Earlier efforts to ask executive-director Jim Laws about a Frank magazine story entitled "Taxpayers milked for millions as farm advisors live high off the hog," were first met with a refusal to speak to a reporter on the weekend. When contacted later at his office, Laws refused to talk about the matter.
"He (Laws) appreciates that it was the wrong thing to do, but he was acting under instructions from the board and from legal counsel," Forbes told Better Farming during a telephone interview last month. Forbes, just back from the organization's annual meeting in Saskatchewan, spoke highly of Laws' accomplishments. She rejected some of the published allegations and declined to respond to others, again citing lawyer's advice.
Forbes says CFBMC is now fighting back against a recent flurry of unfavourable media coverage which, she claims, is being instigated by former staff. She acknowledges organizational and structural problems in the past, but says CFBMC is making a "new beginning."
Agriculture Canada has cut annual funding to $1.5 million from $3 million over five years. The current agreement with Agriculture Canada expires in four years.
Disputing published reports of overpaid directors, Forbes maintains two directors from each province each receive an honorarium of around $3,000 annually. "Every person at that table puts their heart and soul into it," she insists.
Staff has been reduced to five from eight. Forbes says a search is on for new Ottawa office space in an effort to cut rent to less than half the present amount. Recent CFBMC accomplishments include production of a CD ROM which could help 70,000 prospective growers evaluate the feasibility of canola. Produced in collaboration with the Canola Council of Canada and Monsanto, more than 100 copies of the CD were sold when it was unveiled Nov 16.
CFBMC has also invested in a farm succession-planning program and is currently establishing a national crisis team to help farmers cope with low returns.
It quickly became apparent that the Premier's comment came as a surprise to everyone.
Harris's press office said "the workfare pledge was not in the Premier's prepared statements" and had no further comment. A spokesperson for the Department of Social Services said, "I have heard some talk, but there have been no concrete proposals that I know about to bring farming into workfare. However, it is no secret that the government is looking to expand the program."
OFA President Ed Segsworth was at the Agricultural Week festivities and the issue also came as a surprise to him. "We're not opposed to workfare on the farm, providing there are programs put in place to train workers as to what they need to do," he told reporters. Finally there was no mention of the plan in the Throne Speech.
So if the OFA didn't know of the plan, the Premier's office didn't know and the Social Service Department didn't know, is it likely that workfare will be coming to your farm any time soon? Well, don't send flowers to the funeral yet. A Community and Social Services ministry spokesman told Better Farming "we are looking at ways welfare recipients can participate in employment placement positions." He said that these placements will give welfare receivers "an opportunity to take part in the local economy" as well as "on the job training," while stressing that "this is not a situation where people on welfare will be forced on to farms by anyone."
There will be a screening and matching service and it seems likely that farmers will get some financial incentive for taking part in the program. There are still concerns to be dealt with, such as compensation in the case of a workfare-related accident.
When farm families are under economic pressure, children know it. How kids react differs from individual to individual, but an Iowa State University research study conducted during the farm crisis of the 1980s found some patterns, Williams says.
The study showed some teenage girls gained a greater sense of independence from doing more household chores, while others resented having to take over child-rearing and household duties when their mothers sought off-farm jobs and tended to become more pessimistic about their futures. Teenage boys often became insecure watching their fathers struggle financially and tended to question their ability to support their own families someday.
Parents facing financial difficulties can do two things to help reduce the impact on teens, Williams suggests. First, they can work to maintain a strong parent-child relationship by keeping communication lines open and spending time together. Second, parents can develop and share good stress-coping skills with their children. She sees a tendency in farm families for members to withdraw and not talk about their problems. "People think, 'I should be able to provide for my family and I'm not doing so.'"
Family members can help each other by looking for stress symptoms such as muscle tension, headaches, nervousness, digestive problems or a change in sleep patterns, and by encouraging them to seek professional help, she says.
As individuals, Williams recommends that family members cope with stress by talking to somebody who cares, by exercising, relaxing over a book or a good movie, spending time with friends or doing something nice for somebody else. As families, she suggests spending time together, especially at mealtimes; hosting family meetings; partaking in inexpensive activities such as sledding and starting new family traditions, such as volunteering.
Maintaining ties to a faith community also helps by providing social contact and spiritual nurturing, as does a willingness to accept help from others, if necessary. "We should learn to accept help graciously if we need it," Williams says.
"Have fun at the zoo," he quipped, just before waltzing out the door, presumably to minister to sinners elsewhere.
