OPINION
Trade development cut is short-sighted
The federal budget is a case of smoke and mirrors. Underlying the faŤade is a cut from $2.1 billion in 1994-95 to $1.6 billion in 1998-99 in the budget of Agriculture and AgriFood Canada-a 25 per cent decrease.Included is a 13-per-cent cut in trade and market development. Yet Canada is anxious to reach a $20-billion level for agriculture and agrifood exports.
The budget notes that exports to China in 1995 are estimated to increase 80 per cent. But the Chinese government has imposed high tariffs on North American ginseng. Small wonder that unofficial estimates of the amount of unsold 1995 ginseng approaches one million pounds in Ontario.
Tobacco sales into China this year are off sharply, contributing largely to uneven Ontario auction demand. No buyer wants to hold inventory as the June 30,1997, transfer of Hong Kong to China looms. And it's difficult to ship product into an area where the Chinese government is lobbing missiles over your head on the way into local harbours.
Where is the federal government while Spain and Italy get lavish export subsidies on their tobacco but Ontario leaf is kept from competing in the European Union by the Lome agreement? The Lome agreement uses a high tariff wall to keep out equivalent-quality chemically-cleaner Ontario leaf.
Also in the budget, the federal government confirmed its commitment to sell its fleet of 13,000 grain hopper cars. To minimize the cost impact on producers, the average freight rate increase will be limited to 75 cents per tonne effective Aug. 1, 1998. Wrong again-What if you have a rail line that hasn't been abandoned? What are the chances of a fair distribution of rail cars for Ontario? Likely about as good as getting our fair share of safety nets and crop insurance reform. This proposal has more to do with rail privatization and government revenues than a desire to help Ontario farmers.
The budget also highlights the creation of a single food inspection agency for federally mandated quarantine and inspection services which will save $33 million starting in 1998. Considering the mess from the strike in Ontario, maybe they should consider restructuring this area as well. Whether this will result in a turf war between Agriculture Canada and Health Canada, with agriculture losing, only time will tell.
Finally, the budget set aside $300,000 per year for four years for 4-H programs. The last thing the feds or the province wants to do is foster and finance new farm leadership.
Hugh Zimmer grows corn and tobacco in Oxford county.
Canada is rudderless
Let's hope the spin doctors at Finance Canada realize the budget speech they wrote for Minister Paul Martin reveals them for what they are: a rudderless crew on a sea of fiscal incompetence. How else could taxpayers look at the incongruous provisions which seem both to prescribe regulation of spending and revenue while deciding social policies?The government was so proud of itself that Industry Minister John Manley dashed off the following day to New York to tell the financiers and bond traders that Canada will have a deficit of only $32.7 billion this year and $24.3 billion next year. Other cabinet ministers have fanned out across Canada to tell business leaders and others about the 'good news' budget. Is it good news that the country has a total debt this year of $600 billion and no plans to pay off this burden? And that despite cuts in programs and reduced income tax deductions, the government will only 'balance' income and expenditures by 1999-2000? Canada may look better compared to other G7 nations but if we include the provincial debts, Canada's total government deficit will fall just below the average for the G7.
From an agricultural perspective, it would be easy to say that the money saved from the elimination of the dairy subsidy plus the reduced spending on agricultural research and other programs will end up subsidizing something else - say, the $600-million subsidy to the profitable technology industry announced in the budget. The $400 million sale of the grain hopper rail cars, plus the other cuts to agriculture, would add up to $600 million. It was not a question of need but politics which swayed the government - where were our great defenders?
Our American neighbours dislike agricultural subsidies in any form, so we capitulate. Meanwhile, subsidies to so-called private corporations amount to $1.5 billion each year. Another form of corporate subsidy has come to light in information from Revenue Canada: large corporations had underpaid on their corporate taxes by $1.8 billion in 1994-95; and small and mid-size enterprises underpaid on income tax by $711 million and an additional $514 million in GST. About 2,700 large corporations with incomes more than $15 million were audited in 1994-95. Each file on a company generated $689,000 on average in new tax revenue. Income tax has always been based on the honour system; this appears to have been ignored, despite the fact that corporations employ well-known audit companies to prepare or at least check the income tax statements. In addition, the Export Development Corporation and the Business Development Bank received equity injections of $50 million, presumably to cover loan losses, including exports.
Farm leaders have done a good job of carrying the message on the state of agriculture but politicians don't have the will to recognize the special place needed for farmers in the nation's economy. Sitting around the Cabinet table, farmers have only a lawyer with no knowledge of general agriculture as agriculture minister, and the former mayor of Toronto as international trade minister. Farmers have not had a knowledgeable and forceful minister since Eugene Whelan. The Liberal government has no effective opposition and the voting public has no other choice in elections. The agricultural industry has been in the forefront of innovation through research, but farmers will soon have to rely on other nations for knowledge.
Keith Matthie is an apple grower from Prince Edward county.
Hiding in my morning mail: a column
I had intended to write this column on leadership and change, but as I sat down, the mail arrived. Two items caught my attention: one from the George Morris Centre and the other from the local Agricultural Employment Services (AES) manager. The envelope from the George Morris Centre contained a copy of the current newsletter, with coming publications listed on the back page. I can't wait to read these papers. The George Morris Centre is the best-kept secret in Canadian agriculture. Here is a group of people bringing to the agricultural community the latest in business thinking as it applies to agriculture. Why is their reading list not on the desk of every farm or agri-food business owner and agri-food policy maker in the country?The papers don't delve into the usual 'tech transfer'. There isn't information on rates of application, yield per acre, microbial activity in the rumen or number of piglets weaned per litter. Instead, the reader will discover the kind of thinking that is keeping business competitive and changing the shape of business and business structures in the western world today.
