Grow tobacco
(I) read the sad story about the tobacco industry (WP March 22).
Being in the workforce 60 years, I’ve met people from all walks of life. People from the tobacco country even. Why can’t they carry on as before?
People are going to smoke if they get addicted to nicotine. If Tillsonburg can’t supply it, they will get it elsewhere at any price. The tax on tobacco is ridiculously high. It keeps poor people poor. I know of a couple that smokes $1,000 a month.
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As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
Some die if they quit. Bad withdrawal symptoms. You’ve got to go to the fridge to eat something every time you want a smoke. You get hog fat and get a heart attack or stroke….
One little old lady in her 80s planted a row of tobacco plants on the edge of her garden, beautiful border on her garden. Somebody reported her to Crime Stoppers to get some blood money. Revenue people came and destroyed all her beautiful plants. Is that the law of the land?
True, smoking causes a lot of fires. Why don’t they have a law to make cigarettes with slow burning paper? When you put the cigarette down it’s supposed to go out, out, out.
– J. A Rogal,
Meadow Lake, Sask.
CWB slow
I support the concept of having a wheat board. It makes logical sense if we pooled our wheat and all sold together, we should receive a higher price for our product.
Unfortunately this is not happening. The lowest price for grain in the world has been right here in Western Canada. You can check on the internet if you don’t believe me.
Contrary to what many people tell you, our wheat board system is not working. In fact we are receiving less than the cost of production. We can’t keep growing this grain at a loss.
One of the symptoms of the problems with the current wheat board system is the decision to award all employees $1,000 Christmas bonus. I was dumbfounded.
Given what has happened in the past two or three years, I could not believe that anyone could justify paying out bonuses. Bonuses should be based on merit. I don’t believe it is merited in this case.
The wheat board has been very slow to move the grain, a lot of it not until the last couple of months of the crop year.
We have a product that we can’t get our cost back and the wheat board will not take it all until months after it has been grown.
It has placed a financial hardship on every wheat grower. We are trapped into financing to seed the next crop before we can get paid for the last one. Now there is a wheat shortage in the world and the price is going up. What does the wheat board do? They decide to only bother selling 80 percent of the A series contract.
Our first opportunity in years to sell our wheat over our cost of production and the board only wants to handle 80 percent.
How, on God’s green earth can these people justify having a bonus?
There is another fact that I would like to point out. … The Canadian Wheat Board has no money. The only money they have is the farmers’ money. This money is held in trust so that final payments can be made.
I have no sympathy for the wheat board using farmers’ money for promotion in an election campaign. I have no sympathy for the wheat board using farmer’s final payment money for paying out Christmas bonuses. I have no sympathy for the wheat board or anyone else using the money for any frivolous whim that comes up.
The money is supposed to be held in trust and the wheat board needs to start acting like a trustee of someone else’s money. …
– Victor Hult,
Waseca, Sask.
No consensus
In his defence of the theory of human-induced climate change (Open Forum, March 8) Gary Howland relies on the fallacy that, because many science organizations back the theory, it must be true. I would remind him of the words of Anatole France: “If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still foolish.”
Scientific truth is determined by objective testing of ideas, not by a show of hands.
Even if one accepts his premise that “consensus equals truth” there is no real consensus.
Mr. Howland cites the guarded public support of the National Academy of Sciences for the theory, but learned societies aren’t herds of automatons marching in lockstep. They thrive on internal dissension, and there’s plenty of it. Even the academy’s most notable past-president, Dr. Frederick Seitz, spearheaded the lobby, successful to date, against U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Accord.
Mr. Howland also refers to an analysis, by Naomi Oreskes, of 928 published papers on climate change, not one of which disagreed with the conclusion that human activity is causing climate change. That isn’t surprising since serious scientists rarely play the mug’s game of attempting to prove a negative.
I have yet to see a paper, except in the popular press, with a title along the lines of “Human-Induced Global Warming is a Fantasy.” There are, however, many papers, some of them quite recent, attributing climate change to other phenomena, principally to variations in solar activity. Perhaps Dr. Oreskes should broaden her search criteria.
