Sad news; Feast over; Room for praise; Starving cattle; Livestock woe; Rainy day
Sad news
It is with shock and great sadness to learn of the death of one of Saskatchewan’s most well-known farmers and farmer advocates, Paul Beingessner.
Whether one agreed with the views in his columns or not, one thing was certain: you read Paul’s column.
Yes, he may have stirred the pot sometimes, but somebody has to in our ultra-politically-correct world. We need more people like Paul in our society today, people who are not afraid to say what everyone else is thinking.
Read Also
Crop insurance’s ability to help producers has its limitations
Farmers enrolled in crop insurance can do just as well financially when they have a horrible crop or no crop at all, compared to when they have a below average crop
A true class act who died doing what he loved.
-Ryan Kiedrowski, Editor,
Brooks & County Chronicle,
Tilley, Alta.
Feast over
Bailout is getting to be recognized as a word that many of us would rather not hear.
One question that needs an answer is this: where is it written or promised that if someone undertakes a business venture and expands to a point of bloating and collapse, that taxpayers are on the hook for their misadventure?
A clothing industrialist, for example, who manufactures thousands upon thousands of far too many shirts, dresses, suits, etc. and their export market goes flat and bleeds red ink, are they entitled to bailout privileges?
Of course, clothes and hogs are two entirely different products, but nevertheless, the comparison of overproduction is a valid one.
Kicking in more money to help the hog producers now might be a short term answer for this time, but what about next time? Should we, as taxpayers, keep donating into this huge basket with a very large hole? Why has the public purse become the public trough?
For the past 10 years, much to the anger and frustration of rural residents, the hog industry in Manitoba has had the freedom to expand and build their huge hog producing factories nearly anywhere that suited them best.
They and governments were warned that this uncontrolled growth would eventually burst and now apparently it has….
The consequences of the huge appetites within the Manitoba hog industry over the past several years has caused many problems and much anxiety. These latest developments are, in fact, a form of suicide, for they are self-inflicted. They themselves have become victims of their own gluttony – all with some generous help, of course, from our provincial and several municipal governments.
If anything, what is needed now into this entire economic development fiasco is a full and open public inquiry.
Accountability is foremost and needs to be addressed at all levels.
– John Fefchak,
Virden, Man.
Room for praise
If the prices the Canadian Wheat Board earned for farmers were at least as good as world prices, “there would be room for praise,” says Darroll Wallin in his letter of May 7. I’m happy to assure Mr. Wallin that there is room for praise.
The CWB uses all available sources of information to compare its sales values with the values achieved by competitors for similar products in the same markets.
Targets for net per-tonne price spreads are established at the start of each crop year, and at year-end spreads are calculated and published in the annual report.
The results for 2007-08 were as follows: $13.81 per tonne for wheat; $48.84 per tonne for durum; and $29.47 per tonne for designated barley.
The formal customer survey we conduct every two years confirms the single desk’s effectiveness in terms of values extracted from the market. Customers indicate that they have a very high opinion of the CWB overall.
However, this opinion is driven first and foremost by product quality. Price competitiveness is at the bottom of the list.
In other words, our customers see the CWB as a company that provides them with a high quality product at a high price.
– Larry Hill,
Chair, CWB board of directors,
Swift Current, Sask.
Starving cattle
Regarding the article “Locals unable to help starving cattle,” (WP, May 28) there are some things I do not understand.
Apparently the neighbours realized the cattle were going hungry because one neighbour stated the land on which the 300 cattle were grazing was “not capable of supporting that many” and they were being fed straw which has “no nutritional value in straw or very little.”
The RM and the police were also aware of the situation.
What I would like to know is, did anyone contact the SPCA before March 3 when the cattle were seized? The cattle had been starving for months before that and many were dead.
Surely, something could have been done to prevent this terrible abuse of animals.
– Sharon Markwart,
Rosthern, Sask.
Livestock woe
In recent weeks, the cattle slaughter plant in Moose Jaw, Sask., shut down. Why?
The answer was the lack of slaughter cows. In recent months, a record amount of bred cows simply went to slaughter. In one RM, it was reported that over 500 bred cows were sold with less than 10 percent of those animals going on to grass in 2009. …
Saskatchewan by 2009 was to become the cow-calf capital of Canada. However, this will never become fact. We have lost two generations of cattlemen, those men and women who would have bought those cows and continued on. What we are left with is an alarming amount of 60-year-old cowboys who, when the baler and tractor wear out, will quit and sell the balance of the …cow herd.
The prime minister recently announced a program to finance young farmers to get them back onto the farms. He has indeed taken a step forward, however we have to go further. We will have to have a cost of production program that will guarantee that the young farmers will not lose what they have applied for. …
The cattle industry is facing some hard times but … so has the grain industry. As we view the many auction flyers, we wonder when will the reduction of farmers stop? We no longer see the small farmers quit or retire but now we see the very large farmers throwing in the towel.
Large farms are indeed part of our future but at what cost? Most of these farmers now complain that they cannot entice the kids to stay home and they no longer can get good help to run the massive machinery that they have….
It is indeed time that all levels of government decide on how important this industry is. Further, how important is it to the people of this country to know that the food that they eat is safe and in good supply with no worries of shortage….
Canada, wake up and smell the coffee while you can. We have the best farmers, the safest slaughter and processing plants in the world. We have the best inspection agencies in the world.
In all of this, if we do not have the farmers producing, then we will be forced into the international marketplace, buying substandard foodstuffs at what price? Think twice about what the costs maybe in 10 years if we do not take the proper steps to insure supply and quality.
– Bob Thomas,
Regina Beach, Sask.
Rainy day
The crops look good in southern Saskatchewan, until you get north of Swift Current.
One old farmer from Rosetown told me that it’s so dry up there, there are fish in the river that are five years old and still haven’t learned how to swim.
I once saw an American video where an inventor from Texas had designed a series of rockets during the Depression. He would fire the rockets up in the clouds hoping to shake the droplets of water loose and have them fall on the parched fields of corn and wheat.
It never did rain, and the Texas Rangers eventually stopped him because of the numerous grass fires he set ablaze.
In this area, when the climate turns to drought, there are normally no clouds in the sky. Cloud seeding experiments in Saskatchewan and Alberta have yielded negative results.
With genetic engineering, however, I’m sure that before long, drought and insect resistant grains and grasses will overcome the problem.
In the short term, however, I would trust that the farmers who have crop insurance, or who have been saving for a rainy day – no pun intended – will weather drought the best. …
– John Hamon,
Gravelbourg, Sask.
