EDITORIAL
Take a stake in your future
It's an appropriate time for farmers to consider the state of agricultural leadership. A new provincial minister of agriculture, Ernie Hardeman, is about to head out on the concessions to take the pulse of Ontario agriculture. Speaking at the Pork Congress's kick-off black tie dinner last month - his first official function as a cabinet member - he made clear the government's agricultural vision: Create an environment for fostering even closer ties among farm producers, processors and suppliers to further the development of agri-business. (See page 6)The Farmers of Ontario lobby made clear its vision of the future to former minister Noble Villeneuve in March, outlining five areas Ontario Agricultural Commodity Council president and co-chair of the industry lobby Wayne Newman called "equally important for the future of agriculture": risk management, research and technology transfer, food safety, environment and market development.
Telling signs of the new minister's and government's concurrence with a key component of that agenda - risk management - should come out of this week's meeting of the provincial agriculture ministers in Saskatchewan.
The federal government has put off truly dealing with a new national safety nets policy that brings NISA and various provincial programs under one umbrella. The result has been willy-nilly response to emergencies, with cash poured as the crises have occurred. Witness last month's emergency relief announcement by federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief, responding primarily to weather woes on the Prairies, enhancing minimum income triggers for NISA and advancing 1999 AIDA payments. The money may eventually get there but only after confounding paperwork, according to many farmers. Imagine if the process and programs were forward-thinking, detailed, easily accessed.
Farmers deserve better, and they will get it when they insist that their case be made vocally and persistently to government and the public from their elected representatives, in government and in the farm organizations to which many pay dues.
Elsewhere in these pages, there's lament for days when that seemed to be delivered by the likes of Eugene Whelan. Past OFA president Harry Pelissero commends Whelan for loudly ensuring farmers' interests were front and centre in both public and cabinet (page 46) after John Turner dumped him as ag minister in 1984.
And another past OFA president, Gordon Hill, weighs in with comments (page 13) about a seeming lack of outrage on many issues that directly impact farmers' livelihoods.
Ask yourself if your views and needs are adequately presented. Take a stake in your future by speaking for yourself if no else is.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Disgruntled Whelan hanging up his hat
Officially next Sunday, but practically any day now, Parliament Hill will lose one of its true characters. And the farm community will lose one of its strongest advocates inside this Liberal government.On July 11, Eugene Whelan turns 75 and loses his Senate seat. Let it be said he is going neither willingly nor happily.
The long-time agriculture minister clearly is disgruntled. For one thing, Whelan is losing the podium from which to argue his causes.
The one-time Senate abolitionist has become one of its ardent defenders since his friend Jean Chrétien appointed him three years ago and he discovered a new soapbox.
But Whelan's angst clearly runs deeper than being forced out of the spotlight. He comes across as an old man forced to watch as most of his life's accomplishments are challenged, eroded or undone, often by people he thought were allies.
He has been a sharp critic of Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief's tepid attempts at farm aid.
In the Senate, Whelan employed his traditional distrust of American capital ists when he joined with others to fight against Monsanto's bid to have a dairy growth hormone licensed for sale. They won, but even he seems to sense it was short term.
Monsanto has more staying power than a temporary Senator. In April, he mused about the inevitable return of Monsanto's application for bovine somatotropin. "I ask my colleagues [in the Senate] who are lucky enough to have terms stretching into the 21st century not to let it happen," he said.
"There is no need for the approval of this hormone." He did not sound hopeful.
Meanwhile, Whelan watches his old cabinet buddy Chrétien adopt most of the policies of the hated Conservatives, from free trade to deficit obsession and the GST.
He sees the trade liberalization agenda of the bureaucrats he fought so hard against coming to the fore.
After a near-death experience last year, Whelan said God saved him so he could be a conscience for the Chrétien government. Considering the gap between Whelan's liberalism and Chrétien's conservatism, it is a wasted conscience. Then there is Whelan's beloved supply management.
