By KIMBALL CARIOU

Bigger and fewer farms, the decay of
communities, and changes in farm
‘Operations can all be expected if the fed-
al government and the railways win
ir battle to scrap the Crow rate.
Stage is set for changes in grain
Nsport policy which could accelerate
‘decline of the family farm in western
hada. Last June’s Gilson report, pre-
to meet the specifications of the
al cabinet, will end the Crow rate,
Statutory system of distance-related
d low-cost rates for hauling export
n. Rates on the base of 30.4 million
S of grain moved in 1981-82 will
Mp, and will skyrocket for grain pro-
duced over that figure. By 1990-91, far-
could be paying an average cost of
0 per tonne to move grain, 5.75
S the 1981-82 figure of $4.89 per ton-
Why?
¥arm leaders campaigning to save the
Crow Say the federal government is try-
ing to implement a new agriculture
Strategy. When the West was being set-
tled at the expense of the Native peoples,
Canadian governments adopted far-
Teaching measures to build up agriculture
hd populate the Prairies. The Canadian
ou ‘ific Railway was given massive sub-
‘Sidies of land and cash, and in 1897
Settlers were promised fixed rates to ship
| their grain and bring in farm necessities.
| ‘Ice 1925, only the fixed grain shipment
ces have remained, with the force of
i law. As many studies have shown, this
Tow Rate is necessary to allow Cana-
farmers far from seaports to com-
te on international markets, and to
}| Protect them to a degree from wildly fluc-
“ating prices for.their products.
__ The railways, which have historically
|| “Mloyed great benefits from the deals of
| the 1800s, have complained for years of
the “high cost”? of moving grain, al-
though their claims of heavy losses are
believed by many to be greatly exagger-
ee Hence, said National Farmers’
|| ~8ton president Ted Strain at a seminar
0 Regina in September, the strategy of
_ the federal government has been to drain
| Money from the farmers to the railways,
meer of an ‘‘industrialization”’ policy in
West. Strain termed it “the biggest
Single swindle since Confederation’. He
a Was echoed by NFU women’s president

7

seciaias

ne Henderson, who pointed to fed-

wal Agriculture Minister Whelan’s

..*8ti-food strategy, i.e. the industrial-

liter. 0f food production with abso-

ay no concern for farm incomes, as
Rg as food is produced.”’

_ 45% Freight Hike
gsnilson’s proposals would result in a
| 2% increase in freight costs by 1985-86,
: with farmers paying an ever higher per-

rettage of costs after that. NFU projec-

Lions, based on an average 10% yearly
freon, show that farmers would go
19g Paying a total of $148-million in the
1960-63 crop year to $1,107-million by

enthat enormous extra burden would
Bsa Many farm operators. The in-
Costs, early a billion dollars in freight
1981 Fepresents about one-third of the
on net income of farm operations
eee Prairies. Naturally, this would
in ate further to the long-term drop
- Hy qa Lumber of prairie farms (from
000 in 1951 to 164,000 in 1976).
Revo. Bob Sterling of the University of
apa. Calculates that the average farm
tige 38 in Saskatchewan would have to
Hectare 700 from 1,000 (690 from 405

Oday, OP to 42,000 farms, from 69,000
rave Other factors, he says, could slow
min’, such as dramatically higher
. $ or big increases in yield, but

the elimination of the Crow will remove a
vital defence for farmers faced with fluc-
tuating prices and higher input costs.

Sterling feels that some 15-20,000
farms could be lost over the next 10
years, largely north of a line from
Lloydminster to Moosomin, an area not
as deeply affected by earlier waves of
farm consolidation.

Corporate Farming

Besides the sheer loss of thousands of
farms, changes in management patterns
and operating methods can be expected.
The continued growth of corporate farm-
ing could be accelerated, with many
more family farms incorporating. This
may not mean a big increase in hired
labor, as equipment investments rise to
cope with larger acreages, but that in turn
will convert more farmers into virtual
“‘sharecroppers’’ for the banks. As soil
productivity declines, there will be a ten-
dency for greater use of chemicals and
fertilizers, and an accompanying higher
risk of poisoning, pollution, etc. Greater
use of machinery will make farm work
more and more resemble industrial
work.

The farm family, a mainstay of rural
prairie life, will be hard hit by Gilson’s
proposals. The stress of running a large
operation can only be worsened by more
tension over how to cover higher costs.

Families will be faced with tough ques-
tions: How to cut costs? Should we go
deeper in debt to buy more land and
machines? Should we sell out? Who
should get a job off the farm?

The issue of off-farm employment is

Scrapping Crow rate means
lecline of rural communities

coming to the fore, according to Darlene
‘Henderson. Figures for 1978 show that
wages and salaries earned off the farm
equalled income from farming operations
on the prairies. Henderson lists such ef-
fects on families as the increased work
load for those who remain on the farm,
the problem of having only one parent at
home much of the time, the lack of child
care, and the possibility of marriage
breakdown and child abuse.
Farm Women in Industry

Those working off the farm face other
problems, especially women. Many face
long drives to their jobs every day. Rural
women Can usually find only low-paying
service industry jobs with no union rights
or benefits, and earn only half as much as
men working off the farm. Henderson
also says that the growth of off-farm
employment tends to cloud a central
issue — how much income is needed to
support a farm family?

