Crow disaster

To the Editor:

Death of Crow rates means disaster. Increase in road traffic, road costs, accidents, injuries and death to people, farms and towns will result. Some have said the death of Crow will stimulate local processing. Utter nonsense! Such absurd talk is to convince the gullible to give up the fight against the corporates.

Anyone who knows some prairie history knows that there were many small-town flour mills. These mills did not fail because of declining flour markets or poor quality milling, but because they were squeezed out by large predatory monopolists as farmers now are being squeezed out.

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If we go back far enough, we will come to the day when branch lines were profitable. It has been said, “most changes occur with certain objectives in mind.” No wonder our economy is ailing and the giant corporates are prospering.

The Aug. 2 CBC radio open-line broadcast drew in a very pertinent caller who explained the move to kill the Crow was engineered by Cargill as a step to dominate production and handling of food products as they do under various names in California. The manner in which that caller spoke, it was easy to surmise that if agriculture as a way of life is to survive, the likes of Cargill must be driven out. Instead Cargill received help in building a canola-crushing plant. …

– Stuart Makaroff,

Saskatoon, Sask.

Changing times

To the Editor:

Times have certainly changed for Saskatchewan farmers. In the last 10 years, agriculture has undergone a process of destabilization that is unprecedented.

This destabilization is far-reaching and has the potential to adversely affect the thousands of hardworking farmers.

Most farmers react to adversity and uncertainty by pulling together and helping each other. On a personal level, this is evident when a farmer becomes ill and the neighbors all pitch in to “get the job done.” On a commercial level, marketing clubs and producer-funded grain terminals are good examples of farmers pooling their resources to help each other. By acting in unison, these farmers can act on ideas and create structures that are impossible tasks for someone working alone.

By combining this idea of mutual self-help with an automatic profit-sharing plan (patronage allocation), direct control by the user/owners, fairness, honesty and trust, we can come up with a pretty good approximation of the original Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. Faced with uncertainty in the early part of this century, farmers banded together in the knowledge that only they could ensure the fairness, honesty and trust required to gain some control over their lives.

Imagine the disgust that the co-operators feel when their institution, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, and its subsidiaries has: 1. former grain traders sent to jail (XCAN ’91); 2. a conviction under the Canada Seeds Act (April ’94); 3. a conviction for poaching fish from Lake Diefenbaker (May ’95); 4. a non-fine of $250,000 paid to the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange (’95); 5. a plan, complete with interest-free loans to senior management, to sell shares on the stock exchange and seriously erode any claim it has to the word “co-operative.”

The Pool’s real strength was in its member’s vision to be better than the rest. Now senior management are saying that the Pool must do these things because “this is the environment that we are working in.” Aren’t we lucky that management did not use this excuse in 1924?

The current board and management of the Pool have lost their compass and are heading in the wrong direction. Farmers have already seen the future-they’ve been there, and it prompted them to build real co-operatives. It’s time for farmers to reject the Pool’s share offering proposal and take control.

– Stewart Wells,

Swift Current, Sask.

Preserve farmers

To the Editor:

On preserving species, should not the farmers be preserved? We are to preserve the burrowing owl, grizzly bear, whooping crane, wood bison and some plants. Government wants to set aside and even expropriate lands for these threatened species. Besides the farmers, the others won’t feed us. We have to preserve a balance in ecology so that we too may survive. And yes, the wolf, the most vicious killer in nature.

We already lost over half our farmers since the Second World War. Can we afford to keep losing them? …

This year I read about a world shortage of grain. The farmers were pushed out of growing grain into other things to survive economically. We may have lots of oil and beer, yet lack bread in some nations. A balance is needed.

– Paul Kuric,

Vega, Alta.

Misses mark

To the Editor:

The July 20 article, “Ethics professor balks at benefits of biotechnology” by Courtney Tower, highlights the somewhat controversial comments made by Dr. Arthur Shafer during the Biotechnology Forum. But he misses the mark on two accounts.

First, the session was part of the 75th Annual Conference of the Agricultural Institute of Canada. The AIC is a national not-for-profit organization that represents the interest of professional agrologists across Canada. The majority of our nine scientific society member organizations hold their annual meetings in conjunction with AIC, making ours a dynamic, multi-disciplinary conference – 10 conferences in one.

The Biotechnology Forum was part of the AIC portion and aimed at the professional agrologists. The majority of questions during this session came not from scientists but from regulators, administrators and practitioners.

Second, Mr. Tower implies that the sponsors (the “chemical companies”) had one pulled over on them by providing funding for this session, and from the way the article was written that may seem to be the case. In reality, the Agricultural Institute of Canada and the sponsors are interested in promoting an informed public dialogue on the pros and cons of biotechnology. This article addresses only one person’s opinions and ignores the other speakers and much of the discussion that took place.

– Brenda G. Heald,