Greater share
When I read these two headlines one right after the other today, “Late harvesters fighting mud,” Western Producer, Oct. 12 and “Grim harvest for 3rd year,” CBC News, Oct. 17, I wondered whether grain producers might be cost cutting themselves into oblivion.
There has long been a strong focus on cutting cost per unit to generate profits. This is a natural enough course of action for “price takers,” as economists label agricultural producers whom they assume cannot influence price.
That has led to ever-increasing farm size as producers spread increasingly slim per unit margins caused by the infamous cost-price squeeze over more hectares.
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Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Producers must then recover a greater total cost of inputs for those hectares. So when good weather turns to iffy or bad, producers with ever-higher costs sunk into their crops face ever decreasing prices for those crops.
Maybe farm size is getting to the point that it is increasing the risk of failure instead of increasing the risk of success as growth in farm size is intended to do.
I wonder if producers might reduce the risk of unintended consequences by finding ways to earn the same level of gross revenue on fewer hectares by earning a greater share of consumer spending. The consumer unit price is typically many times the producer unit price.
So, producers must still invest more to earn more, but in pursuit of a much larger opportunity represented by consumer prices rather than only producer costs.
– Mike Klein,
Calgary, Alta.
Hunger & food
Re: “Chronic hunger has nothing to do with lack of food” (WP, Oct. 13).
Mr. Barry Wilson’s article hits the mark. Well done. There is more than enough food to go around. This article should also be a telling blow to the GMO (genetically modified organism) industry that is trying to convince us all that theirs is the only way to feed the world. It’s not.
It’s about owning food rights. They operate by fear of scarcity.
We are very fortunate to be in a country of such abundance. This gives us a responsibility to see how we can contribute to the global community. Producers are and should be food and land stewards, not multi-national businesses.
– Frank Sarro,
Category Manager,
Community Natural Foods Ltd.,
Calgary, Alta.
SE research
Dr. Vitaly Vodyanoy et al of Auburn University in Alabama recently published, in Cells Tissues Organs, a paper which is important to everyone and which may finally turn the corner on more than BSE science. The ground breaking study, Novel Metal Clusters Isolated from Blood are Lethal to Cancer Cells, detected nucleating centres called proteon nucleating centres or PNCs. These PNCs are comprised of one to two nanometre metallic nanoclusters containing 40 to 300 atoms.
These metallic nanoclusters do not contain any protein or any DNA. They consist of various metal atoms. Numerous types of blood samples revealed the presence of metal clusters, “including but not limited to metals such as Cu, Zn, Fe, Mn, Cr, Mo, Sn, V, Ni and the like, as well as metalloids such as Se, Si, As, B,” quoted from Dr. Vodyanoy’s USA Patent App. 20050142611, which relates directly to this research.
Auburn University’s research revealed several extremely important findings:
1. When the PNCs were filtered out of the blood samples, amplification of proteons, being PNCs with attached proteins such as hemoglobin, did not occur. Therefore, the formation of these aggregates was completely dependent upon the amount of metal nanoclusters present.
2. When these PNCs were carbonized to 660 C, they still initiated the formation of proteons. Proteon formation was subsequently halted by the addition of a metal-chelating agent. This discovery exactly replicates the findings with BSE and prion research.
3) The Auburn research used PNCs from healthy specimens and introduced them to various types of cultured cancer cells. The results were a 90 percent and 75 percent death rate to two types of cancer cells, while a much smaller 25 percent decrease occurred in normal rat astrocyte cells.
Today’s flawed but accepted theory on BSE creates the illusion that a prion is a living organism. It is not. It is a clumping of proteins, or protein fragments, attached to PNCs. Clearly, Dr. Vodyanoy has shown that some types of PNCs can be extremely beneficial to our health, destroying certain types of cancer cells. We should now concentrate on analyzing the PNCs of prion aggregates.
It is time governments and scientists look at these neurological diseases with the understanding that an imbalance of metals, or a contamination of metals, is responsible for a host of neurological diseases, including BSE.
– Kathy Czar,
Hanna, Alta.
Glyphosate imports
Re: Glyphosate imports hit 4.1 m litres, WP, Sept 22. As a grain grower and cattle producer, I understand the need to try and cut farm input costs in order to increase farm profitability.
True, the North American agriculture industry makes profit on input sales.
However, it’s misleading to think that importing generic glyphosates like ClearOut 41 Plus from the U.S. is resulting in greater economic growth for local communities.
In fact it’s quite the opposite. When we import a generic glyphosate, we are literally taking money away from our local dealers and transferring it directly to the U.S. economy, and that has a ripple effect here.
Apart from having a genuine interest in the well-being of the local communities in which they operate, local businesses make it their duty to support local initiatives and fundraising efforts, lending help and assistance to schools, sports teams, 4-H clubs and other organizations whenever they can.
