More rural jobs, jobs, jobs
By BERNARD TOBIN
The provincial government is hoping its new $30-million fund will help create more jobs in rural Ontario,The Rural Job Strategy Fund, which was announced in the May provincial budget, was officially launched late last month by Agriculture Minister Noble Villeneuve.
Since May, Conservative MPP Barb Fisher, Bruce, has led an extensive public consultation process to determine how the money should be spent. Close to a thousand rural entrepreneurs, residents, farmers and municipal officials have had their say. "Now it's up to all sectors in rural Ontario to take up the challenge so that rural Ontario can enhance its role as a major player in the province's economy," Villeneuve says.
The money will be spent on projects designed to build rural partnerships that enhance the quality of Ontario products, capitalize on marketing and export opportunities and encourage the use of information technology.
The government says the Vintner's Quality Alliance, which has received much of the credit for the success of the Ontario wine industry, is a good example of how quality assurance and marketing can help build an industry and create jobs.
"The grape growers and vintners, in partnership with the provincial government, have improved the quality of Ontario wine, increased marketshare and developed agri-tourism in the Niagara Region - all of which have lead to jobs and investment," says Len Pennachetti, VQA chairman and president of Cave Spring Cellars. Pennachetti will be part of a nine-member industry panel that will review funding applications. The panel will review a "short concept paper" and request a full project proposal, including a complete business and marketing plan, if the concept paper is approved.
The government is willing to pick up 70 per cent of projects valued at $50,000 or less with the remainder coming from the private sector. Projects costing more than $50,000 are eligible for 50 per cent government investment.
Partnership will be a key to accessing the fund. All partners must invest in the project while funding requests from an individual or individual business will not qualify.
The government has already spent $3 million of the fund. The money was spent this summer to fund the Rural Summer Jobs Program. Agri-food industry employers used the funds to hire 4,300 students, well above the 3,000 program target, the government says.
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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Three face off for top OFA spot
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture campaign is well underway.Current OFA president Tony Morris, a Mildmay sheep farmer, is seeking a third term as leader of the province's largest farm lobby organization. He'll be challenged by current vice-president Mary O'Connor, an Ayr crops and beef farmer, and Halton region cash cropper Ed Segsworth, who served as OFA vice-president in 1996.
Elections will take place at the OFA convention, scheduled for Nov. 24 and 25 at the International Plaza Hotel in Toronto.
At least four candidates are vying for the two vice-president positions. Paisley farmer and current vice-president Ken Kelly will seek re-election. He'll be joined on the ballot by Lakeside's Sharon Rounds, Port Colborne's Gary Davison and Spencerville's Geri Kamenz.
Cayuga's Ben Walpot and Metcalfe's Terry Otto will seek election to the four-member executive committee.
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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Farm workers' compensation costs could climb
Farmers with poor employee safety records could be facing up to a 50 per cent rate increase to insure workers, due to changes to the Ontario workers compensation system.Legislation passed by the provincial government clears the path for the now familiar Workers' Compensation Board to be renamed the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. Beginning in January, 1998, the compensation system will resemble an insurance-type program where farm claim records will have a direct impact on the rate of assessment paid to the board.
Smaller farm employers who have paid an annual assessment premium of $1,000 to $25,000 will be assessed under a new merit rating program while larger farms paying premiums over $25,000 will continue to be assessed using the current experience rating program.
Under the merit program, farmers will pay assessment rates that will differ from the group rate. Assessment will go up or down depending on the number of claims exceeding $300 a farmer makes over a three-year period. Assessments for 1998 are based on the 1994 to 1996 farm records. A claim, for example, could be made up of a doctor's visit costing $98, plus two lost work days.
"If you have more than three of those in a three-year period, your rates are going to go up and they could go up by as much as 50 per cent," says Mark Wales, vice-chairman of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture's Labour Issues Co-ordinating Committee.
"If you have less than three events in that same time period...your rates will go down. However, they will probably only go down by 10 per cent," says Wales, who points out that rate increases would begin at five per cent.
When an accident results in a workplace fatality, a 25 per cent surcharge will be added to the rate of assessment on top of the merit rating increase.
