Low incomes
Farmers have many problems but nothing more serious than low net income. Is it because farmers have no power in the marketplace, as was suggested by many farm experts in recent years, or is it because of government policies that are obviously promoting an unequal distribution of wealth and destroying many farmers?
In a recent one-page letter to the producers re: $400 million direct payment to producers, Agriculture Canada indicated that “payments will be based on 2.36 percent of producers’ average net sales” as if they don’t realize that net sales and net income are almost synonymous terms.
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In other words, for a producer to qualify for assistance, there is very little, if anything, for those who need it the most….
The large corporate farms with the most control over the market or the government will again receive millions in assistance and the small farmer will be forced out of business. The market is not the problem. It is government policies that are effectively eliminating the small farmers who, if you read some of the latest research regarding production costs that include social costs, are more efficient than any corporate farm.
We need the small farmers for many reasons as I point out in a book that I am working on. Not only are they more efficient than the large farms, they are supreme when it comes to producing natural food that is more likely to meet our biological needs. It is time we think about our health and not just profits and tell our politicians to stop blundering away our future.
– Arvey Olsen,
Okotoks, Alta.
Farmer’s money
I’m wondering how many colour portraits of the Canadian Wheat Board directors we need to see in our farm papers? I requested this information by fax, but those at the board office refused my request…
The two half-page ads in just two of the farm publications I subscribe to cost $6,741. Painful, but merely a drop in the bucket.
Why advertise a monopoly? There is no other act in town, and should you attempt to find one, you go to jail – in Canada, an otherwise free market country.
Jim Chatenay, the trusty CWB director from Red Deer, is in complete agreement with my position.
“We should be selling your wheat at the best possible price and not be wasting time and money on promoting our self-image.”
He further stated that the CWB spends approximately $2 million a year on just that, a shameful misuse of farmers’ hard-earned money.
I would suggest those who still think the CWB has any value, sentimental at that, should pick up the tab themselves…
All the fear mongering about what will happen if the monopoly is lifted is just that. The irony is that this manufactured fear flows directly from the wheat board itself, using farmers’ money to get the message out.
Has the sky fallen because the other commodities you grow aren’t controlled by a huge, costly bureaucracy? I think not.
Canada’s new government was elected partly because they promised to give farmers a long-overdue choice in marketing their precious wheat. Surely this is our human right?
Chuck Strahl is simply following through on his party’s promise.
Thank you, Mr. Strahl, for listening to farmers and getting things done. Way to go. I for one will follow your lead to stand up for Canada and for farmers too.
– Gertrude Sawatzky,
MacGregor, Man.
Weird logic
(Federal agriculture minister Chuck) Strahl doesn’t seem to get tired of quoting the results of the barley plebiscite using three proposals turned into two.
Perhaps Mr. Strahl’s logic could be applied to the last federal election. Using this logic would mean that the last federal vote was choice between a Conservative government and “someone else.” Since “someone else” got many more votes than the Conservatives, I would suggest, going by Mr. Strahl’s logic, the government of Canada should be “someone else.”
With the Canadian Wheat Board Act now rewritten, perhaps Mr. Strahl could turn his attention to the Canada Elections Act and modify it similarly. Wouldn’t it be an improvement if the government of Canada consisted of members elected by the majority of Canadians?
For a party that promised open, transparent and honest government, there seems to be a lack of all three. I suspect that instead of the above we have what a journalist described as an F.U. government. The voices of constructive criticism or disagreement certainly seem to have no access to this government and manipulation of facts and figures are just as popular as the previous administration.
I would further suggest to Mr. Strahl that most who voted for the Conservative party at the last federal election were expecting to get the promised open, transparent and honest government, not a different set of crooks.
After the way the CEO of the CWB was treated and the mishandling of the barley plebiscite, one wonders about the ability of this administration to make rational, constructive decisions, which is precisely what a positive future of Canada will require.
– Horst Schreiber,
Ohaton, Alta.
Unequal help
It is only fitting that in the province of Saskatchewan, where football is so popular, that the federal and provincial departments of agriculture are treating its hard working farmers like a football.
(For example) the northern farmers in 2006 getting help provincially for the flooded acres that their farmers couldn’t seed. Six months later, when the southwest cried for drought assistance, the provincial safety review committee would not even meet with us when they immediately gave money to our cousins and brothers who do the same thing in the same province – try to make a living growing food.
