Powerful Words

One of the most talked about, viewed, watched and shared Super Bowl Commercials this year is about farmers.  It is a perfect example of advocacy, something that supply management would do well to consider.  Done right, it would provide balance and real information to the general public about the importance of the industry and the very real services it provides to Canadians. Below is a reprint of the Farms.com article about the commercial and what it achieves.

You can watch this wonderful you tube video again here:

“So God Made A Farmer” Super Bowl Commercial Gives A Boost To Agvocacy

Ram Pays Tribute to Farmers with Voice of Paul Harvey and Powerful Images

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

It’s the Super Bowl commercial that everyone in the agriculture community is talking about - Ram Trucks version of the famous 1978 speech with the voice of Paul Harvey known as “So God Made a Farmer.”

Not only was the commercial a great advertisement for Ram Trucks, but it also gave a boost to “agvocacy”. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term agvocacy, it’s the combination of the two words – agriculture and advocacy to create the word agvocacy. The whole purpose of agvocacy is to communicate about agriculture with the non-ag audience.

One of the biggest challenges to being an impactful agvocate is ensuring that you are engaging with the non-ag audience and not preaching to the choir. Ram’s commercial was able to reach that non-ag audience, which helps set the stage for agvocates to connect with the average consumer. The message was bold, the images were powerful and it was a positive message about those behind agriculture production.  Thank you to Ram Trucks for their tribute to the American Farmer!

 Paul Harvey’s “So God Made A Farmer Speech:

And on the 8th day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.

"I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his wife's done feeding visiting ladies and tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon -- and mean it." So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, 'Maybe next year.' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from a persimmon sprout, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, planting time and harvest season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain'n from 'tractor back,' put in another seventy-two hours." So God made a farmer.

God had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in ahead of the rain clouds and yet stop in mid-field and race to help when he sees the first smoke from a neighbor's place. So God made a farmer.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-combed pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the broken leg of a meadow lark. It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk and replenish the self-feeder and finish a hard week's work with a five-mile drive to church.

"Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer.

Throwing down the Guantlet

Wendy Holm-

Among all the shouters egging our Federal Government onward to dismantle Supply Management is Ms. Martha Hall Findlay, candidate for the Federal Liberal Leadership. Various people have responded to Ms. Findlay about her Economic report which is so badly flawed she had been forced to make 'corrections'.

One of the earliest defenders of the industry has been Wendy Holm.  She has been tweeting Findlay for a while.  You can find all of her tweets if you follow the link below.

Now the National Post has joined the fray, giving Findlay's erroneous economic study even greater exposure. With friends like this supply management does not need enemies.

wendyholm@wendyholm@MHallFindlay@monmills @TheTyee@dfc_plc @arzeenaWhere is this "corrected report" posted Martha?11 days ago · reply · retweet· favorite
wendyholm Martha I challenge u 2 a debate anywhere, anytime. U r dead wrong on supply management.@MHallFindlay@monmills @thetyee@dfc_plc #democracy15 days ago · reply · retweet· favorite

PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE

Of note in this article is the concept of a concerted attack with a goal in mind; the end of farmers and their families controlling  their industry and receiving a fair price for their work. It is hard to ignore the PR war against supply management. The industry needs to respond with it's own educational  PR campaign in a big way. 

Check out the face book pages and twitter feeds for the 100% Canadian Dairy page you see a miserable number of  tweets or Facebook 'likes'.  This is not enough activity to spread the word. 


Where are the  directors and their producers? Is anyone paying attention?-cg

Supply management: a worst-case scenario

By Patrick Meagher

If you’re reading the daily newspaper headlines to get a gist of what Canada should do, you’ll find that almost every columnist with an opinion thinks supply management should get the heave-ho.

As the argument goes, why make poor families pay three times the market price for milk to prop up capital-rich farmers? Yet supply management does not cost taxpayers a cent and we don’t know if the price will drop by two-thirds in a freer system. The poor families that columnists pretend to defend receive a minimum $200 monthly government cheque per child under six to help pay for diapers and milk. Many also get subsidized housing, free food, free bus fare. So, the cry to end supply management is not about poor families.

The current debate is about power and trade. Dairy processing companies want more power and other sectors want more trade. The processors launched their attack on supply management in time to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a scapegoat. Farmers Forum columnist Ian Cumming said a group of processor executives, standing with him under Florida palm trees at an industry convention last year, laid out their strategy to take down the protectionist system. It included the push for a lot of media coverage. They’re getting it while farmers are losing the propaganda war.

Supply management was meant to sustain the family farm but when it creates millionaires on paper it becomes an easy target. It’s no secret that even many non-supply managed farmers would not shed tears if supply management were dismantled.

Wrote The National Post’s John Ivison on June 21: "It’s long been known that supply management is a racket — an indefensible, anti-competitive cartel. Politicians of all parties have known it, condemned it in private and then voted unanimously in support, as they did in November 2005."

You get the same line reading a plethora of recent articles in The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star, both of which are so far left they disagree with The National Post nine times out of 10.