In the 17th century, most scholars and theologians believed in witchcraft and some wrote learned treatises on how to detect it. The witch-hunting hysteria that swept the western world during that period cost the lives of many thousands of people, mainly women with low likeability indexes. In the end, reason prevailed.
I could cite a half dozen illogical manias that have come and gone in the last hundred years or so….
The irrational fear that human beings are changing the global climate is only the most recent example. One can only hope that it runs its course before any serious damage is done.
– Lee Morrison,
Calgary, Alta.
Employer’s story
In the past couple of weeks the credibility of our family has been questioned in the media and in the Alberta legislature. We feel we need to respond with our side of the story. (See WP, March 22 for initial story).
Armando Garcia was hired by us through an employment company based in Calgary. Through this company we paid for his flight to Canada. We also paid Armando directly for his flight because he bought his own airfare to Canada, bypassing the employment agency. We provided Armando with a brand new home, fully furnished and stocked with food, clothes, linens, dishes, cleaning and personal supplies. We helped him obtain a social insurance number, a bank account …
Shortly after Armando arrived at our farm he wanted to send for his wife and two small children, but did not have enough money to do so. He asked us for help in getting them here, saying he would repay us through his wages if we purchased flights for his family. We agreed to this, and his family joined him in time for Christmas. We provided them with a crib, clothes, baby items, toys, a Christmas tree and gifts. …
Armando has said we have mistreated him according to the contract we have with him. We made a big mistake in having a representative sign his contract on our behalf; it is not a contract suitable for a farm. However, we treated Armando as well as any of our employees, we did more for him than we have done for any of them, and trusted his word for things we should have had him sign. …
We did so much to try and help Armando and his family adjust to life in Canada and be successful here. We were naive in a lot of ways in how we handled this situation. We hope by coming forward with this we can prevent anyone else from going through something similar.
Make sure every agreement is written down and signed, and check any agreements you enter.
– The Paulgaard Family,
Hayter, Alta.
Concessions
Barry Wilson is critical of both government and supply management supporters. (Costly game of chicken, March 15). Neither seems willing to face up to what is necessary to achieve a new World Trade Organization agreement.
It is not credible for either Canadian Wheat Board supporters or other marketing board defenders to say that holding out for the status quo is the best tactic.
The question for both is whether they can agree to concessions that allow them to retain some advantages from collective marketing.
The Harper government appointed a task force that looked at how a transition might be made away from single desk selling of wheat and barley. It could do the same for how to move away from supply management protection.
Wilson blames both government and farmers for the game of chicken. He might have included a word of encouragement for prairie grain growers who are willing to move on the CWB single desk issue. Not all farmers are of one mind. Some of us are willing to look to the future.
– Tom Hewson,
Vice President,
Western Barley Growers Association,
Langbank, Sask.
Respect law
Re: Exploitation of farm workers. Last Thursday (March 22) the Alberta opposition asked our premier to respect the constitutional rights of agricultural workers by including them in labour regulations.
The premier refused, suggesting it would be pointless to extend the law to the ag sector because the laws would be ignored. The premier said “… just because we have regulations does not mean that somebody is going to follow them. We have many regulations. We have many laws. We have laws that say that people should stop at a stop sign, and they don’t…”
Despite our premier’s cynical opinion of Albertans’ ethics, I believe most Albertans respect the law.
– Eric Musekamp,
President,
Farmworkers Union of Alberta,
Bow Island, Alta.
What expertise?
Curtis Sims was recently heard on radio stating oats prices took off upwards right after it was taken off the Canadian Wheat Board.
Yes, Mr. Sims, this is partially true but perhaps you and your economist friend Dr. Al Lyons, who has stated the same as you, should look closer at the true facts.
A study commissioned by the Alberta government clearly shows that U.S. oat acres in the mid 1980s were at 10.8 million acres and slowly decreased to a mere 1.8 million acres in 2004, which is a reduction of nine million acres.
The reason for this being a sharp drop in support programs for oats in the United States. There has also been an increase in support for soybeans, corn, wheat and barley. These are the reasons why there is now a big demand and better prices for oats in Canada.
