UNEARTHED
Notes from All Over
Bird bangers and beef-eating bishops
Agriculture may not be going to the dogs, but some farmers beg to differ.More and more misguided urban animal lovers are dropping off unwanted dogs in the countryside in the hopes that a soft-hearted farmer will take them in.
It doesn't always work out that way, reports one farmer in London fringe, who has encountered a growling dog in his barn. Another farmer reports finding two dogs swimming in his manure pit.
Birds are a constant menace for grape farmers, but earlier this
spring
Niagara grower Ken Clark encountered a flying critter larger than
most.
Returning from a luncheon break to resume pruning his vines,
Clark, 59,
was startled to find a single-engine plane where he had been
working,
reports the Sunday Sun.
The plane, a home-made machine built by 70-year-old pilot William
Mowat,
had crash landed into Clark's Grimsby-area vineyard after
suffering engine
failure.
The pilot emerged virtually unscathed, thanks to the pruning
wires that
cushioned the impact, the grower surmises.
Church leaders in Britain are battling over the role they should
play in
the national debate over the government's beef on the bone ban.
Since late last year, the Labour government in Britain has
forbidden
butchers from selling perennial consumer favourites such as
T-bone steaks
because of a slim chance that the marrow may contain some Bovine
Spongiform
Encephalopathy infectivity.
Thomas Butler, the Bishop of Leicester, a town about 150 km
northwest of
London, used a BBC radio show religious spot in early May to call
for the
beef on the bone ban to be lifted.
"I believe we should consider whether it is wise to continue with
a ban
which has also been another blow to a hard-pressed agricultural
industry,"
he said.
Butler has been taken to task for his comments by Michael
Marshall,
assistant bishop in the diocese of London, who has a somewhat
narrower view
of what religious leaders should speak out on.
"It ill-befits our spiritual leaders to squander both our
credibility as
well as our privileged opportunities on the media to speak out on
subjects
which are not within our remit," Marshall said. "Beef on the bone
does not
fall within the realm of applied theology, such as issues of
justice and
ethics most certainly do."
Ontario horticulture producers who look at their farm labour bill
and balk
should gaze west to California and be grateful.
Minimum wage in Ontario has been frozen at $6.85 an hour since
January
1995, up $1.45 from 1990, an increase many producers felt was too
rapid.
Meanwhile, California's minimum wage has increased by US$1.50 an
hour since
1991 to US$5.75.
But not all farmers are paying minimum wage, here or south of the
border.
"Almost no one is at minimum wage," says Rachel Elkins, a
University of
California farm adviser. Machine and non-machine workers for
horticultural
operations are earning an average of US$10.22 and US$8.06
respectively,
including social security, medical insurance and other benefits,
she says.
Those figures are based on the Sept. 1997 minimum wage of US$5.
With the
March 1998 increase factored in, a machine-operating farm worker
will earn
an average of $11 an hour, which at the current exchange rate is
$15.62 per
hour.
Farmers in Ontario are willing to pay $8 to $9 to keep quality
workers
coming back year after year. "Some of the wages are edging up,"
says Rudy
Masswohl, executive director of the St. Catharines Employment
Centre, which
oversees the Niagara Farm Labour Pool.
But while wages are going up, so are standards. As farmers
embrace more
technology, their need for workers with more technical skills
increases.
back
Farming by the Numbers
Canadian farm operators earned an average $38,203 in 1996, a 2.6
per cent
increase over 1995, according to the latest numbers released by
Statistics
Canada. But 52.5 per cent of earnings came off-farm.
Here's some detail:
- Average total income was composed of $20,070 in off-farm income and $18,133 in net farm operating income
- Alberta farm operators posted the highest average total income - $42,049
- Manitoba farm operators registered the lowest total income - $30,210
- Potato farmers had the highest average total income - $60,608
- Potato farmers also had the largest net farm operating income - $38,411
- Dairy farmers averaged the lowest off-farm income - $9,045
back