Organic ballot
The Saskatchewan Organic Directorate would like to respond to the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers’ half page advertisement (Feb 16 Western Producer) directed at Saskatchewan certified organic farmers and the recently formed Saskatchewan Organic Commission Interim Board.
The Pulse Growers ad urged a “no” vote to the Saskatchewan Organic Commission Interim Board’s mail-out ballot to the province’s certified organic farmers. The ballot requested support in the formation of an elected board to administer organic research and check-off funds which would be redirected from other organizations, including the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers.
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The ballots have been counted, and a large majority of the respondents have voted in support of the Saskatchewan Organic Commission.
Regarding this modest effort of organic farmers to control some of their own money and research, several points need to be made. Organic producers appreciate the ongoing benefits they receive from research and promotion by the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers and others.
However, because organic agriculture often takes a fundamentally different approach to agronomics, and sees the relationship between soil, plant and animal life, farmer and society as intricately bound together, organic research must follow an independent path.
Good organic research recognizes sustainable agriculture is as much an art as a science. It functions as a total system. Research most useful to organic farmers does not treat agriculture as a series of unrelated problems simply requiring technological “fixes” such as changes in inputs or plant breeding.
Furthermore, the goals of “agri-business” are often at odds with those of organic farmers and patrons. Increased participation on the pulse growers board by organic farmers will not address these issues.
Judging from the substantial support the Saskatchewan Organic Commission’s ballot received, it is clear that organic farmers feel a structure is needed to give them more say in how both their check-off dollars are spent, and to influence the direction of agricultural research.
The Saskatchewan Organic Directorate supports the efforts of the Saskatchewan Organic Commission to that end.
We ask for the understanding of the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers and other organizations, and urge them to lend their co-operation.
– Doug Bone,
SOD First Vice-president,
Elrose, Sask.
Balance the scales
So Canada, all businesses have an equal chance in the world, don’t they? They all set commodity prices to cover costs and make a modest profit, correct?
I can agree with that for all sectors except one, farming.
The farmer who runs the business of feeding the world has absolutely no say in what the selling price of their commodities is. Someone else sets the price, and they’re doing a lousy job of it because the selling price of commodities doesn’t even cover costs.
If farmers could control their commodity prices, like every other business out there, they wouldn’t need relief payments and handouts to stay alive on the farm.
However, you might have to pay $5 for a loaf of bread or $40 for a bag of flour. That wouldn’t go over so well, would it?
Thank goodness for the cheap food law, you say. That law is making farmers go begging.
Notice the middlemen are still making a profit – grain handling companies, trucking companies, fertilizer companies, implement dealers and many more.
Why isn’t the profit going all the way down the line to the producer/farmer, the base of all these people’s livelihoods?
Don’t they realize that most of them won’t be able to continue when the farmers are gone?
Sure, big companies will take over the land and just hire workers. Great industry, that. Will those middlemen all still work? No way. Do you think food prices will stay the same? Dream on.
Big companies don’t care about people. They care about the bottom line, their profit. The bigger it is, the happier they are.
Now I ask you, are the scales balanced here? Is this an equal chance?
I think big business is making all the money on the backs of farmers who are slaving away on the land. I think we need a change.
– S. Gaudet,
St. Louis, Sask.
More of same
In the Jan 19 edition of the Western Producer, an Ipsos-Reid poll detailed voting intentions of western Canadian farmers as follows: Alberta Ð 87 percent Conservative; Saskatchewan Ð 73 percent Conservative; Manitoba Ð 71 percent Conservative.
That’s just about how the election turned out.
The centrepiece of the Conservative farm policy was a severely emasculated Canadian Wheat Board. With light speed, this change to a new government is bearing fruit.
Western Producer, Feb. 9 (had) a big front page headline: “Grain company stock values rise.” And why are grain company shares increasing in value?
Let me quote: “An expectation that the new federal government will end the Canadian Wheat Board single desk and perhaps reduce its role in transportation logistics, which could translate into higher profits for grain handlers.”
That seems clear enough. If grain companies are expecting more profit from the grain system after all meaningful power has been stripped from the CWB, it is a sure bet farmers will get less profit.
For many years now, farm profits have declined, while the agribusiness profits and market powers have increased. The election results indicate farmers want to keep it that way.
