2,4-D OK
On May 16, 2008, the Pesticide Management Regulatory Agency released a finding that 2,4-D was a safe product.
This weed control product has been safely used for decades by farmers across Canada and even with the advent of many new herbicides, 2,4-D and related phenoxy herbicides continue to be applied on more than 32 million acres annually in Western Canada.
This translates into an annual savings to Canadian farmers of up to $500 million in comparison with alternatives on the market. In a time of rapidly rising farm input prices, this saving could be even larger in the coming year.
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Over the past 25 years, there have literally been hundreds of studies showing not only irrefutable scientific evidence of safety, but also negligible environmental risks when applied according to label directions.
As farmers, it is encouraging to see that good decisions like this are being made based on sound science.
The Grain Growers of Canada fully support and concur with the recent re-evaluation of 2,4-D and we urge the federal minister of health to accept PMRA’s recommendations.
– Richard Phillips,
Executive Director,
Grain Growers of Canada,
Ottawa, Ont.
Grocery bill
We can’t be using food grains to make fuel. Our grocery bill will double or triple or more. The world will be short of food.
Maybe someone should have thought of that when we as farmers were starving on the farm with $3 wheat. We can produce more if we can get paid a good price for what we grow.
The oil companies and a handful of environmentalists would like everyone to believe that the amount of fuel needed to produce ethanol defeats the purpose.
Well, the same thing applies to the tar sands.
Believe me when I say I don’t care if your food bill doubles. I will sell my grain to the highest bidder and I don’t care what they use it for. We have been subsidizing the world’s grocery bill for far too long.
– David Nelson,
Consul, Sask.
GSU elaborates
Re: Collective bargaining – Grain Services Union and Viterra.
There were a number of important omissions and over simplifications in recent Viterra Inc. media releases regarding the collective bargaining disputes with GSU. As a result I am writing to clarify key issues in the dispute between Viterra and the unionized employees working in the company’s Regina head office, country operations and maintenance services.
GSU proposes that each employee’s rate of pay should rise each year to reflect the labour market and to compensate employees for increases to the cost of living and raising a family.
GSU proposes actual wage increases be added to every employee’s salary while Viterra proposes to budget for the increases, not to actually pay them to every employee.
Viterra wants the ability to compel employees to work variable daily hours while at the same time stipulating that the employees’ hours of work “are not to be construed as a guarantee, as a minimum nor as a restriction for any maximum of hours to be worked.”
Viterra proposes to take group insurance benefit plans out of the collective agreement and give management the exclusive ability to change the plans whenever they want to. GSU members want their benefits plans secured …
Viterra wants much greater ability to employ casual and temporary employees instead of hiring regular employees who have benefits and full coverage of the collective agreement.
On June 9, more than 80 percent of unionized employees working in Viterra’s Regina head office voted to reject their employer’s final offer and to authorize strike action. …
GSU’s elected bargaining committee has offered to resume bargaining with Viterra in an effort to resolve this dispute. Viterra’s reply has been less than conciliatory.
– Hugh Wagner,
General Secretary,
Grain Services Union,
Regina, Sask.
Professors’ drivel
“Adequate food is simple justice,” read the headline (Opinion, May 22.) Well, well, a professor of justice and a professor of history chiding the growers, traders and distributors of food for treating food as a commodity.
Blaming profit hungry traders, speculators and hedge funds for the high price of food. This drivel from professors that earn a scandalous return on investment, with tenure by the way, but being paid tens of thousands of dollars …
A professor of history that ignores the great famines of the past in Russia, China and elsewhere under the communists, the famines of the present in North Korea and Africa that have nothing to do with traders and speculators but with despots willing to starve their own people.
A professor of justice ignoring the tariffs and other government restrictions on the movement of food. A professor of justice who thinks that others should be responsible for feeding him and others.
Professors that disdain the feeding of feed grains and ethanol byproducts to livestock thus converting waste products into concentrated protein for human consumption. Professors that live in a city where not one in 1,000, including themselves, are self sufficient in food.
They say Via Campesina wants a return to the “back to the land” movement like what happened in China when millions starved and the government controlled the availability of food.
Professors that advocate a cheap food policy for the world’s poor but support marketing boards that restrict the production of food to maintain the artificially high price for commodities with the resulting quota bidding better remember which side they are on….
The Canadian government instituted a cheap food policy in the Trudeau years and the result was the decimation of the farm population.
Maybe it’s time for a cheap university education policy, not with subsidies, but with the slashing of income for professors like the cheap food policy did for farmers. The mansions built in university park weren’t built by trades and speculators in food.
– Murray McMillan,
Arcola, Sask.
Wrong advice
Further to Barry Wilson’s article “No statue planned …” (Opinion, May 15) may I suggest this:
The monuments to Arthur Kroeger may be seen in the abandoned farms to be seen all across the Prairies.
The fact that the Prairies are landlocked leads to costs of transportation that the farmers cannot do anything about.
Kroeger gave the wrong advice to governments where this was concerned.
– Allen Ronaghan,
Islay, Alta.
Apples to apples?
In a letter to this paper on May 29, Acme, Alta.’s Glenn Sawyer wrote: “If you look on the internet and check out what a Montana wheat producer gets for his northern wheat, you will find that he receives at least $1 more than his Canadian counterpart. This is comparing apples to apples. Where is the premium?”
I hope Mr. Sawyer isn’t comparing a spot price to a pooled price because we all know how that is not an “apples to apples” comparison. But I was intrigued enough by his claim to check it out myself.
I visited www.usda.gov to find the weighted average price received by Montana farmers at their elevators according to the timing of sales by exporters for the 2007 crop. I also used the site www.bankofcanada.ca to find the U.S.-Canadian exchange rate for the same period.
I calculated that an average price of $6.57 Cdn per bushel was available to Montana farmers for this crop year.
Finally I went to www.cwb.ca to see what the Pool Return Outlook is for Canada Western Red Spring wheat for the 2007 crop. The May PRO for the 2007-2008 crop year says farmers in Alberta will get $8.69 for No. 1 CWRS 12.5 protein. A farmer who produced No. 3 will get $8.23 per bushel.
The 2007 crop in Canada was pretty good quality so the No. 1 price is probably more relevant.
So when I do the math, I see the reverse of what Mr. Sawyer is saying. An Alberta producer will actually receive $2 more per bu. than his/her American counterpart this year. Works for me.
– Bill Rosher,
Kindersley, Sask.
