Special crops
To the Editor:
The article in your Dec. 18 issue regarding special crops and changes to the Canada Grain Act is typical of press releases coming from Ottawa.
To imply that these changes are industry or producer driven are misleading and are obviously stated to deflect away scrutiny of the bill.
What this bill has to do with is transferring financial risk and responsibility away from government and industry onto producers.
While it can be argued that more options for producers is a good thing, it can also be argued that leaving producers with a false sense of security in dealing with companies with limited financial responsibility is a recipe for future problems.
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It seems that government has seen a golden opportunity to levy or tax producers to support more government bureaucracy (a portion of the levy will go to the insurance fund) while maintaining control over the system.
The government has been trying to fast track this bill for a number of years and my only hope is that producer groups have had some success in amending it into something both workable and livable.
– Craig Shaw,
Lacombe, Alta.
Aging farmers
To the Editor:
Re: On front page of WP – farmers are getting older.
Well, that is the way our country is being shaped up by governments and labor unions, whether intentional or not.
It is now cheaper to pay for your child’s education, buy them a home and car then to buy them a farm tractor and combine if you have land to spare.
Education also does not depreciate like farm machinery and most of the time gives better income than farm and shorter work hours. So who can afford to farm?
There seems to be no sign of inflation slowing down. And this is very bad for farmers. When we depend on 80 percent of farm produce that has to be exported to countries with very little inflation or none. Our farm produce then has to be sold at Third World prices.
Farm subsidy is not the answer. So sooner or later farmers have to disappear.
– John Pokorney,
Tilley, Alta.
Farm trucks
To the Editor:
I am writing this in response to a letter by Alan Holt of Wild Rose Agricultural Producers regarding truck safety in your Jan. 8 issue.
Mr. Holt is protesting a proposal by Alberta Transportation that farm tractor/trailer units over 24,300 kg gross vehicle weight be brought under National Safety Code rules.
Having been in the commercial trucking industry for the last 18 years, first as a driver to subsidize my own farm and in the last few years owning and operating my own trucks, I felt it necessary to respond to Mr. Holt’s letter.
First, if an individual farmer has enough of his own grain or other commodity to justify the cost of owning and operating a tractor/trailer unit, then you should also be required to follow the same rules as commercial carriers.
There are commercial trucks that put on over 200,000 miles annually. There are others that don’t even put on 50,000 miles. But they all still have to undergo an annual safety inspection. For safety sake, there should be no exceptions.
When you consider the fact that most farmers who are now buying semis have absolutely no experience driving or maintaining them, then all the more reason why these trucks should be up to standards.
Regarding log books, for Mr. Holt’s information, if a farmer is only using his truck locally and his hauls are under 160 km from his home base, he isn’t required to keep a daily log. For longer hauls, commercial truckers who are used to long hours behind the wheel, have to keep a log for safety reasons. The National Safety Code states that 13 hours driving per day is the maximum before being too fatigued to be safe. Why should farmers be exempt?…
As a member of the farm community as well as the trucking industry, we can look on both sides of this issue. However, safety is the number one priority. As the trucking industry is already under very close scrutiny regarding truck safety, how can anyone justify trucks on the road which do not have to conform to National Safety Code standards?
– William Grahn,
Bittern Lake, Alta.
CWB history
It was indeed a treat to read in the Jan. 1 issue (page 11) the findings of John Thompson, whom Ag Canada engaged to research the workings of our Wheat Board, and note the confirmation by him of what I and other “Oldies” have been saying all along, that the Board was not foisted onto us by the government.
Indeed governments of both stripes had to be virtually dragged “kicking and screaming” to accede to us having a Board. I well recall how in 1935 a desperate R. B. Bennett, in the final months of his five-year mandate, finally relented and created a Wheat Board, though only a voluntary one.
His Liberal successor, Mackenzie King, argued long and hard to disparage this Tory “circus,” but with the rural vote then being still important, King bided his time, and failing to get anything like a landslide in the April 1940 election, rather the West sent him a few extra CCFers to disturb his sleep. In 1943 he gave in and provided (on the pretext of a war need which was then already four years in existence) the Board with a full mandate, which included oats and barley.
Then in 1948 in a plebiscite made necessary through the removal of coarse grains from the Board in Oct. 1947…, we reaffirmed our support for the Board and the two grains were reinstated.
Which did not surprise anyone, as the memories of pre-Board days were still quite vivid. I recall my father, mother and older brothers heatedly discussing the infuriatingly frequent occasions of taking a load of good wheat in and have the agent say “Yeah it’s pretty good, but all I have room for is No. 4, so take that or take it home.”
This with a team of horses, already tired from hauling it in on a cold winter day… .
Thompson’s evaluation of the Dual Market’s chance of success, by the experience we had with the voluntary Board, is also “Right On!”
While most things change with time, human nature does not, and there are plenty of predators out there ready to pounce on the unwary!…
– Philip Lindenback,
Weekes, Sask.