– Henry Neufeld,
Waldeck, Sask.
Gardens & kids
Three articles on pages 96 and 97 of the Feb. 16 Western Producer spoke volumes.
Food banks needed in the land of plenty. Why? Mainly because people on farms and in towns and cities who could be growing some of their own food do not.
Farmers have plenty of room for gardens, a few laying hens, hogs, beef and a milk cow. That creates a lot of their food. Now a wide variety of fruit can also be grown all across the prairie provinces including apples. Just check at a reliable nursery.
Town lots are usually a good size and will certainly have room for a garden. The biggest problem is in the new subdivisions where the lots have shrunk and the houses look like mini-castles.
No room for a garden, much less a place for kids to play, just like Dan Murphy writes on page seven, in his article about factory farmers.
To quote: “We keep our kids indoors, under supervision, living in housing that’s temperature controlled and subject to meaningful restrictions on when and where and for how long they can stay outdoors.”
And for the most part we have a generation of obese couch potatoes instead of slim, active, healthy kids. When in history have cancer, diabetes, etc. plagued young people as they do today?
It doesn’t take a degree to come to the conclusion that what kids are eating and not running around outdoors is the problem….
Inquiries at the U.S. Department of Agriculture offices are at all time high from people on acreages wanting information on growing gardens, according to a recent news item on local radio. This is good news.
Fixing small communities across Canada makes more sense than more people moving to the cities. Some of our best farmland is being taken over to expand cities. Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, St. Albert and Windsor are some I’m familiar with.
Living in a small community where people care for and about one another is a lot healthier than being anonymous in a city.
For the most part the rink, school, library, hospital, etc., are already there, they just need people to keep them open.
– Elaine Sloan,
Morinville, Alta.
Right idea
Yorkton mayor Phil DeVos has the right idea when it comes to buying bungalows for peanuts and selling them to people who would like to live in the country in an affordable home yet close enough to a city to find work and amenities (WP, Feb. 23.)
Think of Corner Gas, the TV sitcom that boosted Saskatchewan’s population by two when the Quebec couple who won the contest for a town lot moved to the area and built a retirement home.
Also, a town near Montreal, faced with losing its elementary school due to a drop in population, bought up a number of houses and advertised heavily in Montreal for families to fill them. The town succeeded and kept its school.
To have cities overflowing and suffering traffic problems when many citizens could be happier and do their work on-line from the peace of a village address needs a sane solution. Bravo to Mayor DeVos.
– Claudette Sandecki,
Terrace, B.C.
Wall & tunnels
President George Bush never seems to tire of warning citizens of the world, including Canadians, of the imminent and terrible threats to our world from terrorists.
Some overly enthusiastic Bushites have even suggested building a wall between Canada and the U.S. The wall should not be too much trouble in moving Canadian water and oil across the 49th parallel. Most pipes for liquids would have to be buried under the wall anyway.
Hmm, can you imagine all those terrorists that are supposed to be hiding out in Canada, digging tunnels under the wall and popping up like prairie gophers in the spring on the U.S. side?
On the other hand, when Americans finally realize that their national debt is more than a trillion dollars, and growing rapidly – after all, it takes a lot of money to maintain about 2,500 military bases on this planet alone, with all that fancy deadly weaponry – the tunnels could be better used for people escaping back to Canada.
Some members of the previous federal government with Paul Martin had plans to participate in the U.S. Missile Defense Program.
Fortunately, Canadians objected en masse to that plan, and had the foresight to write, phone or e-mail Mr. Martin that the costly plan was something we Canadians did not need or want.
Since then we’ve heard that Russia apparently has a foolproof defence to deal with those enemy missiles in space.
However, Philip Coyle, former chief of testing for the Pentagon, had this to say about the U.S. missile defence fiasco: “The basic challenges haven’t changed. Hitting an enemy missile out in space at 15,000 mph is like trying to hit a hole in one when the hole is going 15,000 mph, and if the enemy is using counter measures and decoys, then it would be like trying to hit a hole in one, when the green is covered with a bunch of black dots that look just like the hole.”
Aren’t we Canadians just going to be thrilled when Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day announce that if Canada is asked by the Bush administration if we would consider becoming fully involved in the American missile defence plans?
