Heald is an Ottawa-based agricultural writer.
Ralph Ferguson, southwestern Ontario farmer, former Liberal MP and minister of agriculture in John Turner’s government, was well known for his “Compare the Share” campaign. He carried with him, wherever he went, a compendium of statistics and data detailing how small was the farmer’s share of the consumer’s dollar.
He was right, but unfortunately and predictably, no one paid much attention. But others have picked up the theme.
David King, secretary general of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, in a recent issue of IFAP’s newsletter, writes about the strengthening of the agricultural economy around the world but warns that the farmer’s share of the consumer dollar has hardly changed.
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The National Farmers Union study of how free trade has not worked for farmers over the 19 years since the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement was signed shows that farm income is down drastically, farm debt has increased dramatically and the number of Canadian farmers has declined by nearly 25 percent. It also details how farmgate prices for commodities and livestock have not kept pace with price increases in the retail stores.
It has never been news to farmers that their share of the consumer’s dollar is woefully inadequate.
Some people – a mere handful when you think of a world of six billion – have learned how to make globalization work for them. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. CEO’s obscene incomes (I dare not call them “earnings”) are at record highs while wages for the working poor are declining. There can be no other explanation except that greed has become the dominant economic policy in a world where moral standards are ignored.
Former agriculture minister Eugene Whelan once quipped that there is nothing new about globalization: “Grabbing as much as you can for yourself regardless of who suffers in the process is an old idea. We used to call it piracy.”