In light of the government's adherence to the free trade ideology and its demand for an end to trade barriers, even this committed Liberal realizes the Chrétien Liberals are setting the stage to bargain away the tariff protections marketing boards need.
He voiced his fears during a poignant speech in the Senate in May, one of his last. He said the World Trade Organization, with its devotion to free trade principles and its subservience to American ideology, is an enemy of Canadian orderly marketing that has served dairy, poultry and Prairie grain farmers so well.
The loyal Chrétien lieutenant even raised a question about the credibility of his own government. "On the one hand, we are committed to protect supply management in the Canadian dairy industry, but on the other hand we are committed to the WTO and the U.S. version of trade liberalization," Whelan lamented.
"We need to ask ourselves what kind of real, concrete protection we can offer to our dairy industry against the United States of America. We should also be asking ourselves some serious questions about the WTO. We need to have the answers to these questions before we go into the next round of negotiations."
The only question the Chrétien government will ask, of course, is how far and how fast can it go to break down trade barriers.
The official line is that Canada wants free trade for others, but since all other countries have sensitive sectors and trade barriers, Canada is safe to push hard knowing others will resist.
Whelan, wily veteran negotiator that he is, can see the fallacy in that. Freer trade inevitably means an open border for Canada's protected sectors, brought to you by the Liberal Party he has spent most of his life defending and promoting.
No wonder he seems unhappy on the eve of his retirement.
Barry Wilson is an Ottawa-based farm Journalist
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
Finding a holiday that fits
Not long ago, I ran into Maryanne in the grocery store. Congratulating her on the second Master Breeder Shield awarded to the McDougall family by Holstein Canada, I asked her how the trip to the Halifax convention had gone."You know, I didn't realize how tired I was until I got away," she replied. After some major herd health problems this spring, she said she could hardly bring herself to leave the farm. Her husband, Paul, stayed home from the award presentation, even though it's the crowning glory in a lifetime of breeding excellence for Dougall Lea Holsteins.
The tiredness Maryanne spoke of is an all-too-common condition for farmers and their families today. One dairyman says his son would like to see a new wing on the dairy barn, an expansion he doesn't want because he's "getting tired out."
Another farm friend has seen the beginning of lots of great movies - he just can't stay awake long enough to see the endings.
When your business is in your back yard, the work, worries and stress are always right in front of you. And when that business means your livelihood, there's no turning it off.
For 10 years my husband Neil and I were like most farmers. We wouldn't even think of taking a milking off, except for the holidays I took in the maternity ward.
There were day trips up country for tractor parts and short outings from which we sped home for chores. Our kids, too, were tied to this routine, and it may have been worse for them: Too young to grasp the importance of getting the work done in order to achieve some sort of profit margin, they had no choice but to accept that their parents' attentions had to be divided between them and any job at hand.
But we've been lucky. We've realized there is life beyond milking cows, beyond the farm. When one of my brothers bought a cottage in northern Ontario, he and another brother included our children in some family vacations. It meant quality time with their relatives - oft-embellished fish stories notwithstanding. Those special times are the stuff that their memories will be made of.
Then came our chance. My brother, Larry, offered to stay at our place and do the chores so we could go to the cottage. We had every confidence in him, for he'd sold his own dairy farm after 12 years in the business. After a couple of days we were even able to sleep in past milking time, lulled into a blissful state of rest and relaxation by the calls of the loons and our childrens' laughter.
However, when my brother sold his cottage last year, we almost resigned ourselves to future summers with no idyllic getaways up north - until we found a rental cottage at the marina north of Parry Sound where my brother's cottage had been.
Still, for those who figure day trips are all they can manage, our vet has a solution: Set up camp at the local conservation area. The family can enjoy a holiday and someone can drive back and forth for chores, making the most of the campsite the rest of the time.
