LAST week’s farm rally in Saskatoon revolved around a common theme: a desperate search for what to do next.
Those who delivered inspired speeches and those who delivered tired rants tussled with this, the most central of questions facing farmers in the most financially troubled regions of the Prairies today. Where do we go from here?
But real answers are tougher to find than booking an arena and getting people to show up.
Saskatchewan Place was less than half full for the rally. On Jan. 26, 1993, 12,700 farmers packed the arena. Someone at the rally suggested that has more to do with deep depression and weariness, not because there are fewer farmers financially hurting today.
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But when it came to real action, farmers at the rally showed exactly why they encounter such problems when they try to set a firm direction for the future.
When somebody suggested staging a sit-in, in which all those at the rally would refuse to leave until Saskat-chewan premier Roy Romanow showed up, many headed for exits.
They no doubt wondered about the point of such an exercise, and rightly so. Even if Romanow would have showed up at Sask Place, which is doubtful, it’s tough to imagine the protesters winning more than a promise to fight Ottawa for their cause – a vow gained weeks ago from the Saskatchewan government.
The inability of farmers, who represent diverse philosophies and backgrounds, to auger their ideas into a neatly contained bin of demands reared its head once again and in the end farmers were left with the same old question: Where do we go from here?
If they cannot agree on a direction, how can they hammer together a useful income protection plan?
In the end the sit-in failed because of lack of support. Somebody then suggested a rally at the Saskatchewan legislature to deadlock the city of Regina be held within 10 days. Then everybody went home.
But that does not mean the rally was a waste of time and effort. It was a time to regain some sense of strength for those who feel wronged and frustrated at having been thrown into a sea of sharks by their own government. At having to face the calamities of the international markets on their own, while farmers in other countries are buoyed by generous subsidies.
It was a fortifier for people hit hard by the farm income crisis, a time to commiserate and to gain strength in the fact that they share a burden.
By failing to attend, Romanow and Saskatchewan agriculture minister Dwain Lingenfelter missed an ideal chance to show they share farmers’ burdens. And that is a shame.
