Crisis mode
I am outraged at the headline in the above issue on the front page “Commodity prices soar” by Ed White (WP, May 8.)
This headline gives the impression that grain and oilseed prices have dramatically surged upward, which is certainly not the case. Creeping up very slowly might be a much better choice of words. Prices are far from producing a profit especially with fertilizer and fuel costs, which I would say have soared.
Of course it is good news that prices are moving upward. However, $6 per bushel canola and $3.25 per bu. peas are very inadequate as well as the $1.50 barley. With canola input costs at a minimum of $150 per acre, this doesn’t leave much for equipment payments etc.
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Kochia has become a significant problem for Prairie farmers
As you travel through southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, particularly in areas challenged by dry growing conditions, the magnitude of the kochia problem is easy to see.
There is a smidgen of optimism beginning to be felt. My main objection to this type of headline is for those that are not actually farming. They will think everything is just wonderful. I think most farmers would feel there is a lot of improvement needed yet.
We need the support of the general public in understanding that agriculture is in crisis mode.
– Gerry Osmundson,
Paddockwood, Sask.
Neighbours needed
Caring neighbours make all the difference to people living alone. News reports tell us that.
Only this month an 88-year-old woman in Surrey, B.C., was found Sunday, after she had fallen Tuesday and was unable to get up to call for help. Only when neighbours noticed newspapers piling up on her doorstep did someone check on her, get a key, and find her lying on the floor, dehydrated.
A year ago, a 77-year-old Vancouver property owner, who visited one of her commercial buildings on a holiday weekend, tumbled into the space between the toilet and the wall, got wedged, broke some bones and was unable to free herself or call for help.
Only when she failed to report for volunteer duty at St. Paul’s Hospital’s gift store three days later was a search set in motion.
Several years ago an elderly Smithers couple spent five days locked in their bathroom when the door handle malfunctioned. The husband needed reviving by the time a concerned friend insisted the police break in.
In the past we have learned of even worse cases: …The Kelowna-area mobile home dweller whose partially mummified body wasn’t found until a realtor walked in with a prospective buyer.
And the elderly Chicago man who lay dead in his easy chair for four years, holding the day’s paper, until his house was put up for tax sale. The mailman had bypassed his address, thinking it was vacant. Once in a while, a neighbour would mow the lawn or knock on the door and receive no answer. The medical examiner identified his body from all that was left, his skeleton and his teeth.
Neighbours will make sure nothing like this happens to Rae Huber (Open Forum, May 18) while she tends her farm alone.
– Claudette Sandecki,
Terrace, B.C.
Not welfare
I read with great interest the article on page 72 in the May 11 issue of the Western Producer, written by Barry Wilson. He calls this a welfare program. If we’re below a certain level of income, we get welfare.
Millar Western, the pulp mill in Meadow Lake, Sask., gets a cheque from the government of Saskatchewan if they are below a profit. They don’t call this a welfare cheque, almost $1 billion.
Bombardier and many other companies get government cheques. I don’t hear anyone calling this welfare.
I would like to see a public apology for the use of the word welfare, or paint all the companies and people names who get welfare the same colour.
– Warren Iverson,
Glaslyn, Sask.
Monsanto tech
A recent opinion piece that appeared in the Western Producer incorrectly ties Monsanto to the development and use of sterile seed technology in agricultural production and makes some misleading and incorrect statements (“Spring can no longer be taken for granted”, The Moral Economy, May 18 by Nettie Wiebe).
First, sterile seed technology is not the same as Genetic Use Restriction Technology and to use the two terms interchangeably is incorrect.
Sterile seed technology represents only one type of technology that falls under the larger class of Genetic Use Restriction Technologies or GURTs. Gene Use Restriction Technology, like any technology, has potential risks and benefits. Possible benefits include reducing volunteers in crop rotation or providing a technical solution to containment of plant-made pharmaceuticals and plant-made industrials.
Second, Monsanto does not own a patent on sterile seed technology as implied by Shiva and repeated by Wiebe in her opinion piece. However, multiple patents on several of these concepts are owned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture together with Delta and Pine Land, Zeneca and Syngenta, not Monsanto as was incorrectly stated.
Monsanto has not introduced any commercial product that includes sterile seed technology derived through biotechnology, nor do we currently have plans to do so. For that matter no company anywhere in the world has introduced any commercial seed product that utilizes sterile seed technology using techniques of biotechnology.
