[Futurework] The farmers aren't jolly!

[Ed Weick]

Someone once wrote: Three jolly Farmers Once bet a pound Each dance the other would Off the ground. And Murray McLuaghlin wrote a song about a dusty old farmer with a face like a shoe, or something like that. The farmers I saw in downtown Ottawa next to Parliament Hill yesterday were not jolly and most were too young to have faces like shoes. They weren’t angry either. They were serious, making a statement. The point they were trying to get across was that we needed them. "Farmers feed cities" their yellow T-shirts read. But they were also making the point that they were being treated unfairly. They argued that, while they were protected from the importation of American milk, butter and eggs, products derived from these commodities could be imported freely. Thus it was not necessarily Canadian derivative products that went into our ice cream. It could as easily be products from the US. As in Mexico, competition from heavily subsidized American corn was also at issue.  I don’t know how valid their arguments are, but there is no question that many of them are hurting. I heard a woman who operates a large farm in the Ottawa Valley interviewed yesterday morning. She suggested that her expenses exceeded her income by about 50%, which is not a sustainable situation. But there is also something else involved, the possibility that an honored and traditional way of life, already close to oblivion, will completely disappear. People will not be able to pass their farms on to their children. Consider the following from Statistics Canada’s Census of Agriculture: The "other 20%" of Canadians make up the rural population. The rural population has two distinct parts: those who farm and those who live in the country, but commute to city jobs or have jobs as teachers, police officers, firefighters, servers or cashiers in the businesses that serve the rural community. Of the two groups, the non-farm group is by far the largest: 9 in 10 people living in rural Canada don’t farm. (http://www.statcan.ca/english/agcensus2001/first/socio/immigration.htm#3) Data provided by Statistics Canada shows that the farm population declined from over 7% of the population in 1971 to about 2.5% of the population in 2001. Given such facts, it would seem that the procession of heavy machinery past Parliament Hill yesterday was as much a procession of mourning as a show of strength. Ed P.S.: There are a few pictures at http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/newblog.htm , last item.

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