welfare when we get these huge government handouts anyway … and it’s probably faster to split up families and apply for welfare then it is to get true government help to save the family farm.
– U. Scott,
Radville, Sask.
Timing urgent
The problem today in western agriculture is (that) the powers that be in government still believe declining income is a farmer problem, not an industry problem.
There is the belief that it is the farmer who fails, not the industry that is failing them.
The fact is the farm picture is a mixed bag. There are farmers doing very well. With weather on their side, they were able to sell into higher priced markets of the last few years. And there are farmers not doing well after several years of drought, then frost and now downgrading…
The farms not doing well ironically are met with farm programs that, rather than support their income, compound their losses.
Margin based formulas using a five-year average reward those farms that have done well and have higher income margins and penalize farms who have faced numerous years of reduced income. …
Now, we have a cumbersome review committee to review the program when in reality, had the directorate of the programs been to stabilize sectors with income problems due to disaster, this income averaging problem should have been fixed already. However, the hope is that the review committee will, in its wisdom, sometime in the future see the problem and fix it.
However, that sometime may be too late. The reality is individual farms losing generations of equity is real and immediate, while the cumulative savings to the multiple levels of government is a factor of significant savings….
The reality is there are too many problems, varying solutions and no one understands the big picture, least of all Ottawa. And the farmer caught in the daily struggle to survive has little time or energy for protest.
We have a nation that will brazenly subsidize poultry and dairy with Canadian taxpayers’ dollars albeit indirectly and then more brazenly ask the question, why is grain any different than that restaurant down the block? …
The total failings of policy and market, now in the face of increasing global competition, creates the feeling of a future we can no longer see; an industry known as next year country with no promise of next year….
The future needs a direction, and someone in Ottawa or even the province of Saskatchewan, who actually cares that there is one and comprehends the complex nature of an international industry and global politics.
A total audit is essential. A total review is also necessary.
The dogmatic Easter report with no benchmarks or understanding of global competitiveness was just another waste of agricultural funding dollars.
And yes after 12 years of disarray in agricultural programming, timing is urgent.
– Vicki Dutton,
Paynton, Sask.
Who decides?
Re: WP, Oct. 6 story, “Canola crusher back in business,” who is really in charge of our national transportation system? Who decides and endorses the closure and removal of our railways?
In the article, it is mentioned that due to prohibitive trucking costs, Associated Proteins Inc., that purchased the St. Agathe Man., canola crusher plant, extended the rail line from the plant to connect with the mainline of CN Rail.
Well, isn’t that a brainwave? Couldn’t we do the same for a lot of our other transportation needs?
While the rails were and are being torn out, people are talking about how foolish that is. Nobody seems to have the authority to reason with the so-called decision makers. With the high cost of fuel will we be reinstalling the rails.
Is there something I’m missing? Someone please enlighten me.
– Glenn Hamm,
Norquay, Sask.
Money lost
Our farm lost $35,000 with BSE. The consumer paid a good price for my meat, whereas I received very little. In my diary I wrote, “They did not steal my cattle, they just stole my hard work.”
A working man’s wage is around $35,000 per year, I wonder who would work all year and then find out that he wouldn’t get paid?
I wonder who has my $35,000 in their bank account?
– Val Pomedli,
Pilger, Sask.
Queries for Scheer
I thought I’d seen everything, but Andrew Scheer’s recent attack on Lorne Nystrom and his friends in a recent edition of your newspaper (Open Forum, Sept. 15) really takes the cake.
Mr. Scheer would have us believe that the fact that Lorne Nystrom’s assistant signed a letter to the editor is significant in some way. Everyone has ghostwriters from Paul Martin down, so what’s the big deal?
Or is Mr. Scheer bemoaning the fact that his writer isn’t as good as Mr. Nystrom’s? In any case, I’m not sure why I’m supposed to think that this is relevant.
According to Mr. Scheer, he thinks Jack Layton’s focus is on “big-city socialist issues.” Is Mr. Scheer trying to say that farmers and other rural Canadians don’t care about many of the same issues that concern our urban cousins? Isn’t that more than a little bit condescending?
Besides, the last time Jack Layton was in Saskatchewan, he talked about the high cost of gasoline, and he talked with Pat Fiacco about the need for investments in infrastructure. Are those big-city issues? Most of the farmers I know are very concerned about the high cost of inputs like gasoline.
Besides, what are Mr. Scheer’s priorities? When the NDP said they would support the Liberal budget if $4.6 billion in tax cuts for big corporations were removed and the money re-directed to some of the big issues facing Canadian families, he opposed it. In fact, I see little evidence that he’s done anything that would actually benefit the people of this constituency.
In particular, it seems to me that Mr. Scheer takes the farmgate vote for granted. …
Conservatives were silent on the elimination of the Crow. They’ve sided with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the issue of the Canadian Wheat Board, instead of supporting the democratic choices western farmers have made over and over again in producer-director elections to the wheat board: to support single-desk selling….
Sure, politicians like Andrew Scheer have called for more emergency funding for farmers from time to time. But it’s all the same old political posturing.
If Mr. Scheer was really concerned about farmers’ well-being, he and his party would put forward creative new policies on how to help primary producers get a bigger share of the food dollar.
Something tells me, however, that I shouldn’t hold my breath waiting.
– Corinne Pauliuk,
McLean, Sask.
End of rope
A few years ago, if I had done my work properly and we got an average crop, I could make about $100 profit per acre. Today, if I do my work properly and get a good crop, I may break even.
On the next year’s crop, if the trend continues, and it probably will, I will have to add money to every acre we seed even if I get an excellent crop.
Things have gone upside down from what we were told and thought would be. We now have a crisis looming in the grain industry that we never dreamt could happen.
Almost every acre seeded will need money injected from savings or equity built from years past to cover costs. There is pressure coming from all sides and where do we go or what do we do as grain growers?
In my time, we were encouraged to become bigger and more efficient. This has not worked for us. It seemed to work for all other industries because they can pass on costs and have control over the prices.
Everyone but the farmer seems to be benefiting from us getting bigger and so very efficient.
Yes, we did get so good at what we do, using all the modern technology. Now it’s killing us. …
I have got to a point where I hate people who never experienced this giving us so much advice on how we must get more efficient, using modern technology, diversify and whatever else, to survive. We have done all this and are in the biggest mess ever.
It seems all these so-called experts are giving us advice on matters they know absolutely nothing about.
I don’t know the answer but I may not be seeding the one and only quarter I seed. It may also get rented out for a sure profit.
I do have to make a little money to pay bills also. In the meantime, I can only hope that in North America we never run out of food one day. Then people will experience what it is like to be hungry for a year or two or more, especially if the farmers give up.
Then no one will forget the value of the farmer and what he grows. An empty stomach may be the cause of lots of troubles or can carry a lot of power. Just ask the people of Holland and the rest of Europe. I would not like to see what happens when all the money you have would not be able to buy you food….
Europe had this experience. Canada liberated and fed starving Holland and they now look after their farmers. If our farmers give up, then a little down the road, no one will ever forget the value of the farmer and the food he grows.
Yes, I am tired of working for nothing so agribusinesses can make huge profits on our work and leave us with nothing.
Just pay me a decent price for the grain I grow on my farm, so society can continue to have the food they need to stay healthy and strong. …
– John Kapicki,
Andrew, Alta.