In agriculture we all too often say we are somehow different from other business or manufacturing activities. In some respects we are, but we delude ourselves if we think that the economic forces at work in the world today are not going to affect us. In this respect, we are no different from any other business, and we must apply the same rules to ourselves. To remain competitive, we must arm ourselves with the latest thinking and ideas. The George Morris Centre is providing us with the tools. It is up to us to use them.
The other envelope from the local AES contained a copy of "The LAST Newsletter", outlining the final activities at the employment office and how clients could access service in future.
The AES offered an excellent product for employer and employee alike and will be greatly missed in the rural community. It's unlikely that Canadian Employment Centres will be able to provide the same quality of specialized service. It is a pity that the service could not be revamped under a new partnership and structure.
But the good news was that the two staff members from the local AES have identified an opportunity in the agricultural employment sector. As of April 1, they will have their own, private sector, agriculture job listing and clearing house, as well as employment consulting service. Two highly qualified individuals prepared to make a difference.
I wish them the best and congratulate them on their initiative. Change was not of their doing, but they have looked upon it as an opportunity and not a threat. Something to remember.
Virginia McLaughlin farms in York Region.By DON STONEMAN
With calf prices down, cow herd operators must wonder whether it's worth the grief of dealing with dystocias and trying to raise calves through bitter February, March and April days.New Liskeard-based beef researcher Tom Hamilton wonders wether it's worth the grief too, especially when he sees the results from summer calving studies at the beef research station there.
Results from several years of comparing summer and spring calving at New Liskeard show a dramatic reduction in birth assistance required for summer-calved heifers and cows; 16.7 per cent for first-calf heifers in summer, compared to 60 per cent for spring-calving heifers at New Liskeard. And mature cows showed a similar pattern, with four times as many requiring help calving in the barn in winter compared with the summer.
Hamilton cites several reasons for the difference. One is that birth weights were lower in the summer, an average of seven pounds, which he calls a significant drop. And cows walking on pasture were likely in better muscular condition than those confined to the barn or a feeding yard.
But there's another factor to be considered, and that comes down to plain old management.
The cows in the New Liskeard barn are checked every hour, "a very unnatural situation." And he quips, "Presumably cows don't feel like calving because people keep bugging them." The other factor is that there is a much greater opportunity to assist calving in the barn.
Yet another factor that may be involved is a possible relationship between day length and hormonal levels that might help cows to calve more easily in the summer.
There were also big differences in the calf treatment rate: 32.6 per cent in the winter-born calves and 8.6 per cent in the summer calves, with virtually identical survival rates. There aren't too many bugs and viruses around in the summer when calves and their mothers are scattered across the pasture, Hamilton says.
"We had a lot less management and labour" on the summer born calves.
His conclusion: "either cows were calving easier outside or we were helping more often than we had to."
Cows in the summer were calved between June 15 and July 30 on a 20 to 25 acre paddock.
But he says that summer calving isn't all easy. "We have to be better with grazing management or a cow will hide the calf" and it won't get its eartag and selenium shot.
Different calving systems also mean a different marketing system. Winter-born calves are sold in September or October to southern Ontario feedlots. Summer-born calves stay on the mother until the following June. They get good forage over the winter, and in the summer, the New Liskeard calves are sold as long yearlings for research. Revenue goes into a trust fund run by the Ontario Cattlemen's Association to fund industry research.
Whether these calves are as profitable in the real world is another question. At 200 days of age, Hamilton notes, the summer group weighs 50 pounds less than the winter group. "We need more research before we can evangelize," he says. Still, he says, it begs the question: "Are we ranchers or are we nursemaids?" This may become more critical, he says, when there are hundreds of cows to worry about instead of dozens needed to make a living.
Another project at New Liskeard is to breed smaller cows into the herd there. What now amounts to the traditional herd at New Liskeard averages between 1,600 and 2,000 pounds mature weight. Formerly, they were bred at 850 pounds to big Char Limousin bulls. Now there is a red Angus in the breeding program.
The next generation weighs only about 1,400 pounds. Two-year-olds calve out at 1,100 to 1,200 pounds, 80 to 90 per cent of their mature weight.
Yearlings grow faster
Feeding practices have a definite effect on carcass size of the offspring of large-frame crossbred cows bred to exotic bulls, says researcher Tom Hamilton. The research was carried out with cow and calf pairs raised at the New Liskeard research station, and calves were fed to finish at the beef facility at Ridgetown agriculture college.Calves born in February and March were pastured with their mothers from June through September and placed in a feedlot after weaning. They were called System One calves in this experiment.
System Two calves were born on pasture in June and July, with calves nursing their mothers for the rest of the pasture season and in confinement until January. The weaned calves are backgrounded on forage pasture during the next summer and put in a feedlot as yearlings.
Genetics of both groups is virtually the same, Hamilton says. Calves were fed out at Ridgetown agriculture college on a growing ration of corn grain at one per cent of body weight, plus free-choice corn silage for 100 days, then the grain ration was increased to two per cent of body weight.
Yearlings were fed a dry whole-shelled corn ration, and both rations were supplemented with protein and minerals to meet National Research Council guidelines. Both groups of cattle were slaughtered at a commercial abattoir when back fat was estimated to be seven millimetres (mm).
Feedlot gains averaged 3.8 pounds per day for both groups, even though yearlings got more energy. Yearlings finished at an average 129 pounds more live weight than calves, with 62-pound heavier carcasses.
Dressing percentages and ribeye area were no different but calves had 1.39 mm more of backfat. Yearlings had a higher estimated retail yield of 1.1 per cent.-DS