– Leo Kurtenbach,
Cudworth, Sask.
Wall & diversity
Re: Security Fence, Globe and Mail, Feb. 2,.
The recent proposal by the United States to build a security fence along the 49th parallel to keep undesirables from crossing into the U.S. from Canada should be a concern to all of us.
Rumour has it that a consortium of Chinese engineers and Scottish stone masons has submitted a bid to build a rock wall along the 49th parallel. The building of this “great wall” could be of enormous benefits to Canada.
Prairie farmers could diversify the economy by selling, as building material, fieldstone from hilltops swept clear of soil by wind erosion. The gravel bed of abandoned railroads can, perhaps, be used for foundation for the “great wall.”
The wall, of course, would stop the migration of wild animals. This can be remedied by building overpasses such as those constructed over the Trans-Canada Highway at Banff. Signs at these crossings would be posed to read: Quadrupeds Only. This would keep out the bipeds Ð mainly humans carrying dynamite and chickens carrying avian flu.
Migrating waterfowl that carry avian flu would be shot down with radar-controlled shotguns firing environmentally friendly steel pellets. A high-energy magnetic fence would catch all handguns coming into Canada from the U.S. duty free.
Maintaining the flow of international rivers can be worked out by the Chinese engineers in consultation with the International Joint Commission, whose mandate is to settle disputes regarding international rivers.
Seemingly insurmountable problems can be worked out to the satisfaction of both governments and the World Wildlife Fund.
– Mike Mowchenko, P. Eng.,
Retired Water Resources Engineer,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Mission complete?
We said it would happen; that the (Saskatchewan) wheat pool would be sold to Americans.
How many fine institutions, private or member owned or government owned, were started by canny men, determined men, men who stood by high principles – and run well for many, many years? Then they fell into the hands of those who, it seems, couldn’t run a tricycle …
It happens time after time but in this case it hits closer to home, as our near ancestors started the wheat pool.
And every time one of our fine institutions falls into the hands of the Americans, a Canadian, be it a private citizen or a politician, lines his pockets. And the rest? Oh, they mumble a bit, then turn back to shifting their ever-broadening bottoms on the couch to watch more hockey on their widescreen televisions.
Why not just haul down the Maple Leaf and run up the Stars and Stripes? Does it matter anymore? Just look around at a lot of those maple leaf flags, tattered and torn, or flying permanently at half-mast, or hung on such a short flagpole that they drag on the ground or are flown lower than other flags such as provincial or foreign and so on.
In other words, if Canadians are too lazy to look after a little piece of symbolic cloth, then it hardly seems likely that they’ll defend anything else Canadian.
Who will line their pockets when the wheat board is “sold”?
Does anyone know that the party in power, at the time the “permanent” Crow’s Nest Freight Rate was abolished, had a party to celebrate? Whose pockets were lined? And the so-called benefits to either cattle raisers or grain growers never materialized.
It’s one thing to study our institutions and organizations once in a while but to give them away is another thing altogether….
But it does look heartening to see two Canadian men, who placed first and second in their event in the 2006 Winter Olympics, standing on the podium and actually singing O Canada.
But the anthem was played at a funereal pace, just dragging along.
– C. Pike,
Waseca, Sask.
Good competition
Well, surprise, surprise. The non-profit Farmers of North America gets into the fertilizer market and saves 10 percent. They declare the savings due to previous lack of competition.
Actually it indicates very good competition. Remove the profit margin from any enterprise and it’s not long before the producers begin disappearing.
It doesn’t take any investment to be a broker, but it does take a substantial financial commitment to manufacture, ensure quality and provide services with the product.
Is that 10 percent savings worth giving up all the other benefits? Maybe for a while, but only until you get burned. Then what’s the recourse?
– Greg Popove,
Hanna, Alta.
Losing the herd
From my own personal experience and by talking to others, it seems that 2006 will probably be a pivotal year for agriculture.
Something has to change and change fast if agriculture as we know it is going to survive.
Large producers claim that the thin profit margin they have enjoyed is gone now, like it has been for small producers for several years.
There are persistent rumours out there that large farmers are about to drop tens of thousands of acres of rental land. Smaller producers are threatening to summer- fallow half or more of their land.
