FARMERS ABOVE INDUSTRY
With the elections for the new wheat and barley commissions looming, I decided to give all of the candidate biographies a read. I noticed an interesting contrast.
There are many candidates for both commissions that are very clear about where they stand on the important issues of maintaining public plant breeding and ensuring farmers maintain the right to save their seed. Others fail to mention these crucial points and cloud their positions with ambiguous language and talking points.
These are farmer organizations, and those elected to serve should be putting farmers first. Some candidates seem very comfortable about cozying up further to the agri-business giants that make their billions off of farmers.
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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.
Others are clear in saying that farmers must come ahead of industry.
The privatization of Canadian agriculture is almost complete. We have no orderly marketing, no publicly owned facilities and the federal government has gutted the public plant breeding system.
These elections are a chance for those farmers who recognize the value of publicly funded research to make their voices heard and work to stop the destruction of a 100 year legacy of public plant breeding.
Do not let wheat and barley seed go the route of canola. Do not elect candidates that would like to see us paying exorbitant prices for seed that we cannot save to plant again the year after.
Read the candidate biographies closely and ensure that your votes go to candidates who will work to put farmers before industry.
Leo Howse,
Porcupine Plain, Sask.
NO TO GM RICE
Re: Greenpeace golden rice stance baffling (op-ed WP Oct. 31).
The rice in the photo with Patrick Moore’s opinion on genetically modified rice looks, to me, to be highly refined. I would think that anyone consuming it would not be getting any nutrients except maybe the claim of vitamin A in the GM.
I am on the side of Greenpeace and the billions of others who know we do not need this technology. With the release of this rice, how long will it take to contaminate the over 7,000 varieties with GM genes? Then who owns them?
We all know there are other ways to help the undernourished of the world.
Glow Lemon,
FARMER CONTROL?
Next month farmers of Saskatchewan will be electing people to represent them on the new provincial wheat and barley commissions. These commissions will be responsible for deciding who gets the money they collect from wheat and barley sales for plant breeding and market development.
The government claims these commissions will put farmers in control now that they have killed the farmer controlled single desk wheat board.
So it is really strange that the government-appointed chairpeople, Cherilyn Nagel Jolly and Bill Cooper, thought it was necessary to appoint a permanent executive director for both the barley and wheat groups before the elections.
Didn’t they think the newly elected directors could select their own executive director? Is the government putting their people in management now so that farmers are steered into giving wheat and barley research money to the agro-chemical seed companies?
Is this a backdoor way of both subsidizing these giant companies and making sure farmers cannot reuse their own saved seed?
As we have seen with canola, it would be a great way to increase farmers’ costs and maximize corporate profits.
It was also interesting that the person the government appointees picked came from the grain trade and was not from any the farm groups. Looks like they think contact with the industry is more important than contact with the farmers who supply the money. It will be interesting to see if these barley and wheat groups will really be under farmer control or simply be the puppets of the government and chemical companies.
Kyle Korneychuk,
Pelly, Sask.
NOTHING REALLY CHANGES
We have just mourned another Armistice Day, when so many wonderful, energetic, young people died. After the end of the Second World War, a huge number of the enemy emigrated to Canada and became excellent citizens. On looking back we discovered these were people just like ourselves.
Therefore, it raises the question why the people who start wars, but never pay with their own lives, should continue to remain in positions of power. It is obvious that this system is seriously flawed when history keeps on repeating itself in this way. Too many young people die needlessly, and there does not appear to be any light at the end of the tunnel because nothing really changes.
Jean H. Sloan,
BLIND SCIENTIFIC FAITH
I find interesting the recent articles and editorials in The Western Producer defending “science-based” advancements in farming and scorning consumer distrust of some farm products and practices.
If science is to be blindly followed, what about DDT, thalidomide, athletic steroids, etc.? Would the champions of scientific advancement give growth hormones to their children to help them grow faster and routine injections of antibiotics just in case they should be exposed to infection or disease?
In case you suspect me to be a member of some rabid animal rights group, rest assured, for I am a farmer. My beef cattle are grass fed. I work hard to raise healthy happy animals in a natural environment. I am not blindly organic. I do use antibiotics to treat a sick animal. I do immunize against common bovine diseases: blackleg, BRVD as examples. I do consult veterinarians and use science to help me on my farm.
But I do not eat beef that is routinely fed “safe” drugs, like growth hormones and prophylactic antibiotics because we are what we eat.
I hate to think that the pro-science, pro-chemical stance taken by editors and writers for The Western Producer is meant to promote the best interests of agri-businesses and chemical companies. It is small wonder there is a growing number of skeptical consumers out there.
How can farmers be seen in a positive light by the public, given some of the inhumane and dangerous practices being followed on the basis of “scientific” evidence? Think cages for laying hens, gestation stalls for sows, routine hormone and antibiotic injections for cattle.
There are countless people who know that industrial food is not necessarily good food, nor is it necessarily safe food, as science may well discover, years from now.
Norma Somers,
Birnie, Man.
