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FARMERS. IN B.C.
Most are caught

in the corporate
giants’ squeeze

B.C. farmers are hurting.

Their costs are aN faster than
their income.

They’re being squeezed by the
implement companies, by the fer-
tilizer companies, by the banks and
by the big chain stores.

Foreign food imports are taking
over the B.C. market.

Most important of all — the pro-
vincial and federal governments
are doing next to nothing about it.

_ Theresult? Not only will farmers
suffer and be driven off their
farms; the big corporations are
establishing a monopoly that will

enable them to take consumers by -

the throat and shake every last
dollar out of them.

According to the ministry of
agriculture we had 19,800 farms in
B.C. in 1978. But many of them are
not really farms — their owners sell
only a small amount of farm pro-
duce and do not depend on the
farms for a living.

According to another govern-
ment publication, ‘B.C. Agri-
facts Indicators’, in 1976 when
there were 19,400 farm holdings,
only 13,033 had sales of farm pro-
ducts of over $1,200. And only
10,100 farms had sales of over
$2,500. So the number of actual
farms is probably closer to 10,000
than to 20,000.

Farm population in B.C. has
shown a steady decline.

Its high point was in 1951 whenit
reached 120,292. Twenty years
later it was down to 79,353. In
1941, farmers constituted 12.5 per-
cent of the population; in 1971 this
was down to 3.6 percent..

The number of farms showed a
similar decrease, down to the pre-
sent figure from 26,406 in 1951. At
the same time the size of farms has
doubled.

B.C. agriculture is highly diver-
sified, probably more so than any
other province in Canada. We have
grain in the Peace River, ranching
in the Cariboo, fruit in the
Okanagan, berries, dairies, poultry
in the Fraser Valley and literally
scores of other products in these
and other regions including hogs
and vegetables.

According to a recent issue of
Urban Reader, only five percent of
B.C. land is arable and only one
percent (just over one million acres)
is top quality land. Despite the

land freeze instituted by the NDP .

government in 1972-73, agricul-
tural land is being steadily eroded
as developers pressure a compliant
government to release parcels of
land for urban development.

It takes a lot of money to go into
farming today. The amount of
Capital invested has been growing
steadily. In 1941 the average invest-
Eneniwas$5; 685. In 1961 it jumped
to $32,967 and by 1976 it grew to
$154,190.

Farmers do not only face uncer-
tainty and the risk of crop failure
due to weather and environmental

_ conditions. The source of most of
_ their troubles is in the nature of our

corporate-dominated economy.
The cost of the goods and ser-

vices they must buy are rising

dramatically. Machinery and fer-
tilizer are two examples. According

‘to the Vancouver Sun, Apr. 26,
. \

1980, the cost of grain combines
went up 65 percent in the last two
years, while the price of a 100 h.p.
tractor increased by 36 percent.
Fuel and fertilizer costs rose 25-40
percent this year while herbicides
went up 20-30 percent.

The main cause of these infla-
tionary costs is that the manufac-
ture of farm implements and fer-
tilizer is under the control of a few
corporations in Canada, most of
them foreign owned, which oper-
ate as a combine and engage in
price-fixing at the farmers’ ex-

pense.

This applies also to freight rates
and trucking costs where the
farmer is again victimized by the
price fixing policies of the transpor-
tation corporations, led by the
CPR.

By
BEN SWANKEY

Farmers can’t operate. without
making big bank loans at certain
seasons of the year. The current
high rates of interest are drastically
increasing their costs of produc-
tion.

Price Squeeze

The price of food in B.C. is high
and is going up steadily. But the
farmer is not reaping the benefit.
Both the farmer and the consumer
are being skinned by the big chain
stores such as Safeway and also by
the big processors of farm products
such as the packing plants. In
many, if not most cases, these are
also foreign (U.S.) owned.

Their policy is to offer only low
prices to B.C. farmers, prices that
hardly meet their costs of produc-
tion, and then to raise prices in the
stores to all the market can stand
and soak the consumer for all he’s
worth.

Imports Up -

Our farmers have the know-how
and the means to supply almost all
of B.C.’s food needs, except for
those types that cannot be grown in
our climate. Yet, according to Ur-
ban Reader, over half of our food
supply — 55-65 percent — is now
imported from California and the
northwest United States. Most of
these foods are the same type that
are grown in B.C. On top of that
foreign processors are buying up
and closing down processing plants
in B.C. and forcing consumers to
buy foreign imports.

The villains are the big U.S. food
corporations, wholesalers and
retailers. But Canadian-owned
wholesalers, processors and
retailers are following the same
policy.

In his book Profit Hungry, ex-
posing profiteering in the food in-
dustry, John Warnock points out
the following:

‘All the major wholesalers,
retailers and large processors are
importing.

“In 1974 and thereafter, the
packers in the Fraser Valley im-
ported most of their strawberries
from the U.S. and Mexico. In 1976

Empress Foods, Canada
Safeway’s packer, bought no fruit
from B.C. Tree Fruits Ltd. Wood-
ward’s and Super-Valu (Weston
empire) bought all private house
brand peas, beans and corn from
the United States. In 1976 Wood-
wards announced that they were
buying all their house brand pears
from Australia. Canada Safeway
was also importing fruits and
vegetables for its private brands.

