Just in case this long drawn out battle with the Wheat Board has been too hard for you to understand, analyze or care about. Perhaps you need to see it from a slightly different point of view.
Another gentleman who has been trying to educate us mainstream ag guys for decades, and getting mostly ignored, has been Brewster Kneen, editor and author of the Ram' s Horn. He has recently written a lengthy, but illuminating article about the whole sorry affair.
It's length precludes my posting it here but I'll start you off with a taste. If you really want to understand this struggle, I believe Brewster has the history and the knowledge to make it clear for you.
A SAMPLE:
Ideological Individualism: “Choice”
The business government we are currently saddled with in Canada is busy dismantling the structures which have been built by farmers to protect themselves from The Market. While our focus in The Ram’s Horn is the food system, we must also note the other ways in which this government displays its ideological individualism, lack of morality and contempt for the public.
Lack of morality: unqualified support of Israel’s extraordinarily vindictive and destructive assault on Lebanon, its people and its infrastructure (roads, bridges, power stations, water supplies, schools etc).
Contempt for the public: acting on behalf of its special-interest supporters and right-wing ideology regardless of its minority status.
Individualism: offering tax benefits (which don’t help poor and working-class people) to deliver a ‘child benefit’ rather than the promised public funding of quality child-care facilities.
Certainly there are those farm businessmen and organizations (Canola Council, Canadian Agricultural Trade Alliance, Western Canadian Wheat Growers, etc.) who support the Harper government and the grain companies, as they have for years, in calling for an “open market,” the end of agricultural subsidies (but not until Europe cuts its agricultural support programs) and “choice” in how they market their grain.
No comments:
Post a Comment