Beyond the family and its farm opera-
tion, the loss of the Crow, and the trend
toward rail-line abandonment, will de-
vastate rural communities A 1978 Uni-
versity of Regina study showed that
some towns could lose millions of dol-
lars; the extra cost of freight represents
yet another input cost, which most far-
mers will pay off first, leaving less cash to
spend in their home areas. The survey
put the potential annual loss to 124 Sask-
atchewan communities from rail-line
abandonment at some $120-million, plus
loss of tax revenues.

The result of this trend will of course
be a decline of many small towns, as
services, stores, hospitals, and schools
centralize in larger points. More and
more of these: vital elements of rural life
will be lost.

Even the rural road system faces a
bleak future. Rail-line abandonment, and
the spectre of variable rates raised by the
Gilson report means increased use of
trucks to move grain. A portent of what
this means was seen when International
Minerals and Chemicals, a U.S. corpora-
tion, contracted to haul potash by truck
south on Saskatchewan highway #9.
The road was soon wrecked, and had to
be rebuilt at more than triple thickness
and a cost of millions of dollars. Studies
in Iowa show that such highways wear
out three to four times faster than they
can be replaced. An 80,000 pound truck
exerts 96 times the stress on a roadbed
that a 4,000 pound car does.

Quebec Farmers Respond
While the Crow rate and the Gilson

report have been most extensively de-
bated in the West, the effects go far
wider. For example, farmers in Quebec,
through their organizations, the Union
des Producteurs Agricoles and the
Cooperative Federee de Quebec, have
denounced the Gilson proposals.

The loss of the Crow rate, they pointed
out, will mean a much steeper cost to
‘them for feed grains from western Cana-
da. This would force Quebec farmers
into dependence on feed from the U.S.,
such as corn, which would in tum rise in
price (currently, these prices are held in
check by cheaper grain from the Cana-
dian prairies). The end result would be
substantially higher input costs for
Quebec livestock producers, higher
prices for consumers. Opposition to the
Gilson report has forced many rural Lib-
eral MPs from Quebec to come out
against its recommendations, an impor-
tant indication that the struggle to save
the Crow is not over.

What will farmers gain if the Crow is
eliminated? They have been promised
more efficient transportation system as a
major benefit. But there are no guaran-
tees. The cost of hauling grain east of
Thunder Bay is several times the Crow
rate, with no noticeable difference in
efficiency. The experience is similar in
the USA, often held up as a model by the
“kill the Crow” enthusiasts. It is not un-
common there for farmers to be forced to
pay bribes to private grain companies to
get their crops moved, or else to accept a
lower grade on their grain.

In effect, the railways, especially the
CPR which gained most of its wealth at
the expense of the Canadian taxpayers,
are able to move grain with outdated
equipment and rolling stock, as a sideline
to the more lucrative business of moving
coal and potash. Certainly improve-
ments in grain transportation are needed,
but history indicates that giving money to
the CPR to accomplish this is useless.

More and more farmers and others in
rural communities are coming to realize
that to save their way of life, the Crow
has to be retained, and the transportation
system should be publicly-owned and
run in the interests of the Canadian
people, not for private profit.

A CPR-Liberal planned attack

By DAVE WALLIS.

Farmers on the Prairies are now under
a planned and coordinated attack by a
federal Liberal government determined
to push through changes in the Statutory
Crow Rates in the interests of Canadian
Pacific Railways and the large coal pro-
ducers. oe

The National Farmers Union in a brief
to the minister of transportation, Jan. 27,
this year stated, ‘Seldom, if ever, has
the farm community been subjected to
such a sustained ne erate ee 25
paign to support t lway co
lobbies to Fr othiecndel ve = a 1925
statutory obligations they voluntarily en-
sr as and, indeed, campaigned to
gain from the Government of Canada.

The appointment of Jean-Luc Pepin as
the minister of transport 1s indicative of
the federal government’s bias toward
Canadian Pacific Railways. Pepin, who

was a member of the Trilateral Commis-
sion until 1975, was also a director f a
number ofmonopoly corporations includ-
ing the Power Corporation of Canada,
now part-owner of CPR.

Transport Minister Pepin showed his
contempt for farmers and his long-term
objectives when he outlined in a
‘confidential’ cabinet document, in
January this year, plans to create the illu-
sion that the Gilson report would reflect
farmers’ concerns and interests.

_ CPR Prefers Coal
CPR is demanding a change in the
Statutory Crow Rates as a way to raise

more revenues in order to expand faci-

lities and improve the rail lines. They
also claim that without improvements
they will be unable to handle the ex-
pected increased volume. What they
don’t say is that CPR could handle all the

grain traffic easily without any changes.

In reality rail improvements such as
double tracking and reducing the steep
gradients through the Rockies are
needed to handle the rapidly growing coal
exports, which are shipped to the west
coast by rail. While grain exports are
expected to rise from the 1965 level of 2.9
million tonnes to 6.3 million tonnes in
1990 this represents a decline from the
1965 level of 43.7% (for grain) of the total
CPR volume, to 11.1% in 1990. (Note: A
metric tonne is 1,000 kilograms, about
2,205 pounds.)

On the other hand coal transportation
by rail in 1965 amounted to only 1.8 mil-
lion tonnes, in 1980 this jumped to 10.5
million tonnes and by 1990 is expected to
reach 36.2 million tonnes. This rep-

resents an increase in volume from |

26.8% of CPR’s total in 1965 to a pro-
A CPR-LIBERAL — Page 8
PACIFIC TRIBUNE— DECEMBER 3, 1982—Page 7

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