Standing together; Sold out; Compatible policy; Seeing good; Begrudging rain?; Toilet seats; Noxious weeds; Thumbs down; Mail service; Send the cheque; CWB losses; Country song; No starvation
Standing together
The story Feb. 19 on page 81, “Can organic, conventional producers co-exist?” attempts to paint lines in the sand in order to get a good story.
Here’s a better story. The Going Organic network (worked) with and encouraged conventional farmers to learn about organics in Camrose March 9 to 13. There (were) even workshops for farmers who want to transition to organics. Going Organic network is open to anyone who wants to see organics bloom. Many members are not organic and some are not farmers and just enjoy learning about how their food is grown.
Read Also
Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
Organic or conventional, many of us are first and foremost farmers and love to learn from each other. Diverse production systems hold great opportunities for sharing ideas.
Farmers love to farm and talk to each other about farming, whether it’s fuel prices or the price for organic wheat. We are all in agriculture, which now stands for less than two percent of Canada’s population. Together we steward the food supply and rural life of this great country.
Our farming neighbours are very supportive and recognize good crops no matter what methods are used and are glad to see regeneration of farming in the rural area.
– Pamela Irving,
Harris, Sask.
Sold out
The livestock producers have been sold out by the groups such as the Alberta Beef Producers, the Western Stock Growers Association, etc., and most of all the governments that are to represent us.
Instead of helping the producer, they are like parasites. Premise identification and age verification have nothing to do with food safety as we are led to believe. It is all about doing an inventory of what each producer has.
What all these bureaucratic programs actually do is take away our freedom at a cost, creating jobs that do not produce anything of value. …
I believe it was P.T. Barnum who said you can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
– Lawrence Hollings,
Donalda, Alta.
Compatible policy
Will Obama and Harper get modern? Obama and Harper both have favoured generous subsidies for corn ethanol and can impose by law a certain percentage of ethanol in oil.
The results: one-third of American corn produced enough ethanol to replace three percent of petroleum in cars.
How close is this to the goal of independence from foreign oil? The reduction of greenhouse gas emission is insignificant. Forty American corn ethanol plants are expected to ask for protection against bankruptcy in 2009. How sustainable is that?
Only after the foreseen hike in grain prices made the world food crisis worse did the G8 commit in July to ensure that the policies on the production and use of biofuels are compatible with food security.
Mr. Obama declared, “if it turns out that we have to make changes in our ethanol policy to help people get something to eat, then that’s the step we’ll have to take.”
Will Obama and Harper finally change their focus from corn ethanol to energy efficiency or will they want to try some other high cost unsustainable, polluting and ineffective way first, while other competitors get modern?
– Pamela Walden-Landry,
Montreal, Que.
Seeing good
Re: Mischa Popoff’s article “Seeing the good in all of us,” WP, Feb. 5.
I have no argument with Popoff’s assertion that the spirit of God is as much in the heart of George Bush as it is in Barack Obama.
The big question is how each one of us demonstrates that spirit.
It surely isn’t in the indiscriminate bombing and killing in Iraq that was promoted by George Bush and company, any more than it would be considered acceptable that the Taliban would demonstrate the spirit of God in their hearts by killing Americans in the World Trade Centre.
– Frank Orosz,
Creston, B.C.
Begrudging rain?
We are writing in regards to the article in the Feb. 12 issue titled “African rain lends to gloomy durum outlook.”
I could absolutely not believe what I was reading. According to the writer and the Canadian Wheat Board, the fact that northern Africa is receiving good rain this season is bad news for Canadian farmers who grow durum.
Bruce Burnett of the wheat board states that if Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco had received poor rains again this year, which would be the third straight year, “it would have been bullish for prices,” referring to durum wheat, which those countries import from Canada when they don’t have enough to meet their needs.
We did a bit of research and found that on the United Nations Human Development Index listing, Canada comes in third in the entire world. Tunisia comes in 95th, Algeria comes in 100th and Morocco comes in 127th.
