Ontario Hydro continues to be the target of complaints from the province's farmers, who cite unreasonably high costs and potentially dangerous operating practices.
At the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) board of directors meeting in Toronto mid-March, members passed three separate resolutions aimed at lobbying for fairer treatment for farmers from Ontario Hydro. Specifically, the OFA wants the corporation to re-evaluate changes to its pricing structure, increases to service charges on small use services, and its standard for the maximum allowable level for stray or 'tingle' voltage.
Recent changes to Ontario Hydro's billing practices allow farmers to apply the Rural Rate Assistance plan only to those meters on their property which service a residence. That means Ontario's farmers who need separate meters for drainage pumps, irrigation or other operations can expect a significant increase in their electricity bills. Also, many farmers complain that Ontario Hydro's service charges for small users have increased unreasonably - sometimes 300 to 400 per cent. OFA vice-president Ed Segsworth has arranged for a representative from Ontario Hydro to be present at the April board meeting, and urges board members to attend with bills of their own that demonstrate the cost increases.
Rising costs, however, may be the least of some dairy and cattle producers' electrical worries. Stray voltage - current sometimes present between two electrical sources - is believed responsible for behavioural and hormonal changes in cows which lead to decreased milk production and even, in extreme cases, animal death. There's no official industry standard for stray voltage, but Ontario Hydro considers 10 volts the maximum safe level. Several studies, however, have suggested that even that amount of voltage is much too high. The OFA board voted to lobby the provincial government to establish the maximum allowable level for stray voltage at 0.5 volts.
The sooner such a standard is adopted, said Dundas farmer Max Sabey, the better.
"There have been farmers who have lost not just their milk, but their cattle," due to stray voltage, he said.
Segsworth agreed, saying that at least one Ontario farmer is facing seizure of his assets due to lost revenue - the cause of which is believed to be stray voltage. And Ontario Hydro, said Segsworth, has been dragging its heels in assessing the situation.
"There has been some study of the problem by Ontario Hydro, but the results haven't come out yet," he said. "Farmers need those results."
By BARBARA HENDERSON, Special to Farm & Country
As the effects of Market Value Assessment (MVA) reverberate throughout the Niagara region, Niagara's farm-based wineries find themselves among the hardest hit. MVA, coupled with a change in tax classification from agricultural to industrial, has devastated local wineries.
Vineland's Lakeview Cellars Estate Winery spokesman, Eddie Gurinkas, says "All farm-based wineries were hit, but we were hit the hardest." The evaluation on the 15,000-square-foot winery jumped 1,500 per cent - 15 times last year's rate, for an increase of $9,000 in property taxes. "We're in a competitive business. In an operation our size, that means raising the price of wine by $3 per case," says Gurinkas.
"Changing the classification of the winery from agricultural to industrial has really hurt," says Henry of Pelham spokesman Paul Speck. "The government wants to stop subsidizing agriculture, but at the same time, we are being penalized at a huge rate - 300 per cent over 1995 rates - for making a value-added product on the farm."
With the change in tax classification from agricultural to industrial-commercial, Allan Schmitt, general manager and wine maker for Vineland Estates Winery, says the new assessment has increased by 800 per cent. "This will dramatically affect our business. We are a farm. We use our own grapes and we produce a value-added farm product," says Schmitt.
Speaking on behalf of his client, DeSousa Wine Cellars, Pat Luciani, National Valuation Services, says taxes are up close to 200 per cent, or approximately $10,000 from last year on the winery portion alone. "The wineries have been wrongly assessed under industrial," Luciani says. The industrial rating is the highest possible rate at 9.8, commercial is 5.4 and residential is 3.4, he says. The company is planning to appeal and hopes, through the Wine Council of Ontario, to have the wineries assessed in a class specific to wineries.
It's been suggested the wineries have an 'agri-tourism' classification at a special rate. "Eventually, the legislators have to see the light of day. They have to put the wineries in a separate classification," says Luciani.
Located on the Niagara Escarpment, Vineland Estates Winery and DeSousa Wine Cellars are in a peculiar position. Their land falls under control of the Niagara Escarpment Commission. Under the commission regulations, the land must remain as farmland and cannot be classed as industrial-commercial. "They limit the use of the land. We have to maintain it as a farm, yet they are taxing us as industrial-commercial," says Schmitt. "We're a model for tourism and agricultural land preservation, and yet we are penalized for doing so." The wineries are appealing the assessment change.
Animal rights on the rise
Animals rights extremism is growing in Ontario, and one of its
prime targets is livestock farming.
Leslie Ballentine, executive director of the Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC), told the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) board of directors meeting in Toronto mid-March that the province's livestock farmers need to be prepared for increased resistance from highly-organized, well-funded animals rights groups establishing themselves in Ontario.