January 1, 2000
CFBMC responds to 'smear' campaign
Two months after Better Farming first began trying to report on allegations of mismanagement at the Canadian Farm Business Management Council (CFBMC), Anne Forbes, the council chair and Nova Scotia manager/director has responded with a denial and a partial explanation. The organization, which receives most of its funding from the federal government, assists farm managers by helping develop and share innovative business ideas.
Farm workfare: fact or fiction?
Better Farming's ears picked up when Premier Mike Harris kicked off Agriculture Week in early fall by announcing plans to expand the government's work-for-welfare program to farms. Thoughts of single mothers parking their children in the farm kitchen before heading for the fields danced before our eyes. We set out to find out what duties workfare participants would be expected to fulfill. We failed.
Tips for Families in Lean Times
Hard times on the farm cause stress for everybody. But parents who demonstrate good stress-coping skills can help alleviate long-term effects on their children, says Susan Williams, a University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension educator.Mad minister
A familiar face popped up at the annual Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) convention in the fall. It was that of Carl Sulliman, the organization's former general manager, who has resumed his career as a United Church minister, preaching in Scarborough. His identification badge as he attended the first morning of the convention said he was representing Mad Magazine. "I'm dealing with sinners," he told Better Farming. "I got training at the OFA."
December 1999
Safety net idea has holes
When Manitoba's Gary Doer and Saskatchewan's Roy Romanow were sent packing from Ottawa with a $180 million pittance this fall, the Prime Minister gave an odd sort of reason for not anteing up more money. Jean Chretien said it can't be all that bad in the Western wheat fields because unemployment rates are low on the Prairies. He, and the reporters in the Parliamentary Press Gallery obviously didn't recognize the fact that farmers aren't eligible for Unemployment Insurance benefits."That great safety net program that industrial Canada has doesn't apply to them. Independent business people can't draw (unemployment) either," says Jeff Atkinson, Canadian Federation of Agriculture communications co-ordinator. "He's pulling up economic numbers that are meaningless when you are dealing with farmers. It just shows he doesn't have a clue about the issue," Atkinson argues.
Both The Globe and Mail and The National Post reported that the perceived arrogance of Finance Minister Paul Martin and the federal Cabinet was alienating Western Canada. Both papers claim calls for separation from the big bad East will be next. Neither oracle twigged to the fact that Ontario grows grain and oilseeds too and would be getting almost one third of the $180 million promised by Ottawa in late October.
Get a job: Conrad.
The editorial policy of the Post, the flagship of ultra conservative Conrad Black's publishing empire, is that there are too many farmers plowing up marginal land and that some of them simply have to find other work.
At first glance this view appears to also be shared by senior columnist Roy MacGregor, a former sports writer, who says "there is some dispute, it would appear, over just how dire the situation is."
But a few paragraphs down, MacGregor says that perhaps Canadian farmers deserve at least as much shrift as the multi-millionaire hockey players which Ottawa appears ready to help. "Hockey players are not committing suicide rather than see their team fail," MacGregor reasoned.
Lame ducks on side
As debate goes on over genetically altered food (define "altered food" as you will), the Consumers Association of Canada is warning that mandatory labelling might not be the answer for Canadians who are concerned about what they are eating. The labels might confuse shoppers more than inform them, the CAC said recently in a joint news conference with pro-biotech farm groups.
Farm groups must be reaching. The Consumers Association of Canada isn't much of an ally. It's generally regarded as a lame duck organization with about as much clout in Ottawa as a half-filled feather pillow.
Wheat Board says "Wait."
Whether he called for a moratorium on their introduction or stopped just short of that, Greg Arason is clearly no fan of transgenic crops. The Canadian Wheat Board chairman says transgenics should be held back until either customers are more willing to accept them, or technology can be developed to separate biotech and traditionally bred crops at the elevator.
"The customer is always right, even when they might be scientifically wrong," Arason is quoted as saying.
Ham and Eggs, Milk and Cookies, Ponies and....Slots?
Horse racing is holding its own against the casinos in Ontario, but apparently only because the industry has adopted some casino tricks. Elmira Raceway supporters say that if you don't have slots you can't afford to race horses. The non-profit Woolwich Agricultural Society, Elmira, consistently has black ink on its ledgers and doesn't need the slots, opponents say. Marketing manager Kelly Spencer begs to differ. Elmira draws in the betting crowds because it offers the biggest purses, drawing horses. But raceway needs slots because other tracks use them to subsidise the purses. No slots equals less prize money, equals declining revenues all around.
