IT’S CONFESSION time. Media, including The Western Producer, are doing a one-sided job of covering the farm income story.
Day after day, news reports are filled with the sad angry tales of farmers hanging on by their fingernails, losing money, eating up equity, receiving little government help and claiming they are not getting their fair share of the billions of dollars that governments say are flowing.
News stories are filled with such tales because these are the folks who talk, represented by farm leaders who describe dire circumstances and demand more government help.
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But surely there is another side to this story, farmers who are doing OK and who are grateful for taxpayer support that has kept them in business.
Why don’t media cover it?
It was a question posed last week in an initially angry telephone call from a prairie farmer who had read a Western Producer story about pressure on agriculture minister Chuck Strahl to find more spring money to help desperate farmers.
Why are you calling for more government money, asked the caller. It’s embarrassing. Farmers in his neck of the woods are doing well and the program payments have been very helpful.
His message was that by using space in the Western Producer to plead farmer poverty, I was slapping generous taxpayers in the face and misrepresenting the real and more positive situation many farmers face.
He had received or expects to receive more than $100,000 in program payments on his farm during the past year, was grateful and many of his neighbours felt the same way.
“Why are you writing that we need more money?”
What followed was a brief explanation of what it means to be a “reporter.” Stories reflect what a reporter hears, sees and is told. That particular story reflected comments from a number of farm leaders from across the country when Strahl appeared before the Canadian Federation of Agriculture annual meeting.
Strahl was told thousands of farmers are in trouble and the $500 million promised by the Conservatives during the election should be paid now to help farmers pay seeding bills. Much more is needed.
Ontario and Saskatchewan farm leaders repeated the message last week.
I told the caller I agreed farmer distress is just part of the story but it is difficult to get farmers doing well to tell their story. His call was an important reflection of the other side of the story.
What’s your name and where do you farm, so I can tell your good news story?
Nope, he didn’t want his name used. He has to live with his neighbours who say they are not doing so well. Bingo.
And that’s why reporting on the farm income story is so one-sided.
Farmers who feel they are in trouble are happy to talk, demonstrate and demand.
Farmers doing well, including some farm leaders who make the case for impoverished farmers, insist that their good fortune is their own business.
It means politicians who struggle to find farm aid dollars never hear that they have done some good. It means taxpayers hear that billions are spent and nothing improves for anyone.
It is a message that can only erode public support for farm aid.