I hope I’m wrong, but from Mr. Ewins’ article and comments from the CWB, it would seem that Canadian farmers are begrudging these impoverished countries rain and the resulting bumper crops, because that will mean lower sales for Canada.
I find this unbelievably selfish and self-centred, which I don’t believe typifies Canadian farmers. We should rather be very pleased for these countries that they will in fact have sufficient for their needs, especially in these days of food insecurity.
– Rudy and Louise Froese,
Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.
Toilet seats
The solution to the toilet seat problem is easily solved if all members of the household are taught as children to always put the lid down when finished. (WP, Feb. 19.)
One solution is to purchase or make a two-piece tank cover set and toilet lid cover made of thick pile fabric. This usually prevents the toilet lid and seat from staying up unless held.
Bathrooms with the toilet lid and/or seat left up remind me of public washrooms.
Most homemakers go to a lot of work and expense decorating and colour co-ordinating the bathroom. Is it too much to ask all the users to keep it looking nice and ready for unexpected guests?
Toilets wouldn’t have lids if they weren’t meant to be put down when not in use. Before indoor plumbing most outhouses even had lids over the hole in the seat.
– Elaine Sloan,
Busby, Alta.
Noxious weeds
It saddens me as a farmer to read the latest subject brought out to divide what is left of the farmers in this industry of ours.
Fines for noxious weeds aimed at organic producers? I guess someone thought the age-old Canadian Wheat Board debate wasn’t doing its job any more.
As an organic producer, I am confident that our 99-year-old farm will pass on to our son, who doesn’t ask for or need a handout from government. The choice to work the rigs to subsidize his own farm and the sustainable practice of organic farming are keeping him in the black.
So now we are supposed to let councils of our rural municipalities decide who is and isn’t doing a good job. It is very scary since the majority of them are trained to run to town and buy a pail of fix-it for whatever ails their land.
The thought of personal long-term safety and affordability have been completely driven from their minds with all the ads and propaganda spray companies have trained farmers to pay for.
What is the most common complaint from farmers having a tough financial time of it? I can’t pay my chemical bill and need more. Sounds like a heroin junkie needing another fix.
I do know that long before the two RMs I farm in have the moral right to judge anyone’s weed problems, they had better address the fact that their road allowances are breeding grounds for downy brome. This is partially due to killing off the grass on the road shoulders with spray, making an ideal place to reproduce this terrible weed year after year.
I have been told by both RMs that there is nothing they can do about this when neither one has a plan in place to at least do an early short mowing to keep the plants stunted and not being allowed to fully mature before being mowed.
I don’t support noxious weeds being grown and nobody could grow an organic crop and not do their best to control all of their weeds. We don’t have the easy removal of them with spray. Have you ever hand-picked weeds in an 80-acre field?… Farmers will argue about the colour of the sky. Do we really need to be suckered into another debate to conquer and divide us?…
– Randi Ellis,
Hazlet, Sask.
Thumbs down
It seems we get inundated with advertising for herbicides at this time of year. I don’t begrudge them for wanting to get their product in the minds of producers but recently a certain product promotion raised my ire.
First, as an insert to the Producer, we received a many folded instruction guide for Broadband. Upon opening, it was basically a large sheet of blank paper. What a complete waste.
Then a few days later a special trip to a postal outlet for a parcel pickup gleaned us another useless Broadband gimmick.
I’m no wiser as to what the heck this stuff is for and much less inclined to find out. Thumbs down to Syngenta on this one.
– Stephen Light,
Lloydminster, Sask.
Mail service
Re: “Rural Albertans seek better mail service” (WP, Feb. 19.)
As a student who lived in a rural community and moved to a city, it troubled me to read about the difficulty that residents of Thorntonville, Alta., face to retrieve their mail in a convenient way.
I understand that Canada Post has constraints on the service they can offer to customers. These inconveniences, along with others, are outcomes of declining rural populations in Alberta. Unfortunately, now it is a reason why more people and younger generations will not move to rural areas.