Changes to the legislation are designed to target the 20 per cent of farm employers who tend to have more claims than the average farmer. "Those tend to be the ones who are causing group rates to go up," Wales says.
As part of the reforms, the compensation board has developed a farm service unit which will be located in Guelph. -BT
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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Membership swells following tax change
Where have all the farmers come from? That's the question provincial farm groups are asking as farmer registration numbers for 1997 continue to swell.In the first nine months of 1997, over 2,400 more farmers had registered with provincial farm groups than in all of 1996, and there's more to come, farm groups report.
Barry Sinclair, acting manager of province's Farm Tax Rebate Program, points to two key factors influencing farmer numbers. He says a new farm tax assessment system, which will assess farmland at 25 per cent of the residential rate for 1998, has prompted farmers who have avoided the registration system to sign up.
As well, in past years, farmers who received a Farm Tax Rebate cheque for less than $100 were not required to register, Sinclair says. But in 1998, with the end of the Farm Tax Rebate, these farmers must go through reassessment to get any tax break they're entitled to and have been asked to register.
Sinclair says many of the farmers who receive small cheques farm in northern areas where tax rates are lower than in southern areas of the province, putting them in the under-$100 rebate category.
A look at Ontario Federation of Agriculture registration numbers shows that the farm lobby is on track to reach 40,000 members this year.
OFA president Tony Morris is pleased to see more farmers registering, but says a declining farmer refund request rate is even more gratifying and shows that more farmers are pleased with the organization's performance. OFA's refund rate is currently 18.4 per cent, down from more than 21 per cent in 1995.
Last year, the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO) attracted 3,328 members, but 34 per cent of the 5,070 farmers who registered with the organization requested a refund.
As of Oct. 31, after refund requests were deducted, the CFFO's net registration stood at 3,809 members, a 14-per-cent increase, while the refund rate had dropped from 34 per cent in 1996 to 30 per cent this year. The numbers are still preliminary, but, overall, the CFFO expects at least a 10 per cent increase in membership. - BT
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
backBy BERNARD TOBIN
Canadian pork processors are going to have to be more efficient if they hope to compete with U.S. plants for Ontario hogs, says a new report from the Guelph-based George Morris Centre.The report's co-author, Larry Martin, the Centre's director of economic research, says Canadian plants are less competitive than U.S. plants due to higher Canadian wage rates, inadequate plant design and technology, and processors' inability to take advantage of economies of scale, double shifting and heavier hogs.
Processor inefficiency has also contributed to a hog drain south of the border, Martin says. In 1987, 97 per cent of hogs raised in Canada were processed there. By 1996, that number had fallen to less than 85 per cent as more farmers decided to deliver their pigs to premium-paying U.S. plants.
The report was commissioned by Maple Leaf Foods, Ontario's largest pork processor, which is seeking wage concessions from employees at several of its Canadian processing plants.
Martin stressed that closing the gap between U.S. and Canadian plant worker wages was only part of a solution that would put processors on a solid footing: "This is not a simple situation. There's no magic bullet here."
Martin said the most dramatic factor was the discrepancy in capacity of Canadian plants when compared to U.S. operations. He identified 34 U.S. plants that have a larger capacity than Canada's biggest plant - Maple Leaf's Burlington plant, which kills 32,000 pigs weekly.
The report says moving from a 20,000 per week capacity to 40,000 would reduce manufacturing costs by $8.74 per 100 kgs of pork produced. Going from 20,000 to 45,000 per week would save $12.31 per 100 kgs.
If processors are willing to put up the money to get bigger and more efficient, they then have to overcome the wage hurdle, Martin says. Data released last month by Virginia-based Agrimetrics Associates shows that the average wage paid to workers in Canadian plants is C$22.65 per hour compared to C$16 in the U.S. And the United Food and Commercial Workers Union contract that governs work at many Canadian plants restricts work at regular pay to one five-day shift weekly. U.S. plants run second shifts at regular pay. Those labour costs are a major reason behind Maple Leaf's offer to buy out the existing UFCW contract at its Burlington pork processing plant.