A holiday can fit into any type of farm or budget. For fruit and cash crops, winter may be the time; in our own case, the oats and straw are stored away before we go. Sometimes a night or two is all you can manage, and a change, for all that, is as good as a rest. Perhaps there's someone with a camper who'd be happy just to see it being used. Maybe there's a retired farmer who's looking for a short spell of chores to do to pass the time. Good help is hard to find, so when you come across it, take care of them to keep them coming back. (Personally, I've found a cherry pie can work wonders!) You never know when a family emergency will come up, making that experienced person in the wings worth their weight in gold.
To make it easier while we're gone, we use livestock markers to indicate dry or treated cows, as well as the number of scoops of grain required.
Phone numbers for the feed and fuel companies and vet should be handy, along with the number where you can be reached.
And remember, when selecting a location, word of mouth is best. Here on the farm, I am constantly struck by the team-work. Children are an important part of that team, through co-operation, physical work, even message taking. As Neil and I have seen, they also grow up in the blink of an eye. Don't wait until it's too late to show them just how important family and fun are on the road of life. The work will always be there.
Margaret Comfort partners a family dairy farm near St. Catharines© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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LETTER FROM EUROPE
By Norman Dunn
New EU puts squeeze on land prices
I often thought in the past that farmers living along the borders of European countries - especially in the lower Rhine area where you have four countries all within less than an hour's drive from one another - were in a really great position.Crop spray, for instance, is generally cheapest in Luxembourg. Buy a combine at Belgian prices and you're saving up to 30 per cent on Holland's and France's prices. And just now, diesel is around 20 per cent cheaper in Germany - 90 cents per litre - than in neighbouring countries. There are catches, mind you. Try, for instance, getting a Belgian-bought combine repaired under warranty at your local dealers in Germany. European Union law stipulates that there should be no service difficulties in cases like this. The reality often means that instead of a point blank refusal you get told that the workshop can't fit your combine in for another five weeks.
But the theoretical, and quite often practical, benefits of international shopping still remain for farmers in this region. The gains here, however, are insignificant compared with the disadvantages being showered on regions like these due to new, more cosmopolitan, EU policies. Internal borders are falling away and this has brought the once-quiet border areas slap bang into the new millennium.
One development that's really piling on the pressure is the trend to better inter-EU communications. The race is on now to have high-speed rail links between the main population centres. This means new links stretching from Berlin to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. These are being bulldozed across the border regions at the moment. Whole farms are disappearing. Land values are shooting sky-high as dispossessed families shop around with bulging pockets for alternative land in the same area.
Being right in the middle of an ever-more united Europe means these borderlands have suddenly become attractive for hi-tech industries.
Factories are springing up in once-sleepy farming villages that find themselves equidistant between Paris and Berlin or Brussels and Frankfurt.
With the factories come extra housing and more land-grabbing transport infrastructure.
A farming friend was in the Belgian/German/Dutch border area a few weeks ago. "The people there have stopped being farmers in many cases," he told me. "Their lands are now often criss-crossed by new roads and railways.
Ironically, they'll only be able to stand and watch the high-speed intercontinental trains hurtling by, as there are no plans to built passenger stops in the area.
Land has become so valuable for development that they're farming assets instead of fields.
Making the farmland scarcity even worse is the new EU environmental protection policy, which basically insists that for every acre of countryside sold for development another acre must be reserved as a protected nature area.
The resultant land scarcity means that in many cases long-term agricultural planning has more or less gone out the window. "There are families who are desperately trying to scrape up enough capital to buy a few more staggeringly expensive fields to make up for land they've lost to development. On the other hand, there are many more who have just given up and are holding out for the highest price before moving out."
Average farmland prices on the Belgian border just now are running between C$18,700 and $ 21,500 per acre.
Main targets for the border-land migration, which is expected to get much worse in the next few years, are the still reasonably priced (for Europe) lands of eastern Germany and, further to the east, countries like Poland and Hungary, where an acre sells for around C$2,500.
I know these border areas and remember how, only 10 years ago now, many young farming families complained to me that they were living and working in a backwater. Where Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and Germany meet, you don't hear complaints like that any more!
Norman Dunn is Farm & Country's European correspondent, based in Germany
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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