Cost formulas
To the Editor:
I would like to make some observations on two connected articles in the March 26 Western Producer: “Dawn of a new era for supply management” and “Cost of Production drops profit promise.”
In the tone of these articles Ms. Currie suggests that farmers are rolling in money, far from the real truth which is that many farmers’ net incomes are at the poverty line or lower, as set down by the Canadian Government statistics.
Ms. Currie has stated she is reviewing the present Cost of Production formulas as she feels that “A bloated COP serves no one well.” What does she base this statement on?
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Ms Currie has stated that she is going to squeeze costs out of the formula, so that we may compete with $10 (U.S.) per 100 pounds of milk and New Zealand’s $6 milk. How does Ms. Currie say she is going to do this?
Firstly she is going to eliminate the profit margins from the formulas. Great move, Ma’am, now the farmers can collect from the food banks instead of contributing to them. What does Ms. Currie mean when she talks about “Flexibility” and “Orderly Marketing”?
Ms. Currie has talked about driving out costs of production from Supply Management Products, I have some suggestions. Firstly, Ms. Currie can order the machinery manufacturers, feed suppliers, fertilizer companies, Vets, Banks and all those who supply product or services to agriculture to eliminate their profit margin along with the farmers.
Well done, Ms. Currie, this should reduce cost 15 to 20 percent.
Now who else can make sacrifices for their country? Why, all the labor connected with agriculture and agricultural products. Ms. Currie can reduce their wages to the poverty line ( those who are not already there). That should reduce costs another five to 10 percent.
Now comes the coup de grace. Once Ms. Currie and her merry band (all probably paid $60,000 to $100,000 a year each) have put together this poverty Cost of Production formula, Ms. Currie has stated that she and her band cannot disallow a price that a Province may pay different to the new formula “but we can undermine it.”
What on earth does this mean? A veiled threat “toe the line or else” who knows? Have you been down to the U.S., Ms. Currie, to see how they cut costs of their production?
How about the 100,000 illegal aliens who live in carboard shacks and are paid a few dollars a day (when they get paid at all) or the mega poultry processors who tell the farmers how many chicken, turkeys they will raise, who will supply the feed, how much they will get for them?
Oh, and if the farmer disagrees he does not get any chickens or turkeys to raise and is forced into bankruptcy.
Have you seen the conditions that the process workers work in at a wage rate of $5 to $8 an hour with no benefits?
Do you want this for Canada, Ms. Currie? I sure don’t. Let us not lose sight of who we are and what we want as our Canadian way of life.
We did not become the No. 1 country in the world to live in by lowering our standard of living to meet that of other countries.
Ms. Currie, give Canadian farmers a level playing field and they will compete with any farmer in the world.
That means the same input costs and the same climatic conditions.
If you can’t do this, then they will require a higher cost of production return for their products ( as they have now).
– Merv Coles,
Nelson, B.C.
Open-market woes
To the Editor:
Last October or November, I invested in canola options with a dealer and his parent company. I instructed this agent to buy canola options and sell them when he saw fit. I wanted them sold by March.
This agent had me sign a power of attorney form so he could do this. This agent held onto them until March. He lost most of my investment.
What am I as a consumer supposed to do? Is this the grain marketing system we want for our new crops?
– Don W. Reineke,
Hodgeville, Sask.
Co-operation gone?
To the Editor:
I have been following, with a great deal of disappointment, the mad rush to build big concrete elevators to get a larger share of the Canadian grain market that will have to be paid for one way or the other by farmers.
But my biggest disappointment is with the three Pools. They were set up as co-operatives; their farmer owners thought they were co-operatives; they belonged to national co-operative organizations.
But when it comes to co-operating and forming forces for the economic benefit of their members, co-operation seems sadly lacking.
Surely if their competitors can operate in all three provinces from one office location, the Pools could as well and may yet have to.
Maybe it’s a matter of too many high-paid positions at stake, but remember who has to pick up the tab.
It’s so sad it’s funny.
– Avery K. Sahl,
Former Vice President,
SWP, Regina, Sask.