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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Don't blame wages: economist
The heralded hog price differential between Canada and the United States is temporary and probably isn't caused by higher Canadian labour rates.That's the view of Daryl Kraft, a University of Manitoba agricultural economist, who says, "U.S. packers want a certain throughput through their particular facilities and are willing to pay for that. The hogs really aren't available right now."
Large processing states like Iowa, which have cut back on production in recent years, have excess slaughter facilities. Kraft says it makes sense that these facilities would pay more for hogs - they can boost profit margins by running at capacity.
But why wouldn't Canadian packers, who've been chronically short of hogs during the same period, match the U.S. price after allowing for trucking and brokerage costs? Says Kraft: "Possibly their access to export markets isn't as secure as the U.S. processors'." He says the smaller size of Canadian plants may mean they lose less by not running at capacity. "They may be more flexible with their smaller plants."
Kraft's opinions were formed when he began studying the annual exodus of an estimated one million Canadian weaner pigs to the U.S. in recent years. He predicts demand for these pigs will vanish along with higher U.S. hog prices once American farrowing capacity increases. - RI
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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OSI boar stud back from brink
Ontario Swine Improve-ment's (OSI) controversial new AI facility is on again. An announcement late last month that OSI had purchased a 48-acre site to build a 200-boar stud near Innerkip was applauded by John Gough whose Swine Genetics Ontario Group (SGO) is a major OSI customer.OSI was established by government and the pork industry when the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) stopped its hands-on approach to swine improvement. At that time, OSI's mandate included AI as well as research and performance testing.
Gough's group has used OSI's popular rent-a-pen service at rented facilities near Woodstock to have SGO's boars housed and collected. Some of that revenue will be lost to OSI next month when SGO opens National Swine Genetics, a new private AI facility near Strathroy.
Gough terms his venture "friendly competition" for OSI because SGO will still house some boars with the public stud as insurance against a disease outbreak. Gough says SGO will remain a semen customer to take advantage of new genetic material.
OSI plans to use funds from its reserves to finance its new unit. Ontario Pork and OMAFRA, OSI's two major funding sources, aren't backing the project, which was announced on the heels of further upheaval among OSI staff and directors.
Arnold Ypma, who owns a private AI unit, resigned without explanation from OSI's board just after OSI general manager Fred Hays was fired without explanation and a laboratory employee resigned, all just before the land purchase was announced to the public.
Last year, Gough waged a tireless campaign aimed at Ypma and Warren Stein, another private AI stud owner. Gough argued both were in conflict of interest because of their AI businesses.
OSI chair Henry deWolde, who heads family-owned Bra-Ma-Rod Farms Inc., Ashburn, has volunteered as interim general manager pending a permanent replacement for Hays. -RI
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
backBy ROBERT IRWIN
Another chapter was added recently to the well-publicized controversy surrounding a Ridgetown-area pig farm and its neighbours.The Ontario environment ministry recently laid two charges under the Ontario Water Resources Act against Michael Bernard DeBrouwer and Great Lakes Pig Company Ltd., Howard township, in connection with an alleged pig manure spill said to have occurred May 27, 1997. Neither investigator Russell Fosburg, who swore the information, nor Alice Uher, a Great Lakes owner, would elaborate on the incident because it is before the courts.
Uher describes the charges as "unfortunate. Obviously, we're pleading not guilty. I'm sure that the truth will come out."
Ridgetown lawyer Douglas Desmond, a Great Lakes neighbour and spokesperson for area residents opposed to Great Lakes, terms it "unfortunate" that these kinds of matters are usually heard before a Justice of the Peace "who don't know any law at all." Desmond relates he will be more interested in the effect the charges have on Great Lakes' application for a building permit to expand their operation than on any legal penalty awarded.
In the past, neighbours have filed a variety of complaints about Great Lakes and its owners. This is believed to be the first time charges have resulted.
First appearance in Chatham provincial court is scheduled for Nov. 24, 1997, when defendants will have an opportunity to enter a plea.
© copyright 1997 Agriculture Publishing Company Limited.
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