BIOFUEL TAXES RESOURCES
As I read your Dec. 13 issue, I got a bit confused. I read that (Saskatchewan) premier Brad Wall thinks we must increase food production by 70 percent by 2050 to feed the masses.
Potash Corp. chief executive officer Bill Doyle outdoes Wall by stating that farmers will have to produce as much grain in the next 50 years as they have in the past 10,000 years.
At the same time, consultant Don O’Connor says that the food versus fuel debate around the biofuel industry is bogus.
Read Also
Farm groups are too amiable with the federal government
Farm groups and commodity groups in Canada often strike a conciliatory tone, rather than aggressively criticizing the government.
Apparently, higher yields and better feed efficiency mean that millions of acres of land formerly used for coarse grains are no longer needed.
It seems to me that either Wall and Doyle are correct, or perhaps O’Connor is correct, but they cannot all be correct.
If we desperately need to produce more food to feed the masses, then using millions of acres to produce biofuels would not be helpful.
Perhaps David Suzuki, quoted in the same issue of the WP, is correct. He called biofuels “absolutely crazy.” He also referred to the idea that western farmers have a responsibility to feed China, India and Europe as “male bovine excrement” (my translation of the original).
The bottom line is that everyone promotes their own point of view to benefit their own business. Corporations that want favourable government policy to sell their products, such as seed, fertilizer and pesticides, are going to promote the idea that we must increase food production greatly to feed the world.
Biofuel advocates who want favourable government policy will promote the idea that biofuel production is good for the environment and actually helps food production in the Third World.
As a grass-based sheep and cattle farmer, my sense is that the huge push for more grain in the past few years for feed, food and fuel presents a danger to our soil resource as almost every acre of grass has been plowed under.
That cannot be good for long-term soil health and hence for future productivity. Of course, I am just selling my own point of view, which is ultimately to have more cheap grass available to rent.
Jim Johnston,
LEARN FROM PAST
Having read a few of Barry Wilson’s articles in the last three Western Producers, I am blown away by the comments that I have read.
He paraphrases (WP Dec. 6) Brian Lee Crowley, managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, as saying, “the only answer to world hunger issues is to allow a food powerhouse like Canada to excel at what it does. We are leaving an era of food surplus and entering an era of food shortages.”
I believe that the food shortage that exists is largely due to a lack of fair distribution.
Crowley also talks about the support of the small farmer needing to end.
Lately, I read that the hog industry is in such a mess and that each hog enterprise should own enough land to produce their own feed.
I’m an old farmer, lived through the ’60s and ’70s, and ran a 100-sow operation, farrow to finish. Sometimes the grain was profitable; other times the hogs did well.
Then government came along and promoted large hog enterprises, killing most, if not all, self-sufficient producers.
(Federal agriculture minister) Gerry Ritz thinks that we are now in the golden era of farming, and that there is nothing but good days ahead.
If he would look at the past, and learn from it, which we all should, he would recall the days of the late ’60s. We were told to grow all the wheat we could; the world needed food.
It was but a short time later that I recall custom drying 10,000 to 20,000 bushel piles of wheat with only a six bu. quota.
Much of that grain was sold for as low as 25 to 50 cents a bushel. What happened?
Oh, I know, many would say that it was the (Canadian) Wheat Board’s fault. I don’t think so — that was the open market price.
In the Dec. 27 WP, Wilson states that Ritz said, when talking about the five year agriculture plan, “it is a change in policy mindset based on the assumption that Canada’s agricultural commodity price boom will continue.”
Karl Regier,
Laird, Sask.
GUNOWNERS ALWAYS BLAMED
The killing of innocent children and adults always makes us angry. Rightly so. Who in his or her right mind could do such a horrible deed?
Most agree that a person (must be) mentally deranged (to) kill their own parent and innocent children.
The state of Connecticut has the country’s fifth toughest gun laws, including an assault weapons ban. Whenever a mass murder takes place anywhere in the world, the first thing we hear from the media is that we need to outlaw more firearms. Our laws in Canada differ from those in the United States.
In Canada, we have no property rights so the government of the day can by law confiscate anything that we own.
Fortunately, 99.9 percent of the gun owners in Canada are law-abiding citizens. We are not criminals, not insane and don’t go around shooting innocent bystanders. We don’t need to apologize to anyone because we own a firearm.
But the media tends to lump all lawful and peaceful firearm owners into the same pot. Somehow owning a gun makes one a potential criminal in this country.
We need to register the criminals and the insane and not lawful firearm owners. Some people enjoy fishing, others enjoy recreational shooting.
Taking the guns away from the law-abiding citizens is like trying to stop highway deaths through confiscating all vehicles that produce more than 100 horsepower.
How many of us would tolerate such a law? The real solution is through better mental health, compulsory firearm safety training and education, and not finger pointing and blaming the lawful firearm owners.
Inky Mark,
Dauphin, Man.
SAVE PASTURE SYSTEM
The federal government is in the process of washing its hands of Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration community pastures.
The ideals that structured community pastures for ranchers, conservationists and the public are being ignored because of political ideology rather than the needs of the cattle industry.
I can understand the federal government’s view, as it is evident they have no intention of sustaining the current family farm operation in Western Canada.
However, it is time for the Sask-atchewan Party government to stand on its own two feet and stick up for the cattle, ranching and grazing industry.
Agriculture is and will remain the basic industry in Saskatchewan as the majority of the population in Sask-atchewan is directly or indirectly affected by the sustainability of this industry agriculture.
Let us not dismantle the structure of the PFRA community pasture system for the sake of ideology. The majority — we must not forget we live in a democracy — of patrons, conservationists and those affected by these fragile lands, realize the benefits, production and profitability of the present structure….
This is an opportunity for this provincial government to keep the lands under one umbrella; it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel.
Forming new individual identities for each pasture will only cost patrons more money which they cannot afford, for fewer benefits and a significant loss to environmentalists, hunters, wildlife and the agriculture industry.
The domain of the PFRA system in many instances was brought into the fold because of the fragile structure of the land. These lands have been successfully brought into production and maintained viable by the proficient stewardship of trained and accomplished managers….
The existing system has given many young producers an opportunity to grow their livestock operations … allowing them a valuable start into the agriculture industry.
Patrons cannot afford to purchase lands and assets which they have already contributed to and in most cases already paid for with pasture grazing fees.
It is time for our provincial government to grasp the benefits of an existing system for the sustainability of our agriculture cattle industry.
Bryce Burnett,
Swift Current, Sask.