More Cheese (and bread) Please
Food bank still short
Kraft Canada is calling for reinforcements in the war on hunger. Last month the giant cheese maker presented a $1 million cheque to the Daily Bread Food Bank in downtown Toronto, and challenged other companies to do the same.
The Kraft gift underscored the growing concern about hunger in urban Canada. Last year the downtown warehouse on Lakeshore Boulevard East distributed 7.75 million pounds of food nationally. Five years ago it moved only 200,000 pounds. The food bank's director would like to find himself out of a job but doesn't expect to any time soon.
Nationalists are back
The Council of Canadians is back in the news, promising to whip up plans to disrupt World Trade Organization talks in Seattle late November. The nationalist organization takes credit for killing the Mulitlateral Agreement on Investment a couple of years ago. But the C of C is best known for the furor it caused in opposing the Health Canada approval of recombinant Bovine Somatotropin for use in the dairy industry and also for opposing the growing of genetically altered crops for food use.
The Council of Canadians doesn't mind stirring up all the foment it can on these issues, even if it means letting untruths be published in its literature. A recent newsletter published a letter from a farm family in Nova Scotia thanking the council for opposing the approval of rBST, but feared that Monsanto was soon going to introduce a beef cattle hormone. Monsanto Canada officials say they have never had a beef hormone of any kind on the market, and nothing is in the planning stage either. Nor is there any such product being developed in the U.S. to their knowledge.
Hot Day Equals Expensive Pop
This was enough to make Better Farming's Coke-drinking editors turn to (yuck) Pepsi. Soft drink behemoth Coca Cola has begun testing a high-tech vending machine with a temperature sensor. As the outside temperature rises, so too does the price that the machine charges for a cold can. The company's chief executive officer Douglas Ivester was quoted in a Brazilian magazine this fall as saying that since the desire for a cold drink increases during championship sports games the price for the drinks should increase too. Archrival Pepsi was quick to respond that it wouldn't exploit its customers in warmer climates and that it wanted to make it "easier for consumers to buy a soft drink, not harder."
The article didn't say anything about the price going down when it's below zero outside. The best scheme still seems to be the one involving bread prices which rise when there's a wheat price increase but never come down again.
New Theory on Britain's Mad Cow Epidemic
The Brits don't quit being mad about cows. Scientific theories and speculation about the cause of the costly epidemic in the 1990s continue to be spun.
The newest theory is that Britain's epidemic of a degenerative brain disease in cattle was caused by a scientific experiment gone wrong. Some experts believe that instead of creating a better breed of cattle, the experiment infected the cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad-cow disease. One estimate says the blunder has cost Britain the equivalent of US$9.6 billion, claimed the lives of 43 people and triggered fears that the death toll could eventually reach several million. Experts believe that "the promiscuous use of pituitary hormones in cattle" taken from the brains of slaughterhouse carcasses, injected into cows in a bid to create a new breed of super-cattle, simply backfired.
Dr. Anne Maddocks, a retired senior medical scientist, has spent a year investigating the theory, which contradicts previous ideas that attributed the epidemic to changes in the preparation of sheep carcasses infected with the brain disease scrapie, which were fed to cattle.
Dr. Maddocks is backed by Malcolm Ferguson-Smith, an award-winning Cambridge University scientist on the government's BSE inquiry team. The theory is supported by David Brody, the lawyer acting for the families of victims of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), thoght to be spread by eating diseased meat, who are suing the government.
Although the ban on British beef exports was lifted in Europe this fall, specialists warn that CJD could still kill millions of people.
In a further sign that scientists are still in the dark over the disease, a new warning has been issued by John Collinge, another scientist advising the government, suggesting that people having their tonsils and appendix out are at risk of contracting CJD. This is because the disease has been found in these parts of the body and can be spread through surgical instruments, he warns.
Didn't we just say that so-called Mad Cow Disease had cost Britain US$9 billion and more? Well, here's another count.
The U.K. Parliament's Public Accounts Committee was cited as saying that the cost of measures aimed at protecting public health related to BSE and getting the beef ban lifted was expected to total 4.2 billion pounds (US$6.74 billion) by March next year.
The committee conceded the government had been forced to act fast when it came clean about BSE in 1996, setting up a scheme to destroy cattle over 30 months old, but it should have acted faster and negotiated with abattoirs harder to contain costs.