Speaking as someone who would like to return to live in a rural area, I hope that services like mail service will be dealt with in a way that will benefit current and future residents.
Many rural communities are shrinking in size but there are still people who call these communities home. These residents should have easily accessible services that we all enjoy.
– Elise Neumann,
St. Paul, Alta.
Send the cheque
I have finally read enough about how the wheat board is so good for us farmers. Lawrence Beckie (Open Forum, March 5) writes how the friends of the wheat board owe Stewart Wells and others a debt of gratitude. Well, I believe they owe me much more.
In the 2007-08 crop year when we had the small window to market our malt barley to the grain companies and not have the wheat board involved, I contracted for $6.50 per bushel.
Thanks to the friends of the wheat board and the judge they found to hear the case, I ended up with just a few cents over $5. Who will pay the rest? The friends of the wheat board? I think not.
But in the small chance that they decide to pay the difference, my number is in the phone book and I would be glad to give them my address to mail me a cheque.
In the future, to the friends of the wheat board, please stay out of my business and let me sell my grain to whomever I like at the price I choose.
– Iver Johnson,
Dundurn, Sask.
CWB losses
Re: CWB contingency fund loss, WP, Feb. 19.
In this story on the front page they talk about a $89.5 million loss in this fund. They go on to blame the loss on unpredictable and volatile grain markets. They talk about another loss of $226 million for mostly the same reasons as the loss in the contingency fund.
Is this not the whole purpose of the Canadian Wheat Board, to watch the markets and price grain at the best possible price?
After shaking my head at this loss of well over $300 million, I turn the page and it shows that chief executive officer of the CWB Ian White was paid $703,000 for what CWB chair Larry Hill called a much deserved and earned wage.
Mr. White and Mr. Hill would both be looking for new employment if they were working for me. Oh wait a minute – they are working for me.
– Irvin Lepp,
Rosemary, Alta.
Country song
It was with tongue in cheek that I read the letter of Avery Sahl in the Feb. 12 issue.
For a moment, I thought I was reading the words to a country western song. All that is lacking is a chorus line along the lines of, “pain, grain, no gain and a darned old train.”
You criticize the Harper Conservatives. In 1996, was there not a Liberal government under Jean Chretien installed in Ottawa, and an NDP government under Roy Romanow in Regina when the members of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool voted to privatize what had been a co-operative since 1924?
Was that not the first clear indicator that prairie grain farmers were shifting toward a privatized grain industry?
Was it not Liberal Ralph Goodale who was the minister of agriculture in Ottawa when the Crow grain freight agreement was terminated on Aug. 1, 1995?
Was that agreement not what really kept the prairie grain handling system alive from the days when our grandfathers first plowed the virgin Saskatchewan soil, until 1995 when the elevators began to disappear from the prairie skyline?
Was there not a Liberal government in Ottawa in 2001, when the shareholders of Agricore United voted to dismantle their share structure and reorganize as a privately traded company? …
Mr. Sahl, may I suggest a closing line for your country western song. How about, “Yesterday’s heartaches are deeply etched in our prairie hearts.”
– John Hamon,
Gravelbourg, Sask.
No starvation
The government just looks after their own pocket and does not care about the people. They have no problem giving themselves raises or making up jobs for their buddies.
The main problem in Canada is we have not starved.
During the war, people starved in Europe because there was very little food to be had, not because of a lack of money. Money doesn’t help when the store shelves are bare.
Since then, the European governments have made it a mandate to ensure that there is always a supply of food.
To do this, they provide a direct subsidy to producers so they can remain viable and continue to produce high quantities of food.
In Canada, when there is an abundance of grain or livestock the price plummets and there is no incentive to produce more.
The Canadian government better open their eyes before Canadians are faced with empty shelves and starving people.
– Curtis Stachniak,
Prince Albert, Sask.
