Complaint topic
Farmers have a long standing and well-deserved reputation for constantly complaining. Machinery is too expensive, too big, too small, too high-tech, out of date and, of course, the proverbial wrong colour.
The price we receive for grain is never enough, or if it is, it will just push up our costs. We shouldn’t complain; after all we’ve had one increase since the 1920s, I think?
Now, when it comes to weather we outdo ourselves. It’s too cold, too hot, too windy, no breeze or the wind is in the wrong direction, too cloudy, too sunny, snowed, didn’t snow, rained too hard, too soft, too long, too much, at the wrong time and, of course, it didn’t rain at all.
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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
As farmers, I think we should take this natural talent and put it to constructive use.
The federal government and the genetically modified organisms industry is pushing hard to introduce GM wheat into the market and its introduction will wreak havoc on our export sales. Eighty percent of our customers don’t want GM wheat in any amount and a lot of farmers don’t want GM wheat on their land.
So take time from your arduous schedule of hockey tournaments, curling games, golf practice and think tank sessions on coffee row.
Live up to your reputation and complain to both the federal and provincial governments, your MP and, not to let them off the hook, the Canadian Wheat Board.
Stop the introduction of GM wheat into our market before it’s too late and ruins our good reputation as a supplier of quality wheat to the world.
– Brian McDonald,
Grenfell, Sask.
Grossly underpaid:
Well, I’ll be doggoned. I guess I was just too dumb to realize it. Now they tell me, the (Saskatchewan) Wheat Pool that is, that the reason my shares in the outfit dropped from a decent $12 to a mere 30 plus cents was because the directors were grossly underpaid.
Grabbing onto a last-minute reprieve by the banks and grumbling bondholders, who have already lost a goodly bundle in a damned if you don’t or damned if you do predicament, they lost little time to delve into the fresh cookie jar to claim what is rightfully theirs.
No talk of sacrifice here on their part that they preached for all the other stakeholders. No sir; they want to compare themselves to others in the industry. If my neighbour drives a Caddy, I gotta have one too …
I just didn’t know that, by doubling someone’s pay, would instantly increase his mental aptitude to such high levels of sound decision making that the genie in Aladdin’s lamp would miraculously fill those ugly concrete giants to overflowing, with highly marketable grain and resultant flow of profits into the Pool coffers.
If we’d have only known that the past adventures that the board of the day embarked on – empire building in Gdansk and Manzanillo, intruding into other provinces and bullying sister co-ops and buying everything in sight, all with borrowed money – that all along, the procurators sitting around the mahogany table at Victoria (Ave.) and Albert (St., Pool’s head office in Regina) were just slaving away for a pittance. If we’d have just paid them more, we would have never got into this mess. Or so it seems to me.
Poor old me, the dirt grubber from the back 40, don’t even fit into the equation. No matter that one faithfully hauled his every kernel to the red spires that were an icon in every one of our communities, bought my chemical and fertilizer in total support for my local agent, just because I swore an oath in my sleep to do so; it now doesn’t count. …
Who will it be in the end that will blacken the fiscal sheets of the organization that’s overwhelmed in red ink? Will it be the tenants of those plush chairs in their Regina lair, who have cut themselves much thicker slices of bread and butter, no doubt graduating from the Harvard School of Economic Strategies as a prerequisite to do so, or will it be the Joe-boys like me, the dusty, unwashed illiterates from the back 40?…
Will some inner sense of pride make the rest of us leather-necks roll up our sleeves and not be a let down to the forebears who are now pushing daisies, who themselves would roll over in their graves if we allowed the American monopolies to steamroller over the dreams of 1924? …
– Harry Beskorovayny,
Gronlid, Sask.
Accounting methods
It’s not just the level of (farm income) support, it’s the accounting methodology behind how the support levels get calculated.
Those of us in the farm accounting profession are horrified at the thought of even the possibility of continuing to use the warped Agriculture Income Disaster Assistance “modified accrual” accounting, particularly the requirement to value opening inventories at closing inventory values.
I’ve been on the case of my local MPP and fellow MBA grad, Helen Johns, for years, on just that issue. Now that she is agriculture minister for Ontario, she has been saying publicly she wouldn’t sign on till she saw how the accounting would be done, and rightly so….
As to farmers not being helpful, (federal agriculture minister Lyle) Vanclief is spouting hogwash. Furthermore, the accounting profession has been unanimous, for years, in quite stridently trying to get Vanclief to drop the wretched and completely unprofessional accounting practices in AIDA, yet every indication shows that these policies will carry on into the new Net Income Stabilization Account.
We have been so helpful that if we were any more helpful, we’d have been camped on the minister’s door every day for three years. …
– Stephen Thompson,
Clinton, Ont.
Data?
In her recent letter to the editor, (Open Forum, March 20) Colleen Bramall is still trying to make factual statements without supporting data.
For instance she says “it’s a proven fact that wages are significantly higher in Alberta than in Saskatchewan.”
This is quite contrary to the facts. In Saskatchewan the minimum wage was reset in November 2002 to $6.65 per hour (up from $6.35 per hour set in May 2002). In Alberta the minimum wage remains at $5.90 per hour, unchanged since October 1999.
And where does she find the information that states “if the work force is expanded by 20,000, then 15,000 of those jobs will simply be government jobs”?
I would like to ask where is there a series of buyers and sellers who would recycle a $40,000 vehicle every year for five years?
