Farmer vows
I find there is no other occupation or business that has so many self-styled experts, paper pushers, desk experts, so-called scientists, telling us what to do, but none of them earns their living farming but an endless supply of unfounded theories as credible as weather forecasters and their experts but never bother to consult us, farmers ….
That’s only the beginning. We have to constantly deal with a blizzard of advertising, which is right, which is wrong for your particular farm. We have to experiment constantly (with) sometimes very costly experiments, and pay out of our pockets the expenses, of course, as those experts are never around then.
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Then if it doesn’t pay as advertised, usually it’s the farmer’s fault.
Next are the vagaries of the weather, which we have no control whatsoever, that is easily explained by the scientist. If it doesn’t rain, small crop or no crop, (and) a year’s work can disappear in 10 minutes by a hailstorm regardless of what the expert says …
And remember we have no union to complain for us. We produce your lifeblood many times below cost. …
These are observations of a farmer that has farmed for a lifetime in Saskatchewan, (who) likes to tell it like it is with no exaggeration or fiction…
– Raymond Baillargeon,
North Battleford, Sask.
Foolish Kyoto
This Kyoto thing has me really ticked off.
I attended an Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan meeting in Yorkton to explain the Kyoto Protocol. Well, I got schooled up to take the attitude that Kyoto is good for all, so the farmers better get on side just in case there is money in Kyoto for the farmer through carbon credits. I do not think this will happen.
First of all, look at this in a plain ordinary sensible, realistic, sane-thinking way.
Climate change has been taking place for eons and will continue to, whether we on earth reduce our so-called greenhouse gases or not.
So far, I have not heard of any proof that these so-called greenhouse gases are responsible for changing our climate to hot or cold or otherwise. When something isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it. That costs money and will only cause trouble.
This very wild idea the government has about trading carbon credits does nothing to control the so-called greenhouse gases. It is a money scheme of some sort that the government thinks they are going to spread around the world to make Canada look good to other countries and use many millions, likely billions of taxpayers money to absolutely no benefit to our country. …
This kind of tomfoolery, malarkey, just give it a fool’s name that only governments come up with, must not happen.
These kinds of things will be the downfall of our otherwise great country, leading us taxpayers down the garden path, and you know what happens down there.
I look to governments to govern our country honestly with real sensible, realistic thinking, so all of us Canadians can make an honest living, with housing, health care, and jobs for all.
I want my tax dollars to be used for something useful and beneficial for our population like some of the mentioned before, not just blowing it away … just so it looks to the world that Canada is really the great master of this so-called green plan….
My advice to governments and others: when you are in the hole and want to get out, stop digging.
– Glenn Laycock,
Saltcoats, Sask.
Lost gamble
Re: Japan BSE objection beyond science (WP, June 30.)
It’s time for accountability.
In response to Japanese concerns about mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy,) which the U.S. alleges is their reason for not opening the border to Canadian cattle, federal agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief told media: “Be careful what you force other people to do because it might come around the other way.”
This statement could easily be applied to the Canadian beef industry’s non-response – under Vanclief’s reign – to the global outbreak of mad cow disease.
Vanclief should have heeded 1997 recommendations from the World Health Organization and legislated a total ban on rendered animal protein in livestock feed.
Instead, Canadian cattleman continued to force cattle to eat the rendered remains of other animals.
Unfortunately, this dangerous feeding practice has now “come around the other way.” Canada has mad cow disease. By not heeding the WHO, Vanclief gambled, and Canada lost.
Vanclief should have fought for precautionary measures to protect Canada from mad cow disease. Instead, he put the public at risk and may have destroyed our once proud beef industry in the process.
He should resign.
– Bradford Duplisea,
Hull, Quebec
Shameful stance
Where has Paul Beingessner been hiding (“Group was victim of self-inflicted wounds,” WP, June 26), trying to pretend the most serious issue facing the West and perhaps Canada just doesn’t exist – that the wheat monopoly is right, that farmers don’t deserve the freedom to sell the grain they grow themselves.
Alberta premier Ralph Klein couldn’t have stated it more clearly at a Lethbridge courthouse when one group of farmers was marched into jail: “The prison terms show the system is not working… .When decent hard-working farmers are willing to go to jail for the sake of fundamental freedoms that other businesses take for granted, there is something wrong with the laws of the land.”
Klein was absolutely right. I was at Lethbridge too. I have known some of these farmers for 20 or 30 years.
Author Don Baron brought together these catastrophic events in his remarkable book, Jailhouse Justice – Canada’s Story of Shame, telling how an endless number of growers trying to sell the crops they grew on their own farms paid the ultimate price.
One brief story in it just about says it all. Headed “Story of Hell,” Baron writes that when Andy McMechan walked into the Calgary Sun office in early 1997, associate editor Paul Jackson described what he heard as “a story of hell reminiscent of human rights abuses in some third-rate South American banana republic and straight out of the gulags in the former Soviet Union… . But it happened in Canada and is so frightening, every one of us should fear for our freedom.” …
Yes, it’s a shameful story. But how could Mr. Beingessner, a farmer himself, turn totally against his fellow farmers who fight for the freedom to manage their own farms and to build a prosperous West in the face of this furious obstruction by Ottawa politicians and bureaucrats?
– Clarence Taylor,
Regina, Sask.
Wrong assumption
I’ve been following the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) issue since Britain first admitted it had a problem which, incidentally, was long after it actually had the problem.
As a former medical technologist, I was actually interested in prion diseases in general and wanted to see what discoveries would come from work on BSE that might be applicable to its human counterpart, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
What I found was that as soon as our governments in Canada traced the 1993 mad cow back to Britain, they assumed (as did Germany and Norway before they started testing) that there really was no Canadian problem and did not follow all the recommendations made by the World Health Organization.
Many of your readers pointed out, and rightly so, that politics were involved. It would have meant a complete overhaul of our system, which would have raised a lot of industry hackles.
But there is more. When Canada signed on to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) we agreed to harmonize our systems.
While harmonization to the higher standard would be the way to go, that isn’t always what happens. The United States, which has more clout, often has the final say and U.S. rules are in some respects more slack than ours. For instance, they don’t even have a rudimentary tracking system up and running.
Now if you want to know why Canadian beef is not moving across the border, it is my opinion that stalling on border opening will continue until the Americans figure out how to cheaply fix some of the leaks in their system.
Meanwhile, on our side of the border, our politicians are flipping the pages in our NAFTA agreement trying to discover if our government really has any power to do anything, given that under NAFTA, Chapter II, any company that wants can sue our government if it feels it has been discriminated against or in any way made less profitable. …
As the fellow from Germany wrote, the solution to our immediate problem is simply to do as many other countries are doing and that is test every cow over 24 months of age as it is slaughtered. It’s not the way to prevent the problem from happening again, but it is a good start for international confidence building.
– Dorene A. Rew
Red Deer, Alta.
