Cheap food
To the Editor:
Over a lengthy period of time we have had a persistent stringent cheap food policy throughout the North American continent. Figures have ranged in the 12 percent of average disposable income for cost of living expenses. Consumers in lower income levels, of course, spend proportionately higher amounts of disposable income for groceries. Higher income consumers, the ones responsible for most of the inflationary pressures in our economy, are getting an unreasonably low cost of living in relation to exorbitant income levels.
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When it comes to grains going for malting and brewing purposes the figures have been expressed many times showing the miserly niggardly pittance that grain growers receive compared to the value of alcoholic products produced from grain.
I once saw an article in a newspaper giving calculations of the amount of tax revenue generated from liquor sales. Even the tax revenues are out of all reasonable proportion to the income going to grain producers. One person, a well-known politician at that, stated that the cap on the bottle of beer cost more than the barley used to produce the beer. …
There is no way the privately owned farm units can survive in today’s economic climate. Added to the market distortions, we have a soaring increase in the cost of inputs of all kinds. The price of implements, repairs, vehicles, fuel, chemicals, fertilizers and even many varieties of seed have doubled, tripled and even gone up ten-fold. The days of the private enterprise farms are coming to an end at an alarming rate. If and when corporations take over agricultural activities, food costs will follow other commodities.
– Elmer R. Armstrong,
Virden, Man.
White stuff
To the Editor:
Public opinion, or so we’re told, has criticized the AIDA (Agricultural Income Disaster Assistance) program to the point where our provincial government has seen fit to end Saskatchewan participation for 1999 and put their contribution into farmers’ hands directly. How or when is not clear. Reinventing the wheel could waste some time and that always presents an opportunity to weasel out of having to do anything, i.e., the GRIP program (Gross Revenue Insurance Plan).
The AIDA program had some lumps and bruises, most of which I feel could have been remedied with some fine-tuning. One of the most visible “lumps” was the program not paying on negative margins. Vanclief, despite his bad attitude towards prairie agriculture, recognized this and put up $175 million as the Federal Government’s share of the traditional 60 to 40 funding split with the province. Our NDP government have drug their feet on this matter until last week when the feds decided to release their funds and farmers will be paid out for at least the Federal portion on negative margins for their 1998 crop year.
Imagine my surprise last week after talking to (Saskatchewan) Agriculture Minister (Dwain) Lingenfelter’s office to learn that through some convoluted line of reasoning our province has decided that not participating in AIDA for 1999 somehow has absolved itself of its obligation to complete their contribution to match the federal funds covering negative margins in the 1998 crop year.
The best word I can think of to describe this attitude is the same word used to describe the white stuff littered about the ground in a chicken pen.
– Dwein F. Trask,
Harris, Sask.
Awake the giant
To the Editor:
I think we’re all grateful to MP Dennis Mills of Toronto for his exemplary efforts in bringing to focus and amplifying the prairie and Canadian “farm crisis issue.” I hope his colleagues and cabinet were listening. A lot of our politicians could learn from his page and empathetic approach.
It’s time we scrapped Canada’s cheap food policy and hasty concessions to WTO (World Trade Organization) Canada went way too far and filtered all the consequences to the backs and negative bottom lines of our primary producers.
The polls seem to suggest that Canadian consumers understand and we are sympathetic. Let’s test them to see if they’ll put their money where their food goes. What’s the point of pontificating about sustainable agriculture and resources if we can’t sustain the remaining three percent of our population on the land with a half-decent income and living? …
With some 45 percent of Canada’s arable land base, Saskatchewan is a virtual “sleeping giant.”
Together, the prairie provinces also have the largest areas of grazing lands, parklands, forests and wilderness as well as plenty of fresh water. Let’s unshackle the giant and wake him up. …
Here’s how: 1) A consumer food check-off, preferably at the wholesale level. Some 30 million Canadians consuming five million loaves of bread per day, translates into $250,000 per day equaling $90 million per year with a nickel per loaf check-off.
… Such a fund would not increase consumers’ food costs more than one percent over the minimal 12 to 13 percent of their disposal incomes that they now spend on food – virtually the lowest in the world. That nickel should flow directly to the producer’s bottom line, as a small payment to the remaining three percent on the land for producing food; for being custodians and stewards of the land, feeding our wildlife, harboring endangered species, sequestering carbon … and generally fostering all these wonderful things that the other 97 percent of society who expect it to be there for them to enjoy.