“Royal City used to operate two
tomato canneries in B.C. but clos-
ed them and now imports all its
canned tomatoes from California.
Canadian Canners is also impor-
ting fruits and vegetables. In 1976
Showcrest Packers (Burns Food)
bought no vegetables for freezing
from B.C. growers.

‘‘Why are they importing? Just
to give the consumer a better price?
Hardly.

‘“‘The name of the game is pro-
fits, and higher profits can be made
from importing food.

‘*Asaresult of these imports, the
processing industry in Canada has
been dying . . . between the mid
1960s and 1975, the number of
plants processing tree fruits in B.C.
dropped from 15 to 5, and in 1976
three of these were reported to bein
serious financial trouble. The can-
ned tomato industry, which once
flourished in B.C., no longer ex-
ists . . . B.C. has lost its process-
ing industry for asparagus,
cucumbers, .carrots, is losing the
strawberry processing industry,
andis on the verge of losing the cole
crop industry (cauliflower, brussel
sprouts and broccoli).”’

Big and Small

Farmers aren’t one
homogeneous group. Broadly
speaking they belong to what is
called the middle class. Within their

‘ranks there are both class divisions

and class antagonisms.
The size of the farm can’t be us-
ed as a criteria for looking at the

“economic groupings within the

ranks of the farmers. Neither can
the value of the farm (its capitaliza-
tion) or the income of the farmer.
The measuring sticks we can use
are whether or not the farmer
depends on the farm for his
livelihood or has other income; and
whether the farm is operated by the
family or depends on hired labor.

Using this approach we find the
following classes in the countryside
in B.C.

@ Subsistence farmers —
usually small farmers where the
owners do not depend on, although
they supplement their income
from, the sale of farm produce,

-and where their main source of in-

-come is a job somewhere else. In
practice they subsidize their farm
operations with this off-farm
work.

@ Family farmers —run by the
family, where all members of the
family work to keep it going. They
may hire seasonal labor on a small
scale at certain times of the year,
but depend mainly on the work of
the family.

@ Big commercial and cor-
porate farmers — whose owners
may or may not live on the farm,
which employ labor on a large scale
and usually the year round, and
where the owner may also be
engaged in other types of
businesses. Some are big corporate
farms, examples of which are the
big farms owned by food retailers

such as Woodward’s and the big.

multi-million dollar cattle ranches
in the Okanagan, big dairy and
berry farms in the Fraser Valley,
etc.

Then we must also mention the
agricultural laborers who have just
formed a union and against the
fierce opposition of the big and
corporate farmers are trying to
unionize the estimated 11,000 farm
laborers in B.C., most of them
employed in the Fraser Valley.

The class struggle in the coun-
tryside goes on between:

(a) all or almost all farmers and
the big corporations and financial
interests who exploit them;

(b) farm workers and farm
employers;

(c) subsistence farmers and

. family farmers on the one hand,
and the big commercial farmers
and corporate farmers on the
other. This struggle is expressed in
the types of demands put forward,
the kind of farm organizations set
up, and the policies pursued by
these organizations to achieve their
objectives...

Labor has most in common first ©

of all with the farm laborers, arid
secondly with the subsistence and
family farmers. It is in their com-
mon interest to develop joint action
against the big corporations which
exploit them.

Organization

The B.C. Federation of
Agriculture (BCFA) unites the
many commodity groups (poultry,
dairy, berry, hog, fruit, vegetable)
in the province. It claims to have
11,000 members, although some of
them are in businesses that are
agriculture-related, such as fer-
tilizer sales. It is the voice of the big
commercial and corporate famers
in the province and is hostile to
unions.

The National Farmers Union,
which speaks for the family
farmers on the prairies, has about
250 of its 8,500 members in B.C.,
most of them grain farmers in the
Peace River district.

The many farm co-ops in the
province, like their sister organiza-
tions on the prairies, are for the
most part dominated by big com-
mercial farming interests and are
closely linked with big retail and
processing corporations. In most
cases they have shown themselve*
to be anti-labor and anti-union.

Marketing boards have as their
central aims eliminating price com-
petition among farmers, limiting
production and keeping up prices
of farm products. In practice they
have tended to operate to the ad-
vantage of the big commercial
farmers and big processing and
retailing corporations.

Farm Program

With sound agricultural policies,
there is little doubt that we could
produce in B.C. most of the food
that our people need. Furthermore,
they could be provided at
reasonable prices to the consumer
that would still ensure the farmer a
good living on the land. New and
improved government policies that
could and should be considered
are:

@ Provincial government ac-
tion to preserve and extend the
amount of farm land in produc-
tion. An immediate end to the
cabinet practice of taking land out
of the agricultural land reserve.
Land assembly to enable more peo-
ple to go into farming.

@ Expansion of the domestic
market through strict controls on
the import of food and develop-
ment of a processing industry
under cooperative or public owner-
ship to process B.C. grown foods.

@ Barter deals and long term
low interest credits to other coun-
tries, especially the developing
countries, to expand our export
markets.

@ Price security for farmers
through a long term income
assurance program; expansion of
the Income Assurance Act to cover
all farm production; strict controls
over the mark-up in farm prices
allowed to the big retail corpora-
tions; assistance to farmers to
enable them to sell directly to the
public.

@ Control of farm costs
through price controls on

‘manufacturers of farm implements
. and fertilizers; lower interest rates;

cuts in rail and trucking rates; and
income-based farm taxes.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 16, 1980—Page 3