CWB challenge
To the Editor:
… At this time, I will issue a challenge: If the farmers that support the Canadian Wheat Board will sign a contract to deliver 100 percent of their farm’s production to the Board with no access to the open market, than I will be the first farmer in Western Canada to sign a contract to market 100 percent of my farm’s production on the open market with no access to the Board.
If the farmers that support Board marketing are as fair minded and dedicated to their principles as they say they are, then they will have no problem supporting this system, thus resolving a difficult situation.
As proof of my commitment and a challenge to theirs, I propose that these contracts last a minimum of seven years with no choice of opting out, thus assuring the Canadian Wheat Board a source of supply and relieving the system of “we radicals” that want the freedom of choice where we market our farm’s production.
– Murray McMillan,
Arcola, Sask.
Political conversion
To the Editor:
In this part of the province, the crows usually return April 1, for that is the only day they can return unobserved and unbelieved.
Jean Charest’s conversion to an instant Liberal also came close to April 1, but it was no joke, the man is serious!
We, in the NDP, have always insisted that there’s no difference from Liberal to PC and back again. Will these politicians soon become a commodity to be bought and sold like hockey players?…
– Ernest J. Weser,
Laird, Sask.
Dear Ken
To the Editor:
Dear Ken Larsen, I feel that I must respond to your “flight of rhetoric” about Alf Bryan being off base. I, for one, am not confused or frightened by a dual market, but I am definitely worried about the minute possibility of canola coming under the CWB.
Canola has blossomed under an open-market system in which we have many buyers and many sellers. We are currently able to receive over $9.20 a bushel for old crop canola. What would the initial price for canola be under a pooled CWB system? I would venture to guess that it would not be over $5, as the government would not want to stick their necks out too far. …
We do play with the giants in the international market in every commodity except wheat and a smattering of barley, and the CWB’s days are numbered in barley. I received $2.60 to $3 at the farm gate for my barley this year and the CWB PRO was approximately $2.50 or less and you don’t get some of that money for up to a year and a half. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they are not going to source any export barley that way.
If they can’t compete domestically, then why should we let them sell internationally for us without competition? I grow less than 20 percent board grains now, which is the Alberta average handled by the elevator system, and if I get mad enough, it will be less.
We are the 20 percent of the farmers that grow 80 percent of the crop and we are fed up with wheat politics.
If you want to have an OPEC of wheat, then perhaps we should vote with bushels as they do in the oil business and see what happens.
If the CWB has the marketing expertise that they say they do, then they will grab the lion’s share of the market and everyone will live happily ever after.
There has to be a dual market where farmers have choice with binding contracts that you honor. Farmers will choose the right mix of marketing just as they now choose the right mix of crops.
The CWB must also get out of the transportation business and become a port receiver of grain only. The farmers, grain companies, railways and trucking companies will get it there on time through a system of binding contracts, incentives and penalties.
My final point is this. We do not have a single desk selling canola and we are doing wonderfully, thank you very much.
-Glenn Sawyer,
Acme, Alta.
Wrong cars?
To the Editor:
I opened the April 16 edition of the Producer and read with interest President Leroy Larsen’s lengthy letter about libellous statements printed in several weekly newspapers. …
I would not take too seriously statements of “secret agreements,” but I would like to know if it’s true that the SWP head office sent the several cars that showed up on the Arcola CPR branch line, to be loaded with feed barley at Arcola, Manor, Wauchope and Antler, when none of these points have had any such grain for up to eight years.
And is it true that for every car that a point fails to load, they lose four additional cars, a loss our line could ill afford to lose?
Why would the SWP agree to the elimination of the Arcola branch?
Two concrete tombstones at Fairlight and Carnduff! …
As our population declines and we have long-range farming, who wants to live in a no-service outback?
We are losing some of the best people in the world – stubborn, cantankerous, independent, hardworking, as honest as they can be, and a lot of common sense.
There is a line spoken by an actor in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia.”
When Lawrence and his army slaughter a column of retreating Turks, he cries “Jesus wept, Jesus wept.”
If rural Canada continues to be slaughtered by Governments and Corporations with a lost social direction, Jesus will indeed weep!
– Harold G. Madsen,
SWP Secretary,
Wauchope Committee,
Redvers, Sask.