Now, it must look to persuade the world it was safe to phase out the scheme in the years ahead. The committee's report was quoted as saying, "We recognise that this will be possible only if scientific advice and European Union requirements permit. But a further 15 years of the scheme, the slaughter of another four million animals and the continuing cost to the taxpayer are daunting prospects.," the committee's report says.
Because of insufficient incineration capacity, thousands of carcasses are in storage awaiting destruction.
By September 1997, there were 260,000 tonnes in storage a figure likely to increase by 65,000 tonnes per year.
November 1, 1999
'Organic' sideswiped by Governor General's Critic
It's interesting to see how Canada's elite views organic food. Take the tempest in the vice-regal kitchen over the new Governor General's choice of what goes on her plate, for example.Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson and her husband are reported to have ordered the staff in Rideau Hall to prepare only organic meals for the vice-regal repasts. That sounds like a boost for organic growers. However, the National Post reports that organic food costs an average of 20 per cent more than regular produce "in which synthetic pesticides are used." The story is illustrated with a chart comparing organic foods at the high end Pusateri's Fine Foods in Toronto, with non-organic prices at Loblaws. Organic milk at $2.99 a litre is considerably more expensive than non-organic milk at $1.95. The same goes for Loblaws eggs at $1.89 a dozen compared to $5.99 for their organic store counterparts and tomatoes at $3.99 compared to $1.49. The list goes on.
Then look at Sondra Gotlieb's column in the same newspaper. Mrs. Gotlieb, wife of a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S., got more than a little catty about the GG's produce choices. The headline says, "Organic just means it's dirtier, more expensive," in reference to Gotlieb's comments that some organic growers use human excrement in their compost. She continued to take potshots at the new GG, asking if a policy of buying "Canadian-only produce" will last through a long Ottawa winter. It's clear that the columnist doesn't know much about raising organic food raising-- she was ignorant of who inspects the farms-- and that she doesn't think much of the new GG. Maybe Gotlieb is angling for the job.
Novartis next target
So you think that the life-science companies have been peppered with criticism of genetically altered food in the U.S. It's only just begun, says The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), reporting on an enclave of biotech's enemies meeting in upstate New York on Columbus Day (the Americans' match for the Canadian Thanksgiving.) The WSJ says activists, attorneys and scientists aim to take their successful experience in Europe to the United States. Chief among them is the Berlin-based Greenpeace organizer said to have orchestrated the campaign that caused grocers to take products containing GMO foods off store shelves in Europe last year.
Greenpeace aims to target canola, corn, cotton, papaya, potatoes, radicchios. soybeans and squash, all because recently cultivars have been improved using biotechnology. The biotech opponents told WSJ that Monsanto had already been "clobbered" and next on the list was Novartis. The big lawsuits against tobacco companies are considered a model for the actions that might be taken against the life-science companies.
Some efforts have already had an effect, the WSJ notes. Novartis' U.S. Gerber division has already ordered the elimination of genetically modified ingredients from its baby foods. H.J. Heinz is on the way to doing the same, and Monsanto has announced it won't market its controversial "Terminator" gene in the seeds it sells.
Here Bessy, er...Bossy
A mid-October promise by Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief of greater farm support didn't rate more than a footnote in Ottawa's major daily newspaper. There was, however, one farm-related story that rocked the city. In fact, it seemed to generate more headlines, more ink from columnists, more editorials and far more letters to the editor than any war or human disaster covered by The Ottawa Citizen in recent memory.
The issue was a year-and-a-half-old directive issued by federal bureaucrats to ban the naming of cows after people. Stop the presses, The Citizen had a major scoop on its hands. Apparently some visitor to the experimental farm named Stephani had complained about one of the cows there having her name. Farm management in their wisdom decided to avoid subjecting future visitors to the humiliation of meeting their bovine namesakes. Some real dairymen actually began to wonder if the handwriting was on the wall for an eventual ban on human names in pedigrees.
As the letters to the editor poured in, however, it soon became obvious that even in the politically correct and sensitive '90s there are still some things too ludicrous for the average newspaper reader to swallow.
"We were a bit taken aback by the reaction," Paul Donahue, the farm's director general of public programs, told The Citizen. The policy was reversed.
Then came the admission. Actually there was no Stephani. The complaint was fabricated by management as a means of explaining the ban on human names.
Donahue is also quoted as saying, "Never underestimate the power of the press."