Time to start redefining progress
I am a first generation Canadian, born and raised on a Manitoba farm in the 1930s.
I did not take up farming as my livelihood, but I did learn to recognize that farm life can be extremely rewarding in so many different ways. I also learned to appreciate and realize that water and nature were to be treated with the utmost respect and courtesy and with a sense of dignity.
Now retired, I, along with so many, have become very concerned and worried how those once valued principles have deteriorated and crumbled.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
Corporations and their investors have taken over, interested only in benefiting from the current unsustainable economic activity. Huge hog-producing factories threaten our health, our water and our environment.
Part of the problem is that our economy, our governments and our society do not account for the social and environmental consequences that are being experienced and inflicted upon the communities and our precious water sources.
The rivers of yesterday in Manitoba provided a means of transportation, a source of food and clean water. Today, the rivers are regarded, for the most part, as handy and open-air sewers, someplace to dump the leftovers . All but our most northern and isolated water sources are being affected. Lake Winnipeg, the 10th largest fresh water lake in the world, has become a huge sewage lagoon and is dying.
Now the rural people of Manitoba have a common purpose that brings them together to face a shared enemy and the malignant forces of the expansionism of corporations and industries. For the “people” now have come to realize that the future of our generations is at stake, and the risks cannot be tolerated any longer.
I agree with a competitive and profitable agriculture Industry, but never at the expense of our health, our waters and the environment.Feeding the world with pork and exploiting and destroying our finite resources in the process is just not acceptable. In fact, it is very irresponsible, ignorant and immoral.
It seems to me that nature is literally screaming about the impact that we are putting on her, yet we think wistfully of what has been lost and dismiss it as “the price of progress.”
It’s about time we started to put moral ethics back into our present-day society. Also, it’s about time we started redefining progress.
John Fefchak
Virden, Man.
Fertilizer uproar counterproductive
The most famous line from the Chicken Little fable — “the sky is falling” — seems an appropriate comparison to the stories being told in both farm and general media these days about nitrogen fertilizer use.
About five years ago, a new phrase entered mainstream political media — “alternative facts.” What is being touted as fact today is a supposed plan by the Trudeau government to mandate a 30 percent reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use across Canada. As much as I know that most western Canadian farmers would not believe our prime minister if he said the sky was blue, I find it quite disturbing that the fearmongering antics of certain farm organizations actually gets published by mass media outlets.
The first fact is that the objective is to reduce emissions, not usage. Certain groups have rallied to the cry that since we don’t know how much various new technologies and applications methods will reduce emissions, then we are going the way of the Netherlands, which is trying to mandate reductions in use. We’re not Europe.
The farming industry recently witnessed the value of data when the Pest Management Regulatory Agency challenged farmers to provide evidence that neonicotinoids were not harming the environment. We did and they accepted it as fact, resulting in no banning of the valuable pesticide.
Farmers, and all the interconnected research agencies along with the fertilizer industry, have eight years — yes, eight — to figure this out. Expending energy on alternative facts to essentially say, “the sky is falling,” is counterproductive.
Doyle Wiebe
Langham, Sask.