I hear that the Saskatchewan department of agriculture is a friend of the wheat board after an election by farmers to decide how we would like to market our grain. How did you get your jobs, Mr. (Mark) Wartman and Mr. Stewart Wells? Was it through an election process and did either of you have your jobs challenged after the election by friends of the loser?
If the wheat board is such a great thing, why are farmers quitting a 100-year-old tradition, because no matter how many cash advances or interim payments, it all adds up to borrowing from tomorrow. Until our cost of production is smaller than our series of payments, we will never make money.
If the wheat board is so great and you are doing such a great job then why are we so broke?
Mr. Wartman, …quit turning farmer against farmer with unfair political disaster handouts. Half your disaster review committee is hand picked by your government.
Dividing us on the wheat board issue is wrong. We farmers can find enough to fight about without you making us jealous of unfair help to farmers within our own province. …
– Randi Ellis,
Hazlet, Sask.
Roping response
I would like a chance to respond to the letter submitted to your paper by Jim Urquhart from Trail, B.C. (Open Forum, June 21).
In Jim’s letter he showed how little he actually knew about the sport of tie down roping. The first point he made was that he raised purebred Black Angus. That in no way gives him any expertise when it comes to tie down roping.
The second point shared with us was that cattle in tie down roping are roped night after night all summer long. This is also false. Tie down roping cattle simply stop running if they were subjected to this treatment.
The third point he made was that cattle were abused in this event. All rodeo organizations have strict rules that insure humane treatment of rodeo stock.
The last false statement made by Jim was that cattle show acute stress due to being roped and do not feed well. This is also false and this will prove my point.
I purchased 108 calves in 2006 between 200 and 230 pounds. Their average rate of gain was 2.2 lb. per day. There are very few farmers that can get that feed turn around on a 200 lb. calf.
– Alwin Bouchard,
Scandia, Alta.
CFA dismay
Re: “Farm lobby says chemical companies reneged,” (WP, June 21). The CFA is dismayed at the inference that the five products left in the Growers Own Use (GROU) program should be acceptable to Canadian farmers.
The whole point of GROU is to complement the OUI (Own Use Import) program, helping farmers reduce the cost of production and enforcing price discipline on the makers of chemical pest control products.
If the same product is registered both in Canada and the United States, but costs more here, the GROU is supposed to allow producers to go south of the border to access the more competitive option.
The Pest Management Regulatory Agency this past December committed to farmers that eight of the 12 products put forward by grower groups would be accepted under the proposed GROU program being championed by the chemical companies. Based on that commitment, grower groups negotiated details of the GROU program to achieve a positive outcome for Canadian farmers.
However, six months later and two weeks before the GROU implementation, the chemical companies used federal patent and exclusive use provisions to pull three more products.
Farmers were promised eight products for the new GROU program. It is unlikely grower groups would have negotiated the current deal if they had known the chemical companies were going to keep the power to pull products at any time on the basis of patent and exclusive use provisions, effectively undermining the whole point of the program.
This last minute change of tactics has left Canadian farmers in the lurch, once again to the benefit of large chemical companies.
It is obvious that the chemical companies are using the federal patents and exclusive use provisions to price discriminate for equivalent products registered on both sides of the border by the same parent company. This is just a means to further gouge Canadian farmers ….
The CFA works hard on behalf of farmers to improve their livelihoods. We are dismayed by the loss of the three products under the GROU; we were misled to accept a program and negotiate a deal that we might not have agreed to otherwise. The CFA … will continue to fight on behalf of farmers to ensure that Canadian producers have an adequate program for price discipline.
– Bob Friesen,
CFA President,
Ottawa, Ont.
Some celebration
Our federal agriculture minister, Chuck Strahl, has announced that Aug. 1 will be barley freedom day. I wonder how farmers in the West should best celebrate barley freedom day.
Should we celebrate?
In my opinion, those individuals lucky enough to own shares in companies that buy domestic malting barley are the ones who should really be celebrating.
Freedom?
We as farmers will now be free to compete even harder against each other.
Gone will be the “shackles” of collectively negotiating prices for our goods.
Our government is on to something here. I certainly hope that they don’t stop the freedom movement with farmers. I think dentists should be the next group to be liberated. Yes dentists; those poor dentists with their tightly restricted college admission policy. Why, if the government could only do for dentists what they have done for farmers, I bet we could have 10 times as many dentists providing services as we do now.
This would give dentists the freedom to choose between charging their old rates and dropping their rates in order to retain clients.
Some readers will get the point of my satire; others will think that farmers really do have something worth celebrating on barley freedom day.
– Leo Jeanneau,
Prud’homme, Sask.