Silent minority
To the Editor:
I was somewhat taken aback by the truculent tone adopted by my fellow Scandinavian, Ken Larsen, in attacking my presentation to the senate in Saskatoon. In our previous exchanges, we have been able to maintain an underlying sense of humor.
I seem to have become the target of the frustration and disillusionment that he must have felt at the Calgary hearings where pro-freedom presenters outnumbered the pro-board presenters by 20 to four.
The so-called “Silent Majority” seems to have become the “Silent Minority.”
Mr. Larsen accuses me of making up history. How he came to this conclusion is beyond me. It is a historical fact that Canadian forces went overseas to free others from tyranny.
It is also a fact that I have less freedom to market my wheat, barley and durum than my grandfather had before 1943.
He goes on to say that repeated votes in parliament reaffirmed the right of the CWB to confiscate Western farmers’ property.
If he would read page 31 of the April 9 issue, he would see the real reason why under the headline “Cattle producers want wheat board untouched.”
There, a director of the Canadian Cattlemens’ Association is quoted as telling the Senators in Calgary that the CWB has a policy of maintaining grain reserves to service the domestic industry, i.e. keep feed prices low for livestock producers.
Here’s something that Mr. Larsen and other pro-Board supporters can ponder during those long hours on the tractor.
Why is the federal government oblivious to your plight when you’re negotiating an increase in your operating loan from the Royal Bank, buying fuel from Shell or fertilizer from Esso?
You’re on your own when you’re dealing with these huge corporations and spending money.
But, come harvest, it’s very interested in you now that you have potential income.
It says that it doesn’t want you ripped off by transnationals like Cargill and the SWP, so the CWB must market your grain for you.
Curious, isn’t it? Hint: The answer is on page 31.
– Russell Larson,
Outlook, Sask.
CWB history
To the Editor:
I wish to respond to Ken Larsen’s letter in the issue of April 9, “Veterans for CWB” and also comments attributed to Mr. Larsen in the page 4 article “Traveling senators hear wide range of opinions.” In his letter on page 7, he writes “but no one has the right to make up history to suit their cause.”
Maybe Mr. Larsen should quit denying the real history of the CWB monopoly if he truly believes no one has the right to make up history to suit their cause. It is this history that Mr. Larsen seems willing to ignore to suit his cause. The history of Pooling, which is rooted in an unflinching hatred of open markets and free enterprise, is a separate issue altogether.
Pooling and its history is about farmers voluntarily choosing to market their grain collectively and forming a business entity to do just that.
The history of the modern-day monopoly, which is entirely a regulatory and legislative issue, began in 1943 during WW II when the federal government passed an order-in-council granting the CWB monopoly status. No farmer vote was taken. Then in 1947 after the war was over, barley and oats were added, again by order-in-council. …
Mr. Larsen, your comments cut both ways. I can’t deny the fact that the majority of farmers in the ’50s and ’60s supported the CWB, but I can question the selective bits of information and the propaganda that was used to condition the farmers’ beliefs.
The free-market side has learned from its past mistakes because we could admit to them.
Unless the single-desk side is prepared to admit to their past mistakes and their own unpleasant history, the CWB, in any form, will become nothing more than a fond memory for Mr. Larsen and the so-called silent majority. …
It seems that Mr. Larsen is perfectly happy having his views forcibly imposed on others, even against their will and for no other reason than for his own monetary benefit. And we’re the ones being called greedy?
I have a poster of Winston Churchill on my office wall. The quotation at the bottom reads: “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”
– Bernie Sambrook,
Medora, Man.
Vegetarians
To the Editor:
Thank you for covering our campaign urging Christians to be more compassionate and merciful by becoming vegetarians (“Was Jesus a vegetarian?,” March 5). Readers can learn more about this issue by checking out our website at www.jesus-online.com.
More than eight billion animals are killed every year for food in this country.
The vast majority of these animals are raised on “factory farms.” Every one of those animals has a capacity for pain and suffering, just like our own cats, dogs and other companion animals, and in fact, just as we do.
I have been to such farms and slaughterhouses and can attest that the conditions in them are truly from hell. … As we do to the least, we do to Him.
– Bruce Friedrich,
Vegetarian Campaign
Co-ordinator, PETA,
Norfolk, Va.
