I play a little online video game. It’s one of those “freemium” games. That means you can play it for free, but you can buy stuff that makes it more fun from their online “shop.”
This is a tank battle game, and one of the premium offers right now is for the Type 62 Dragon – a funky Chinese light tank. An in-game ad message I received said it was going to be available for $24.99. So I checked it out. Actually $34.99. Oops! Looks like the ad didn’t include the conversion into Loonies. That sucks, because $34.99 is a lot more than $24.99.
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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.
The currency issue seems to intrude into everything these days, from the price of vegetables (remember the brief furore over cauliflower?) to the cost of vacations to the offers inside online video games.
Obviously Canadian farming and agriculture is more profoundly affected than almost anything else. Our farmers and industry exports most of what it produces, and everything outside of supply management has prices based off world prices, which are set in U.S. dollars. While U.S. farmers have seen their crop prices slump compared to their debts, Canadians have seen flat prices that are liveable.
It’s an OK year for most farmers. It’s not good but not terrible.
I wonder if that’s what’s behind the general issuelessness I’m finding as I cover the usual slew of winter farm conferences. There is an odd lack of a Big Issue this year, and no one seems too wound-up about anything. It’s not a year of “sky’s the limit” euphoria, as in the boom years, and it’s not a year of “it’s a disaster” despair, as in a year of critically low prices.
It’s also not a year when some system crisis gets everybody outraged, as with the railways disaster three years ago. The CWB seems long gone and lots of the transitional issues have been sorted, it seems. Instead of a Big Issue, there seems to be a lot of sensible, restrained housekeeping going on in the industry. Lots of issues are being managed and farmers and industry people are working on lots of stuff, but without euphoria or despair to escalate emotions, everything is very restrained.
I saw that a Manitoba Ag Days two weeks ago, and saw it at the Keystone Agricultural Producers annual convention last week. Lots of stuff is being discussed, but nothing is that contentious. (It’s different in Alberta right now with Bill 6, but I’m referring in this post to the general Prairie grain industry.)
A couple of fellow reporters and I laughed about how challenging our jobs were this winter, with few raging debates and arguments to cover. Usually a few of those break out at KAP, with farmers splitting over some Big Issue, but this year everything was quietly constructive. Issues were sensibly discussed and most farmers seemed to be in agreement.
I’m not complaining here. I’m not looking for controversy for the sake of controversy. But it certainly does feel unusual, and once more perhaps we should thank the currency conversion issue for taking some pressure off our farmers. U.S. farmers are having a lot more trouble dealing with their debts this year, so we’ve escaped that Big Issue arising.
I’ll hope the rest of Meeting Season goes along relatively issueless and that farmers can spend all their time and attention getting ready to grow the next crop.
But I sure wish those online tanks cost less. That’s my Big Issue.