Your market choice group will also say there is more processing in Canada now after oats was removed from the CWB but the real reason is because oats are 35-40 percent hull, which is worthless and bulky and expensive to ship.
Therefore the natural characteristics of oats and its milling process explains why oat processing has increased in Western Canada.
Therefore the big demand from the U.S. and the basic nature of oats is the reason for the increase in prices and processing.
These study results were available on Mr. Sims’ market choice website, www.barleyvote.ca, but have recently been removed.
This issue of forgetting to look at all the facts by economist Dr. Al Lyons and want-to-be economists like Rolf Penner and David Janzen makes me wonder how much expertise these spokespeople really have.
– Wayne Dutchyshen,
Gilbert Plains, Man.
Compromise
The spirit of the new Canadian Wheat Board Act in 1998 was to provide western grain producers democratic control over the future of the CWB. It was felt that this would allow the CWB over time to transform into a stronger marketing agency and provide more alternatives for western Canadian farmers to market their wheat and barley.
So far many positive changes have certainly happened under the control of an elected board of directors.
Unfortunately, our so-called “new” conservative government, led by longtime CWB critic prime minister Stephen Harper, has seen fit to interfere with a democratic process that I believe could continue to make positive changes to how the CWB functions.
This zest to remove the single desk authority of the CWB is solely based on ideology and emotion. Very little factual discussion has taken place regarding the economic impact to Western Canada of removing the single desk or about how a CWB could effectively operate in an open market environment.
Deeply ingrained in the CWB debate is people’s different concepts are of how democracy should work. I keep hearing comments about individual freedoms and the tyranny of the majority.
If we were to extend some of this logic to other parts of our society, we would be in a real mess. The majority rule is the accepted and normal working principle of decision making in our Canadian democracy and is what maintains law and order.
Often individual liberties must be sacrificed to achieve what is best for the most people. This is accepted even though we often have government representation elected by a system that gives power to parties who do not have the support of the majority.
At least the CWB under the 1998 amendments to the Act of Parliament has a system of electing a board of directors that clearly elects representatives who are supported by the majority of producers who vote.
The real challenge on the CWB debate is, how can we develop a better marketing system for the huge amount of high quality wheat and barley normally grown in Western Canada that will benefit the majority of producers and at the same time does not oppress the wishes of a minority?…
We need to seek a solution for the wheat board issue that can somehow satisfy producers who have a broad spectrum of views as to what is the best way to market our Western Canadian cereal production. …
– Neil Wagstaff,
Elnora, Alta.
Imperfect view
I must say, Lee Morrison’s “Repent, all ye energy pigs” (Opinion, Feb. 22) , certainly is a provocative article.
It is also understandable that he should speak out against the theories on man-made global warming. He is, after all, a man with scientific training. That means that in spite of the fact that he is going against the majority of scientists, he has been trained to be skeptical of any ideas that are not proven.
Unfortunately, Morrison’s argument suffers from a couple of flaws. One is that, in the real world, we rarely have perfect information, if ever, and yet we are not paralyzed by it. All of us make decisions every day based on limited and imperfect information. It is the way of the world.
And if there ever was a field of science where we lack adequate knowledge, it would have to be climatology. Waiting to learn more before making major decisions would seem to be prudent. Unfortunately for the Lee Morrisons of the world and the rest of us, events are moving forward while we wait.
And there is the second flaw. By the time we achieve the certainty that scientific rigor would ordinarily require, events will have moved beyond our ability to correct the situation. The damage will have been done.
Of course the climate has seesawed in the past millions of years, but these were natural events caused by things such as volcanic activity. This time, for the first time in the history of the Earth, mankind has been the agent of change. Since the industrial revolution, humans have burned fossil fuels at such a rate so as to double the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As well, we have poured a variety of other pollutants into the atmosphere.
The result has been a parallel rise in global average temperatures. These temperatures have stayed in a narrow range since the end of the last ice age. Now they have risen to the upper end of that range and we are about to enter unknown territory.
Did we really think that we could pour all those chemicals into the air and alter the balances of nature without consequences?