If this does happen, it would be the best wake-up call imaginable to government, agribusiness and the consuming public.
I shudder to think of the pain it would cause to retired landlords, small business and thousands of agribusiness employees. However, something drastic has to happen to garner a change.
Could you imagine the huge group of unpaid lobbyists farmers would have working on their behalf if one-third to two-thirds of the prairie crop land goes unplanted this spring?
All of a sudden the big companies that feed off farms and rely on farmers for their livelihoods would be joining hands with farmers, government and consumers to try and find a solution to the high input-low commodity price squeeze that is plaguing agriculture.
It would be difficult to imagine the difference it would make if companies such as Monsanto, Bayer Crop Science, Sask Pool, Agricore United, John Deere, New Holland, Caterpillar, CP and CN Rail, trucking companies, truck dealers, PetroCanada, Co-op and a multitude of others all suddenly realized that their herd of dairy cows, farmers, are no longer milking and without more and better feed they may never milk again.
2006 is shaping up to be a repeat of or a worse year than 2005. If this turns out to be true, every acre we don’t seed will cost us less than the ones we do seed. Give it some thought.
– Herb Hallamn,
Fosston, Sask.
Lost opportunity
This fall I received a significant bill from the Canadian Wheat Board for a shortfall on a delivery contract for No. 5 CW durum wheat. The amount that was charged was deducted from my final CWB payment.
The contract for delivery of CWB grain is a one-sided contract. In other words, if you do not fill your delivery contract to the CWB, you are penalized. However, if the CWB does not accept for delivery all the durum wheat offered, the CWB is not penalized.
In our particular situation we had an offer from a grain company to purchase non-board durum at $2.05 per bushel in late April 2005. At that time it didn’t appear the CWB would be accepting any more durum in that crop year. At a later date the CWB accepted total delivery of No. 5 CW durum.
The delivery opportunity was not available for higher grades of durum wheat.
I offered to deliver No. 1 CW and No. 2 CW durum wheat to fulfil the contract and I was told I would have to wait for a delivery opportunity in the new crop year of 2005-06 at Aug. 1. You cannot deliver No. 1 CW and No. 2 CW durum to any other marketing agency other than the CWB.
In the letter to me, the $6 per tonne penalty is to reflect loss of opportunity and demurrage penalties and the cost of administration. The No. 1 CW and No. 2 CW durum which we could deliver has had a great financial loss. The 2005-06 Pool Return Outlook for CWB No. 1 CW and No. 2 CW durum suggest a discount of $11 per tonne for these grades plus for the loss of storage cost and loss of interest. The above does not appear to the CWB as a loss of opportunity for us.
On several occasions we as well as many other producers have lost financial and delivery opportunities because of poor marketing of the CWB. But no penalties to the CWB.
On July 31, 2005, there were 648,000 tonnes of durum of all grades in terminal and export positions. Of that total, 128,400 tonnes were lower grades or No. 5 CW durum. Much of the above was owned by the CWB.
The CWB has an agreement with the private grain trade for exchange of stocks of feed grain needed to fill grain orders.
There was no opportunity loss by the CWB and no need to charge a $6 per tonne penalty on the durum as there was plenty in the storage system.
The final realized price for No. 5 CW durum from the CWB was $1.85 per bu. The price I received was $2.05 per bu. In fact, all the private grain trade offered me more money than the CWB.
The above statements point out the CWB is not necessarily the best marketer. However, even with the better price we received, we still lost $1.50-$2 per bu. on every bushel we grew in 2004.
Because of the actions of the CWB, the CWB is the Grinch that stole Christmas.
– Bill Farley,
Regina, Sask.
Health hostages
Every day we are canvassed for more money for cancer research, the cure for this and that disease and yet these diseases are increasing. I urge you to buy and heed the advice in a book, The Cure for All Cancers by Hulda Regehr Clark. Anyone who can read can heal themselves by doing exactly what is in this simple-to-read book at very little expense.
This book was made public as a humanitarian gesture. Any part can be copied, plus recipes, 100 case histories and instructions to make and use the electronic circuit that made her discoveries possible. Hulda began her studies at the University of Saskatchewan in biology.
