MOOSE JAW, Sask. – Farmers will get power only if they find common ground on issues, a Farming For Profit conference was told here last week.
Saskatchewan cabinet minister Berny Wiens said farmers are poorly equipped to advocate their causes because there are too many voices and they end up neutralizing each other.
“As a group they are almost like a rabbit caught in the glare of the headlights of technology and trade and markets, and we don’t know how to get off the road long enough to get our bearings so we run this way and we run that way and try to keep ahead hoping not to be overtaken,” the former agriculture minister said. “Stated differently we as farmers are so busy expounding on the things about which we don’t agree that whatever small message of agreement we do have gets lost in the noise.”
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Wiens told a session on the politics of agriculture that the farm community needs leadership to bring unity to the voices, and perhaps one organization to represent them.
“When the (National) Farmer’s Union was strong, it was strong because it had sensible things to say about the family and the community and the economy,” he said. “We don’t have the 1997 version of that out there right now. We don’t have anybody out there right now.”
Former Saskatchewan Conservative premier Grant Devine said there is “way too much” politics in agriculture and farmers can’t afford to argue and debate any more.
“We spend so much time debating changing world conditions, changing technology, all these forces of whether we’re going to allow people to actually adjust to it when we should be focusing on how do you adjust to it,” he said.
“There is more and more reason not to have these deep political debates in agriculture because I think we could sit down and in 85, 90 percent of the time Berny and I could agree.”
But they disagree on the role of the Canadian Wheat Board. Wiens said the agency treats all farmers equally and gives them strength in the marketplace. But Devine said real clout comes from making money, not from having a large organization.
“The world is much more sophisticated in how you get clout,” he said. “If you think you’re going to use systems and organizations that worked when you didn’t have a phone and you had an elevator every seven miles and you could haul 100 bushels on a horse and a wagon, it’s different.”