Activists are moving to rural areas, she said, and while the current 'hotspots' for animal rights extremism are Wellington and Waterloo counties, the movement could heat up elsewhere in the province.
Especially alarming, said Ballentine, are recent changes to the by-laws of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), which could allow animal rights activists to become board members and inspectors. Potential abuses of such power, she said, could include charging farmers who perform such routine practices as dehorning.
OFA president Tony Morris agreed that the threat posed by extremists is a real one. "It's a stated goal of activists to go after livestock farmers," he said.
OFAC, which has previously helped members deal with animal rights issues on an ad hoc basis, is in the process of making a more concerted effort to deal with the upsurge in extremism. Ballentine said farmers' best protection, however, is to become as organized as their opponents.
"Producers should take an active role in local Humane Societies and the SPCA, because animal rights activists already are," she said. "Agriculturalists need to present their point of view." - SO
Big cats bring big bucks for lynx farmer
By DARLENE POLACHIC, Special to Farm & Country
Russell Hanson farms two quarters near Domremy, 100 miles
northeast of Saskatoon, Sask. He grows some barley, as well as
grass, hay and alfalfa to feed his 150 head of cattle. Until
a few years ago, the Hansons also had a large hog operation,
but a serious back injury forced him to look for an
interesting, but less physically demanding diversification. He
certainly found it.Russell Hanson raises lynxes. Of about 40 animals, one is a Siberian lynx that will grow to weigh 80 pounds, the size of a large German shepherd dog; the others are the smaller Canadian variety which will weigh 45 to 50 pounds fully grown. Most of the cats are kept in large metal enclosures outside and remain wild.
Fluffy and Tuffy, both Canadian lynx, and Duke, a Siberian lynx, however, were bottle fed and house trained. They don't spend all their time indoors because they can't tolerate the heat for long with their heavy coats, Hanson says. But the litter-trained one-year-olds are as tame and friendly as any domestic house cat and just as rambunctious as any kitten, he says. But with one difference: In one leap after a tennis ball toy, they can clear the length of an average living room.
Both species of lynx have the characteristic black tufts on the ears and spotted coats, though the Siberian tends to be quite silvery in winter. Hanson's first Siberian lynx was purchased as a kitten from a zoo in Europe. The Canadian lynxes came from a breeder in Fort Vermillion, Alberta.
Why lynxes? "I've always liked big cats," says Hanson, "and thought a lot about trying to raise them. A number of breeders I've heard of had poor success, but I think it was probably due to poor diet."
In the wild, lynxes feed on bush rabbits and deer. Hanson's cats eat about 1.5 pounds of chicken a day. The Hansons grind the chickens up, feathers and all, in a commercial-sized meat grinder, says Eileen Hanson. Her husband buys around 15,000 old hens a year. They keep about 7,000 in a walk-in freezer. Fluffy, Tuffy and Duke were taken from their mothers at about one week and bottle fed. Commercial cat milk replacer kills lynx kittens, so Hanson had to come up with a substitute - milk replacer, blended with yogurt and various vitamins fed every 2.5 hours. "With eight kittens feeding every 2.5 hours, it was round-the-clock feeding for a while," Hanson says.
After two or three months, the kittens were put outside in a large cage. "They're very hardy," Hanson says. "Lynxes are cold weather animals so they don't need much in the way of shelter. We have good pens that are considerably larger than the legal fur farm requirements."
Lynxes tend to have good temperaments, he says. They don't fight a lot. They train to leash like a dog, and ride contentedly in a vehicle, as the Hansons discovered when they took the cats to visit school classrooms and nursing homes. "They're much like house cats - fairly affectionate. Like any other cat, the lynx is content simply to eat and sleep. In the wild, it travels around because it has to hunt to survive, but it's not really free. It must constantly sleep with one eye open. My lynxes are well fed, and they can sleep soundly with both eyes closed."
When it comes to market demand for his cats, Hanson says he has quite a few on order. One pair went to the Forestry Farm in Saskatoon, and another was purchased recently by a woman in Ottawa. "Ontario is a wide open market," he says. "There, lynxes can be kept as pets even in the city. In Saskatchewan, only someone with a fur farm licence can keep them on his property."
Hanson gets about $1,500 for one hand-raised Canadian lynx. Kittens raised by their mothers sell for $500 a piece. The Siberian lynx is more rare and valuable and can sell for around $2,000.
Hanson has plans to diversify further into exotic animals. Besides the pair of bobcats he'll be getting this summer, he also breeds wolverines, a member of the weasel family. "Wolverines are very rare and hard to get," he says. "There are as few as three for every 1,000 square miles of wilderness. Bred in captivity, they can bring as much as US$20,000 apiece. There's a big demand because movie producers are willing to pay as high as $5,000 a day to rent them." Hanson has seven wolverines; he recently sold two to a Montana wildlife photographer for $14,000.