Go back in history to our First Nations people before they started eating white man’s food. They did not have our diseases that now are rampant.
This has been verified by pioneer doctors such as Mary Percy Jackson of Manning, Alta., fully documented in her book The Homemade Brass Plate.
We must be responsible for our own health and not depend on health professionals who have been holding such people hostage for far too long.
– Elaine Sloan,
Morinville, Alta.
Corporate profit
Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan directs farmers’ minds to the Saskatchewan education tax, instilling in farmers’ minds that it is a serious reason for their economic woes.
With media help, they are directing farmers’ anger toward it and the Saskatchewan government. The Saskatchewan education tax is not the reason grain farmers are going bankrupt in Manitoba, Alberta and B.C. …
The grain, fuel and chemical corporations had record high profits in 2004. Farmers had record high losses in 2004 according to a detailed report by the National Farmers Union. These corporations operate across Canada. Farmers, put the two together, think for yourselves.
The corporations want farmers’ minds directed away from their profits to taxes. They could not find a better assistant than the APAS organization. If farmers paid no education taxes, the corporations would be able to increase their profits by an equal amount. Corporate heads must maximize profits or face replacement by the shareholders.
Farmers need control over corporate profits, not subsidies. Money saved through education tax elimination, like subsidies, would go into the pockets of these corporations through the farmers’ pockets and the farmers would only be scapegoats. Tell the people in APAS what is really causing farm bankruptcies.
– Robert Thompson,
Alticane, Sask.
Modern times
The opinion piece “Dual desk is code for disaster” in the Feb. 9 issue of the Western Producer is definitely an opinion piece. The writer states that having a dual marketing system would turn the clock back 100 years.
I would prefer to think that having a single marketing system has kept the agriculture industry in Western Canada 100 years back in its history.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons the writer uses to support her argument is an insult to today’s farmer who is an expert in producing and marketing grains. Today’s farmer has much more marketing information and tools available than the farmer in the 1920s.
The farmer today has access to the same marketing information and the tools that the broker of the 1920s used “to transfer profits from the pockets of farmers to the boards of the Winnipeg exchange.” The information and marketing tools available today give farmers the ability to market their grain according to their cash flow requirements and are not at the mercy of brokers.
Farmers today are much more market savvy, or at least have the opportunity to be, than they were in the 1920s. The abolishment of the Crow Rate did not increase the cost of transportation; inflation did that quite well by itself….
Now we need an environment which would allow the food grain industry to expand in Western Canada. As long as the present system is in place, additional flour mills and related industry will not locate in Western Canada.
This farmer also told of a young entrepreneur who started a flour mill in Western Canada. After a few years the miller moved to Eastern Canada, where there is an open market, because it was easier to obtain the wheat he needed. He could contract directly with local wheat producers.
The attempt to build a durum processing plant a few years ago in Saskatchewan is a similar story of how the present system discourages local western Canadian value-added opportunities.
When will we wake up and realize that marketing systems from years gone past will not work today and in the future? One look at the present day grain prices and financial situations of grain producers shows that the present system is not working.
– George Lubberts, P.Ag, CCA,
Owner, Complete Agronomic Services,
Nobleford, Alta.
Plum offered
After years of trying to break in to the potentially lucrative health-care market in Canada, I expect that international pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations are salivating over the Alberta government’s recently announced “third way” proposal.
If, as is suggested in their Health Policy Framework, “options must be available so Albertans can decide for themselves how best to pay for any services that may not be covered by the government,” … we will have a two-tier health care system. Wealthy Albertans who can afford private health care insurance … will have access to the best health-care providers and facilities. It is only natural that such providers will gravitate toward the more lucrative private health-care field.
Meanwhile, patients in a depleted public health system will be stuck with lower quality care and even longer waiting periods. There is ample evidence of this happening in both England and Australia, where two-tier systems have been implemented.
Apparently the Klein government is ready to hand the private-for-profit insurance industry a plum. Since the Canada Health Act provides for “equal access” to health care for all Canadians, its provisions would be breached by Alberta’s proposal, unless, of course, the Ottawa government enacts changes to the CHA.
A very distinct possibility, I believe, with the Harper Conservatives supported by the Bloc Québécois.
– William Dascavich,
Edmonton, Alta.