Then there is Lee Morrison’s example of the disappearance of the Larsen B ice sheet. This was an ice sheet that had been around thousands of years and was thicker than the Empire State Building is tall. Its disappearance represents a major unusual event and is taken as symptomatic of the climatic changes that we are experiencing all around us.
And worse, if all the ice piled up behind it on the land of the Antarctic starts to go, it will raise sea levels dramatically. We can say goodbye to Holland and Bangladesh and many island nations.
So, how then are we going to explain to the people of those nations that we were too greedy and selfish to stop being energy pigs?
The majority of scientists now accept the fact that we have unleashed climatic changes by our polluting ways. We are responsible, which means we have the power to change, or not. That means that the decision falls on us, and the consequences onto our children and the generations that follow.
– Tom Shelstad,
Swift Current, Sask.
Response to Flaman
In regard to Canadian Wheat Board director Rod Flaman’s letter (Open Forum, Feb. 22), in my opinion, he would have done a greater service to the CWB by having kept silent. His letter only reinforced the narrow mindedness of the CWB and many of its supporters.
In essence, Rod’s letter I assume was meant testify to the benefits and superiority of the CWB pooling system. However, in my eyes, it achieved just the opposite.
As a CWB director, he knows full well that the CWB does not have a legal mandate, charter or otherwise, to return to farmers the best price achievable for their cereals. Its mandate is only for orderly marketing.
Rod’s statement that “half of the sales will be above the average and half will be below [the spot price],” is false. The markets are not that consistent and predictable for the CWB to sell exactly 50-50 with the spot price in the middle. The CWB’s sale of winter wheat alone disproves his statement.
Even if Rod’s point could be true, he has unintentionally testified that the CWB undersells cereals 50 percent of the time. Can Rod prove that the 50 percent of cereal sales above the spot price carry a premium such as to make up for the loss of the 50 percent below the spot price, and to the extent that in the end, the farmer is better off in the pool pricing rather than taking the spot price?
Let us also be clear that the CWB is not a marketing partner for the western farmer. It is the only marketer for export. Price pooling is not one of many risk management strategies, it is the only strategy because the CWB buy back program is set up to penalize and inhibit only the CWB farmer from the initiative because of the farmer’s location.
The CWB seems to have become an entity unto itself, an institution from which to cast down dispersions, cat-calls and insults to anyone challenging them to rise above mediocrity.
If the CWB has farmers’ best interests at heart, it should be at the bargaining table with the federal government and self interest groups to design itself in such a way that the farmer can access the benefits of price pooling or the open market. Both sides can be satisfied. It only takes a willingness and the right parameters in place to achieve it. This should be a first priority for the CWB. …
– Kyle Lickiss,
Barnwell, Alta.
Hog investments
I am puzzled by information contained in an article by Ed White, (WP, March 15.)
Comments attributed to the chief investment officer of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan suggest that prairie hog production has been undermined by “the (Canada/U.S.) currency situation and the massive U.S. subsidies provided to (U.S.) corn producers, making feed cheap.”
Cheap feed should improve hog production profits, rather than undermining their operations.
It would appear that the OTPP investment in Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has not reaped rewards, supposedly because it was an investment in the (now undermined) prairie hog industry.
The initial OTPP investment about 1998-99 included monies to expand the company’s hog processing facility in Burlington, Ont., as well as other business operations in Ontario, not in the Prairies. Perhaps Ontario farmers, teachers and taxpayers should now wonder if the OTPP will continue its investment in Maple Leaf Foods Inc.
Mr. McCain has announced a plan to sell off a number of feed mills in Ontario, as well as the Burlington pork processing facility before relocating operations to Manitoba. Why leave Ontario if the prairie hog industry is undermined?
Does the proposal to invest in the prairie grain handling business, expecting a profitable future in that, sound like a superior business investment decision? Or is it really the OTPP plan to dump the Maple Leaf Foods Inc. investment, valued at $649.5 million as at Dec. 31, 2005, and switch to a different business entirely? …
– Betty Carruthers,
Cobourg, Ont.