I would also like to ask Colleen if she is employed in Saskatchewan but still paying the Alberta vehicle registration and insurance rates, as well as driver’s licence rates that she quotes.
– F. J. H. Fredeen,
Saskatoon, Sask.
Not the farmer
The debate over the licensing of genetically modified wheat into Canada is a serious one. Let’s look at the facts.
Over 80 percent of our wheat customers state, in no uncertain terms, that they do not want GM wheat. Canada has a reputation as a reliable, high quality supplier into the export wheat market. Why in the world would we as wheat producers stand idly by and allow a crop to be licensed, that 1) will certainly jeopardize our markets and 2) will offer negative agronomic benefit?
Is it likely that in the future GM wheat will be more acceptable to our customers and offer real agronomic benefits? Yes.
The task of getting market acceptance from our customers is the task of those that wish to introduce GM wheat, not the farmer.
We, as farmers, must let our industry and government know, loud and clear that in the present environment we do not want genetically modified wheat licensed in Canada.
– Joe Cey,
Wilkie, Sask.
Penalize corn
Regarding U.S. (penalties on Canadian wheat, it) will result in 14.7 percent on durum and 12 percent on spring wheat.
If this became law under U.S. trade law it may go higher, 25.5 percent on wheat.
We should put anti-dumping on canola and U.S. corn. These are very heavy subsidies. They can give it away and Uncle Sam will pay them a good price.
There are millions of bushels of canola and corn coming into Canada. The price of barley has taken a terrible fall from $4 to $3 and less, same with canola. The drop in barley price has hurt the Canadian farmer real bad.
This is what the U.S. calls free trade. When are the U.S. wheat growers going to stop taking the CWB to court? They have lost every time. So far they (have tried) nine times. This costs Canadian farmers $8 million every time. Canadian MPs, take action now.
– Jack Pawich,
Cartwright, Man.
Crop insurance
We all have heard that the crop insurance rates are going up, slightly over 50 percent. I had crop insurance last year, a year I hope is not repeated. I received about $40 per acre for the under $4 investment I made. An excellent investment. That investment will now go to $6.
Because it was such a disaster across the West, this money which I and thousands of farmers received, must be returned and correctly so. Assisted by provincial and federal contributions, those of us who suffered drought or frost are helped by those who did not and the money being spread across Saskatchewan to those of us who qualified for that assistance do not have to pay it all back.
The price of nitrogen fertilizer went from under $300 per tonne last fall to over $400 per tonne this spring. I got little or no return on this last year and this year I will have to pay an additional $10 per acre.
This additional $10 per acre will not come back to the farmers. Not like crop insurance. From well head to consumers, farmers’ return for access to the gas or wages producing it never increased, the increase is called corporate profit, existing throughout the system.
The Saskatchewan Party was on TV and radio many times and by mail telling us how terrible it was that I had to suffer a 50 percent increase on crop insurance (for me an additional $2) but never mentioned the profits the fertilizer companies were taking from us. Could it be receiving campaign funds from corporations?
Could it be that we should look at the sources of the campaign funds of these political parties to find who they represent? Is that why they can change names Conservative to Saskatchewan Party, Conservative to Reform to Canadian Alliance …?
– Robert Thompson,
Alticane, Sask.
Majority wins?
The March 20 copy of your paper contains an article entitled “Most farmers think Ottawa controls CWB.”
In that article, CWB director Rod Flaman expresses amazement that 85 percent of farmers polled think that the government controls the CWB. In an earlier story from your paper dated Nov. 7, entitled “Ottawa likely to reject CWB experiment,” Ralph Goodale talks about the implications of a positive vote to change the CWB mandate.
Ralph Goodale is quoted as saying “a majority vote in favour of change would not necessarily be accepted by the government as the voice of farmers. There is a technical question about how big the vote would have to be – the government would have to decide if the turnout and the margin of victory were large enough to be sure that an end to the CWB monopoly is really what farmers want.”
The writer of the article, Barry Wilson, ends the piece this way: “Critics say that is the problem. Farmers can express themselves but the government ultimately retains the right to interpret the results.”
Mr. Goodale’s own words confirm what 85 percent of the farmers believe. The compulsory mandate of the CWB was established in 1943 by cabinet decree and if at some future point in time the federal government decides to end the compulsory nature of the CWB, it will be accomplished by cabinet decree, regardless of what our worldwide web of CWB voters may decide.
– Richard Brooks,
Wynyard, Sask.
Getting gophers
Re: Gophers will outstrip strychnine supplies, March 20.
Just a comment about the strychnine supply.
I have no problem with a shortage of strychnine. I realize where it comes from and there are harvesting problems.
What gets me is the talk about not allowing the use in following years. We need to have access to strychnine. This is the most effective one-feed bait out there.
It bothers me when these people talk about the alternatives and what exterminator companies use. There is no way you can keep gophers under control with a bait that takes multiple feedings. We are not feeding gold fish. We are talking about doing quarter sections to sections of infested crop and grass land per farm.
I have been mixing gopher poison in Alberta for the last two years for farmers. I feel farmers are doing an excellent job of being responsible in the handling and the putting out of the strychnine. The problem is that farmers are busy and we are seeing the wives coming to get the strychnine and they are putting it out.
Now the talk is to go to multiple-fed bait. I would like to know where this extra time is going to come from.
– Burt Forbes,
Provost, Alta.