2) Get the U.S. off our backs regarding the Canadian Wheat Board. Let’s turn our entrepreneurial producers, industry, and grain companies loose. Under the spirit of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), let them market across North America without fines and impediments. That would still leave the Board with 90 percent of the global market and overseas business. Then watch prairie processing and value-added growth.
3) From Federal budgets and surpluses, restore to the provinces health care cutbacks, GST equivalents, gasoline taxes, etc., so that provinces can restore their budgetary flexibility to up-grade our prairie highway networks agricultural infra-structures, irrigation works and so-forth.
The foregoing three measures, when integrated into long-term policy, would go a long way to restoring vitality to prairie agriculture.
Also, why not copy the U.S. land reserve set-aside program to encourage the grassing down of marginal acres as well. Canadian farmers don’t need subsidies.
They just need a fair shake and a deserving share of the consumer’s food dollar as some compensation for all those spinoffs which society enjoys from vast open spaces and the world’s safest food supply.
– John G. Calpas,
Lethbridge, Alta.
Product defence
To the Editor:
… I would like to reply to Lloyd Dosdall’s doubts as they were described in the armyworm article on Jan. 27. His first doubt was on the efficacy of (Virosoft BA3, a baculovirus for biological pest control developed by Biotepp), which did not correspond to experiences he had made with similar viruses. The explanation lays in our basic approach. Our development process always begins with the isolation of a highly virulent baculovirus from the ecozone in which the product will be used. For finding the virus for Virosoft BA3 we have spent over 1,800 hours sampling Bertha armyworms from the American border to the Canadian forest line, and from the Rocky Mountains to eastern Manitoba. In these samples we found viruses with high, medium, and low killing rates and obviously we chose a virus with a high killing rate for further development.
His second doubt concerned the suitability of a seeding treatment because Bertha females lay their eggs only when the plants already have a certain size. It is true that the canopy might be closed at that time but that does not prevent the wind from blowing through the field. Believe me, 600 of the 1,800 sampling hours were mine, and I can still feel the dust in my face … With (the recommended) density it is reasonable to expect that a sufficient number of particles will be carried to the leaves where they will be swallowed by the young Bertha armyworm larvae. We therefore conducted our field tests.
And this brings me to Lloyd’s third doubt, which I would like to answer to. He is right, Bertha armyworm populations are at their lowest and we had to conduct our field tests in cages with an artificial infestation of Bertha. In our untreated control cages we ended up with a population of over 450 larvae in comparison to five larvae in the cages that had been treated with Virosoft BA3. The yield in those cages differed from 132.8 g in untreated cages to 260.8 g in treated cages. We concluded that the system worked and are now looking for farmers who would like to work with us in trying the product in open field trials. We expect the results to be at least as good because the netting of our cages had blocked out a lot of wind that is supposed to carry the virus to the leaves. In open fields the system should work even better.
Imme Gerke,
President, Biotepp
Charlesbourg, Que.
Dangerous trends
To the Editor:
The announcement of the total purchase of Flexi-Coil by the Case-New Holland conglomerate signifies another nail in the coffin of what was once a vast Canadian agricultural industry supported by thousands of once- smaller prairie farms.
Following on the heels that the Versatile plant in Winnipeg may be phased out, we see nothing but an unpleasant trend to centralization of these industries into the U.S.A. …
To a country that boasts of its nationalistic aspirations, these moves are unthinkable. The future results of all this can only be disastrous for the prairie farmer and the service industry that is required.
Already we have seen dozens of dealerships having to close up, requiring us having to go a great many additional miles for vital parts, adding to costs and the eventual bottom line, which at the moment is negative.
What we are seeing is a worldwide phenomenon of centralization, of vertical integration and monopolizing of corporate controls into very few hands.
If anyone thinks that all this is being done to improve the well-being of the average human being, think again.
Rather, it is a concerted effort by the giants that control world wealth to perpetuate the equation that 85 percent of the world masses will never share fairly, the bounties of this globe. We can take small comfort in the fact that Canada is the best country to live in and so we should. …
Agricultural lands are falling into the control of fewer and fewer owners, resulting in the decimation of hundreds of respectable communities. Governments are totally inept or else powerless to arrest these dangerous trends.
It would seem to me that, by withholding plausible farm aid to the ones in desperation, it is subtly being party to this trend and perhaps hoping in its acceleration. What an asinine way to start the millennium.
– Harry Beskorovayny,
Gronlid, Sask.