Finally, Monsanto made the pledge in 1999 that we wouldn’t commercialize sterile-seed technology in crops for food use. That commitment was reiterated in the Monsanto Pledge articulated in 2000 and we have reaffirmed our absolute commitment not to use sterile seed technology that would prevent small growers in the developing world from maintaining their traditional practices, subsistence or livelihood. …
It would appear that much of the opposition to the concept of sterile seed technology and the potential use of other gene use restriction technologies, is based on misinformation, exaggeration over where and how such technologies might be used, and whether genetic modification vs. traditional breeding methods are used to produce the transgenic change. …
To imply that Monsanto is leading the charge on pursuing sterile seed technologies for commercial products is completely false, not to mention careless and irresponsible. It’s fine to express an opinion, but that opinion should be based on fact and should not deliberately create unfounded fears or mislead the public.
– Trish Jordan,
Public Affairs Lead,
Monsanto Canada,
Winnipeg, Man.
Campaign notice
The RCMP in Saskatchewan is aware of a fundraising campaign by the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers, which is an umbrella group representing police associations. The RCMP does not have an association and is not affiliated with SFPO.
Fundraising telephone calls and letters are being received by some people in communities policed by the RCMP who may mistakenly believe their contributions are benefiting their local detachment and their local community programs supported by the RCMP. This is not the case.
The RCMP wants to ensure the public is aware of this and has all the information required to make an informed decision as to whether or not to support this fundraising campaign.
As a general rule, we always advise residents to ask specific and direct questions about those soliciting funds and, if uncomfortable donating over the phone, ask for written materials which can be examined before a decision is made.
– D. W. McFadyen,
Assistant Commissioner,
Commanding Officer,
RCMP “F” Division,
Regina, Sask.
Whose agenda?
By now it should be clear to most rural voters that the Conservative government will do less for the agricultural crisis than the previous government did.
In fact, one might even question if they will do anything, other than destroy the Canadian Wheat Board.
There appears to be no additional money for farmers this spring, other than what the Liberals had previously announced. The Conservatives have dropped the Farmer Rail Car Coalition proposal. Also, it now appears that CAIS (Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization) may survive for another two years….
However, the Conservatives’ allegiance to destroying the CWB appears to be strong. This will ultimately ensure the end of producer car shipping for producers.
It is very comical that a party who says it can claim rural support can at the same time end or destroy many of the institutions or policies which have benefited producers in the past.
It is also ironic that the Conservatives can kill initiatives that producers have worked on for years to ensure they have some market presence.
Mr. Harper has claimed that his government would be farmer friendly, offering more cash, better programs and a sympathetic ear. What he didn’t say would be who would be receiving those benefits. To date it would appear the government has gone against initiatives supported by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan and the National Farmers Union.
The only groups whose initiatives haven’t been jeopardized are the Western Grain Elevator Association, the railways and the Western Canadian Wheat Growers. It would clearly appear the new government will not support initiatives that the majority of producers support.
One would almost have to wonder whose agenda the new government is following. With the CWB gone, the corporate grain industry will have more market power. If the railways get the hopper cars, they will have even more control.
And what will the producer have? Larger expenses, thanks to a party who claims rural support.
– Kyle Korneychuk,
Pelly, Sask.
COP tax
I have been reading this paper for many years and most of the time the opinions are reasonably accurate, usually from very frustrated people in agriculture venting their desperation and rage over the hopelessness of this occupation and the brain dead decisions of our politicians …
It’s quite commendable that we write back and forth to each other but this is not getting the message out to the buying public who sit down regularly during the day to fill their stomachs on the food that farmers and ranchers produce for nothing.
I suggest that farmers ratchet it up a notch or two and take the message directly to the consumer who doesn’t mind plunking down money for a case of beer or a bottle of liquor.
Six cents for a loaf of bread and tractors in the city are not doing it. Higher food prices are the only way agriculture will survive.
I know higher food prices will cause a lot of hardships because it will cut into the real necessities like booze, cigarettes, gambling and holidays, as cheap food is a given.
When the day comes – and it will – that Canadian consumers have the United States and other countries supplying their food at whatever prices they want, there will be a lot less money spent on their so-called necessities.
I suggest we select some farmers to go into the large food chain stores and set a cost-of-production tax on the groceries that consumers haul out to their mini vans.
If there are any questions, it’s simply a cost of production and now you pay what food is really worth.
Will this happen? No, this is just another letter to all you Western Producer subscribers. By the way, how are ya?
Canadian farmers should take lessons from the Korean and French farmers and become more militant, go to town with more fire in their eyes, if you know what I mean.
– Brian Vigar,
Lancer, Sask.