Hometown back on the info highway
By ROBERT IRWIN
The information highway closed for Hometown users last December, but the community-based information network has now reopened in the London area. "We're essentially rising from the ashes," explains Bert Meerveld, who handles Hometown's information services.
He says Woodstock and Tillsonburg-area customers were back on line last month. Plans to connect Stratford and the west Elgin area around Rodney are well advanced.
Hometown was launched two years ago as a non-profit corporation to provide affordable electronic communication for a five-county area in western Ontario. It has received substantial support from government and community groups since its initial business plan was released in August, 1994.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture has provided major funding and county federations from Huron, Oxford, Middlesex, Elgin and Perth also contributed.
Financial constraints forced cancellation of toll-free calling last fall. The latest crisis began when Hometown couldn't get additional telephone lines quickly enough from their Internet service provider, Intercom.
Meerveld says things deteriorated and a lawsuit was launched when Intercom wouldn't hand over Hometown's costly Spark 5 server and four-gigabyte external drive. Hometown officials believed the equipment was being used for other Intercom business without permission. A server is a computer which links other computers.
Hometown president Patricia Greig finally negotiated a settlement with Intercom and the server was returned after about a month. The group now has a direct link with the Internet and won't be dependent on Internet service providers in future.
Hometown boasts a growing membership of about 650. Subscribers pay $60 per year for basic Internet access.
Meerveld says this doesn't provide the colourful graphics available on the World Wide Web but is perfect for users with old equipment. "If they have a Commodore 64 and a 2,400-baud modem they can get the Internet."
The new setup will eventually feature full graphics. Fees will be a modest $20 per month for 40 hours. Overtime will cost 50 cents per hour. All necessary software is provided free.
As part of its mandate to connect all areas in the community, Hometown also offers free service to anyone for one half hour per day. People who don't own a computer can use Hometown through many area library computers which are also free. No account is required for free use. Users simply log on as 'guest', and then type 'Hometown' as a password.
The service features electronic newsletters for area service clubs and the five supporting county federations of agriculture. It will soon become the World Wide Web home for the five county federations as well.
Meerveld says the decision to resurrect Hometown came after some, "pretty hot debates" at director meetings. "We realized that we were all attuned to the vision and that we have a good thing going here."
Canada Employment Centres in Woodstock and Tillsonburg have provided badly needed funding.
Meerveld says commercial Internet providers which compete in Hometown's area aren't interested in reaching the remote, low-volume areas where many farmers live.
U.S. margarine still not spreading
Little U.S. margarine is crossing the border, despite a
year-old quota system that gives the Americans guaranteed
access to three per cent of the Canadian market.
The federal government set up a quota in 1995 allowing the U.S. to bring 4,535 tonnes of margarine into Canada without paying the normal 50-cent-a-pound duty.
By year end, American margarine makers had shipped only 87 tonnes, mostly made up of kosher margarine that isn't made in Canada and has always come in duty-free.
For 1996, the U.S. margarine quota is 5,139 tonnes. But the industry isn't sure that the Americans will fall so far short. "American margarine will eventually start coming in," says Linda Reid, manager of Toronto-based Institute of Edible Oil Foods. "It [the quota] is still new. We think what's going on is the companies are still doing their research on the Canadian market."
The quota was established as part of obligations under the North American Free Trade Agreement. It compels Canada to give the U.S. duty-free access to three per cent of the Canadian margarine market, 1.5 million tonnes per year.
American margarine makers, however, must still meet Canadian standards for margarine quality, and must also package the margarine in metric, using French and English labels.
Gerry Umbach, market analyst for the federal agriculture department, thinks the low U.S. sales also show Canada's oilseed industry is competitive.
"If there was a big price difference in Canada versus the U.S., the Americans would be here," Umbach says.
"The question the Americans have to ask is, is there any room for their margarine in Canada? The answer appears to be no." Umbach adds, however, that the import limits may also hamper U.S. expansion. Big manufacturers may not introduce new brand names to Canada if they can't hope for a larger share of the market.
As well, many U.S. margarine makers are moving to new products, including margarine-butter blends, that aren't allowed in Canada.
Susan Iler, assistant manager of the Ontario soybean marketing board, says imports could mushroom overnight.
"Our concern is dumping," Iler says. If even one margarine maker, or one region in the U.S., develops big inventories, it may turn to Canadian exports to relieve the pressure, she says.
Canada's oilseed industry is competitive with the U.S. But emergency sales might be made at firesale prices, putting price pressure on everyone in Canada's oilseed chain, she says.
"It's hard to predict when that will happen," Iler says. "It might be this year, it might be next.
"Right now, it seems like the Americans don't know we exist, and we'd be perfectly happy to see it stay that way."-TB