It helps that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was never a friend of fixed prices but we don’t know what he’s thinking. Who wouldn’t want to sit in on trade talks to have a look-see? But if it’s pull-plug that he wants, this could be the moment.

And now there are so few Canadian supply-managed farmers — about 15,000 — a new argument is that support for supply management will not give a politician a significant number of votes. "There are few, if any, ridings where dairy votes could plausibly swing elections — particularly compared to the votes of all those in those same ridings who would benefit from dismantling supply management," wrote Martha Hall Findlay, whose mischievously-timed academic paper on the issue added fire to the debate last month, particularly because the former MP is a possible choice for the federal Liberal leadership.

Only a few months ago, I wrote that supply management is safe for now. Under the current climate it begs the question: how long is safe?

Consider that for the past three years farmers are cash flowing purchases of new milk quota since there is so little available (see page 7). Prior to that, the Farm Credit Canada quota loan policy for dairy, poultry and eggs was a 10-year term, which means dairy farmers have seven years to pay off existing loans. Do you think multiple countries would strike a deal with Canada, if Canada were to end supply management, starting with dairy, in seven years? Of course they would as talks could take years anyway and rule implementation a few more.

This brings us to the farmers’ trump card: Quebec. What politician would want to diss la belle province? Try Prime Minister Harper. He has so few friends in Quebec — support hovering just above 10 per cent — that he has nothing to lose. "No one ever speaks in favour of Mr. Harper in Quebec," longtime Quebec Tory Peter White told The National Post (June 23). Harper already crossed the line with Quebecers when he rightly shelved the long gun registry and made changes to employment insurance. He could advocate dwarf tossing and banning Jos Louis sponge cakes and he couldn’t be worse off. Moreover, Quebec farmers with shares in its milk processing company have a soft landing. The earnings from Agropur are known as the 13th milk cheque and in a free market system that cheque is likely to get a handsome boost.

All of this unpleasant news is important to consider. I’ve laid out a worst case scenario in which supply management has seven years in a climate of screaming critics. But as St. Isidore dairy farmer Thomas Kirchmeier points out: "You don’t usually eat the soup as hot as you cook it."

Other reasons indicate that supply management might have a long, healthy life.

One telling sign will be whether Canada thinks the access it can get from up to10 foreign markets is more beneficial to the economy than protecting 15,000 farmers who no longer have quota debt.

Patrick Meagher is the editor of Farmers Forum.

Government moves forward on Trade again!

Farmers would be well advised to pay attention to the comments attached to the article below. There are over 300 today alone. It is interesting how much "inaccurate" detail some have provided. It might make you wonder if someone has hired people to pound away ...... hmmmmm.

Since there are powerful forces looking for the demise of supply management, I wouldn't put anything past anyone.-CG

Supply management on table as Harper touts trade at Americas summit

JENNIFER DITCHBURN

OTTAWA— The Canadian Press

A New Website about Your Milk

A new web site titled : Stand up for Your Milk has recently been launched to counter the anti- supply management doggerel that has abounded.

It is chock full of good stuff and an ideal source for up to date info for the media (at least I hope so) as well as the public and farmers.

Anyone who finds negative information should at the very least pass along this website and help spread the word.

In fact a whole infrastructure of dairy farm tweeters is out there and they should be pushing this link around. Maybe someone has to remind them to do it.

It is pretty important to populate a site like this with fresh, up to date material responding to the latest attacks. So far so good but the industry needs to ensure they are not viewed as a sitting duck.

Recently, I saw an email that gleefully proclaimed: "supply management has mostly given up trying to respond".

I sincerely hope that is not true.- cg

A message for Supply Management..

Farmers are concerned by all the media coverage and negative press supply management has been receiving and rightfully so.

Continued government assurances, public letters and appearances by the Minister have settled dairy farmers down for now. The underlying concern is still there.

Sometimes it helps to see another point of view. It can reminds us of events and comments that could be important.

From that perspective 3 articles by Wendy Holmes are very important.

Why you should care about the CWB vote In this article she reminds everyone of the legalities and history leading to the vote.

Lulled by the Spin Cycle captures the nasty, big business pundits who have been fueling the anti-supply management press.

The latest column is a humdinger called "the Elephant in the Milking Parlour".

The government is not likely to let us in on their plans. There may not be any warning. Time to forge a plan to make the government think twice. The power of public opinion is likely the only thing that will stop some of this. That cannot be harnessed when the public do not know what supply management brings to Canada. It needs to start now before something irreversible happens.

The media is in control of the supply management message and it isn't good. It is time to take control back.

A Defence of Supply Management (via CKCU)

Listen to this podcast with Prof. Bruce Muirhead of the University of Waterloo and Prof. Hugh Campbell of the University of Otago (NZ) discuss the merits of Supply Management. If the mainstream print and television media really wanted a balanced story they could search out this stuff just like I did. Since they have not it begs the question "why not?"

On the plus side radio in Ottawa DID initiate this discussion. On the minus side the announcer did not buy it. (While I remain dubious as to the merits of supply management as a public policy tool!!!!)

What is it with these guys? follow the link below to hear the entire podcast.

Defence of Supply Management (via CKCU)