This is also the case with the large corporations. They provide our kids with scholarships and support rural communities with economic and environmental projects to enhance our rural sustainability. They support us as much as we support them.
Another thing is that over the past decade, government funding for research and development has been seriously eroded and public companies have become a major source of funding for agricultural research. They spend millions of dollars each year on R & D to move Canadian agricultural technology forward so that we can continue to be globally competitive.
So let’s not forget that this kind of work is where some of those input profits go, and that’s important to all of us.
Reports claim that generic glyphosates work just as good as the name brands. Technically this hasn’t been proven.
The products haven’t been approved or tested in our northern climate.
But the real point is that generics provide no guarantee of performance and in the long term, we could be putting ourselves and our crops at risk.
Private companies, on the other hand, are always there. Some of the industry’s most experienced and agronomically knowledgeable people are employed by these companies.
They do provide product service guarantees, and if you’ve experienced trouble with one of their products, local reps are usually just a phone call away… Are you going to get that from ClearOut 41?…
Think about your neighbour, my neighbour, family members. We all rely on each other’s business in one form or another. Let’s not send our hard earned dollars to our neighbours in the south.
– Kyle Cochrane,
Alexander, Man.
New plants
Congratulations to the town of Lacombe, Alta., with upcoming construction and operation of two federal meat plants.
One of the main reasons … is because of the positive attitude of your mayor, development officer and town and county members.
As a previous owner of a federal meat plant in southern Alberta, I have found it discouraging dealing with municipalities. Being raised in Lacombe and our family having a business in town, I am fully aware that the backbone of this community was built by farmers.
As you look through our town’s history, where would we be without farmers in our community? They shopped in our town, paid taxes for roads and infrastructure, built schools and churches and volunteered time for local causes.
These two plants not only provide economic growth for citizens of Lacombe, but more importantly they provide a market for local elk, bison and beef farmers.
Alberta farmers have been kicked around enough and I am proud our community has not forgotten where their bread and butter comes from.
– Daniel Land,
Lacombe, Alta.
Gas worries
I am confused about the high cost of natural gas.
It does not cost any more to take this out of our ground now than it did before the hurricanes in the south or the unrest in the Middle East. Some one is making an exorbitant profit from these disasters. Who is it?
The gas companies and the governments are the obvious culprits. I do not deny them a decent profit for their involvement, but I do not think that the people of Saskatchewan should be held for ransom to feed large profits to anyone.
After all, this gas is coming out of the ground in our province.
We cannot protect ourselves from these high prices by forward buying as some larger organizations do and we cannot just turn off our heat during our cold winters. The excuse is, of course, world demand. My opinion is that this is not a valid argument.
The people of this province should be able to benefit from the gas from their land. Heating gas should be supplied to them at the cost of removing it and distributing it to them. The companies and government can sell the excess…
Sask Energy is asking for a phenomenal 40 percent increase in its charge for natural gas. This will cause an approximate increase of $475 per year per family in heating costs. Has anyone considered the amount of money each family unit will have to generate to pay this?
If one considers that about 50 percent of our income is tax, each family unit will actually have to take over $700 from their income to pay for this increase as they cannot deduct it as an expense. Either they will have to cut their consumer spending in other areas to pay for this or they will have to find additional work to offset cost.
This of course generates more money for the government, reduces the value of the union worker’s income thereby causing more strikes. Of course, there will be a lot more problems created by this increase.
I believe that our federal and provincial governments are to blame for the instability in our heating fuel prices. This problem could have been prevented long ago by allowing our population access to the gas coming out of our ground at cost.
I also think that our government could be putting more emphasis on research into alternative energy sources through tax incentives and grants. We do not seem to be doing anything about biodiesel and yet we are a major oilseed producer.
Major biodiesel plants are being built south of the border to use our oilseeds. Why aren’t we doing this? The energy in our oilseed is being sold at a fraction of the value of energy from oil or gas. We could also be doing more research into the use of energy from all our crops.
Although every one has the mindset that we are food producers, we are actually energy producers. We use our crops to absorb energy from the sun and we sell it as food.
Because we produce a surplus of food and we do not use our crops as an energy source, the value of our produce is much lower than it should be.
– Jim Rogers,
Edgeley, Sask.
Health & travel
Re: Don Purich law column (about) rural residents having to travel to a major centre for health care. In my case my concern was … the tax I was charged for a motel room, GST plus tourist tax, which came to 11 percent on health care, just because our government blew up one hospital and sold the other.
I have heard that Peter Lougheed ran for government because his mother could not get into a hospital and that Peter had no interest in politics.
Now with the government he set up, hardly anyone’s mother can get into the hospital and if one gets health care they have to pay tax …
– John Pokorney,
Tilley, Alta.
