I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors when politicians meet with Federal officials in Ottawa, but it wouldn’t surprise me that they talked about their golf score at the closest course and other insignificant things rather than problems both national and international.
They have repeatedly said the farm issue is a federal responsibility. The kind of argument used when in Ottawa I have no idea but the Feds seem to have money (millions) to help eastern fishing industry, also millions for ice storms.
That is all in the past, yet more recent spending is millions for Kosovar refugees, help for Taiwan earthquake victims and East Timorese. For some reason there is no help for people at home, homeless in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Canadian agriculture.
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Grain prices are below the cost of production and no help.
I have been farming for more than 30 years, keeping the wolf from the door by whatever means. I was raised carrying five-gallon pails of grain to pigs and cows.
I remember my father saying, “Pork prices are high, made some money this month,” also the reverse, “We won’t make any money this month to get paid for our labor or yours either.”
My mother talks about her father keeping steers four and five years old and longer because cattle buyers were only offering $2 or $3 and that was per steer, not cents per pound.
Grain, cattle, hog prices have pretty much remained constant over the last 50 years with one sector subsidizing the other.
Yet the margin for the food processor has been increasing steadily, with higher and higher profits and increased returns for shareholders, not because the farmgate price decreased but because the price to consumers has increased.
These same food processors don’t want to expand with their money. They ask the government and me, a producer, to put money into a new plant so I as a producer have value-added money to spend. Governments buy into this and tell us to diversify, spending money we don’t have hauling our product on roads we don’t have in trucks we don’t have.
The answer is simple. A living for producers by sharing the profits from food industry. We already have money invested in land and equipment so processors can get the product. …
Ken Hill,
Mildred, Sask.
