—

NFU delivers Manifesto

Prices received by the pro-
ducers at the farm gate are drop-
ping while prices to the consumer
for these products, end each year
with a net rise. On April 22 some
500 farm people went to Ottawa in
support of a Manifesto for Farm
Emergency Measures Program
presented to the government by
the National Farmers Union.

Five major recommendations
are made, based on arguments set
out in 25 points of argument on
the need for such a program. The
Manifesto, read before federal
agricultural minister Eugene
Whelan, by NFU president James
Mayne, points out:

e The battle against food
prices at the farm gate level has
already been won. The govern-
ment’s approach permits the
economically strong in the food
system to exploit the profit oppor-
tunities created by inflation, at the
expense of the weak.

e Government intervention on
behalf of the consuming public,
for example in placing a ceiling on
prices paid by the domestic mill-
ing industry for bread wheat,
while restricting undue hardship
on consumers, is done at the ex-
pense of the farmer.

e Wheat prices have declined
10% since the beginning of 1980
when the U.S. placed an embargo
on grain sales to the USSR, a pol-
icy endorsed with undue haste by
Ottawa.

e There is increasing underde-
velopment of our food production
sector because higher produc-
tivity is often rewarded with in-
come instability.

e An estimated 60% of far-
mers’ income is earned away
from*the farm.to augment poor
returns, and this is making
Canada more dependent on im-
ports of some foods.

e Rising costs of farm produc-
tion and increasing bank interest
rates are tightening the cost-price
squeeze on farmers.

Farm Debt

‘*Statistics Canada preliminary

figures of interest charges paid by

farmers on an indebtedness of

over $9-billion in 1979, is.

$1,240-million, the NFU Mani-
festo reports. ‘‘This is an increase
of 71% over 1977 debt payments
and 35% greater than in 1978. We
anticipate that interest payments
by farmers on projected farm

debts of $10-billion in 1980 will
exceed all other farm operating
cost items, including feed costs
and farm machinery costs, which
now head the list of major cost
components.”’

The purchasing power of the
farm dollar in 1980 is only 42 cents
compared to 1971 value. The gen-
eral farm input index (1971 = 100)
was 234.1 for the last quarter of
1979 and is rising at 15% per
annum.

The manifesto: states that far-
mers, like small independent
businesses, shopkeepers and
working people do not profit from
inflation, whereas a survey of 349
corporations showed increased
profits, 1979 over 1978, of 45.2%.

The NFU’s recommended
Emergency Program stresses five
needs of Canada’s farmers:

1. A moratorium on all farm
debts currently existing, or por-
tions thereof, that threaten the
continued security of farmers’ te-
nure, Ownership, rights of occu-
pancy and/or production thereof.
(This does not refer to debts for
non-essential farming purposes,
but to protection from possible
bankruptcy or forced liquidation.)

2. Credit guarantees provided
by the federal and/or provincial
governments for needy farmers
for 1980 farm .operating costs.
(With this goes a demand for fed-
eral government requirement
from banks and lending institu-
tions of credit policy information
sufficient to indicate how many
farmers are in 1980, being denied
operating funds.)

_ 3. Immediate initiation of ac-
tion by federal and provincial
governments ‘to place under na-
tional orderly marketing pro-
grams all farm products now sub-
ject to speculative and open mar-
keting systems of pricing that are
incapable of guaranteeing returns
based on farm costs of production
and reasonable income to labor
and investment. (It has been
shown that operating credits are
more readily available to farmers
producing products sold under
orderly marketing arrangements
with end pricing mechanisms.
NFU is urging a National Meat
Authority, and including in mar-
keting orders all grains produced
in Canada, -including corn and
soybeans.)

4. Immediate federal initiation
of means of managing the
economy that will lower interest
rates. (‘The economic interest of
this country must have an identity
and strategy for its own survival
... our economic future must not

be entrusted to ... strategies of j—

foreign corporations ‘°and

governments.) 2

5. Measures by both levels of
government to control the growth
and development of industrial,
corporate farming, as ensurance
of the continuation of family
farms in Canada. Control should
cover those involved in contract
production and/or marketing, or
through total vertical integration
within the food system. (The
trend is a drift toward greater pri-
vate industrial control over the
basic food resources of this coun-
try — corporate intrusion com-
bined with apparent government
indifference. The NFU expresses
concer equally over the lot of
potato producers in the Mari-
times, hog producers in Ontario
and Quebec, turkey and broiler
production in British Columbia,
or specialty crops in the prairies.

‘“‘We urge you on this occa-
sion,’ the Manifesto told the 4
government, ‘“‘to accept ‘this §
submission. as a genuine ex- =
pression of concern of thousands Z
of farmers across Canada, and 2
urge a new direction in agri- ~

— TOM MORRI:

cultural policy.”

a r o4

Farmers at recent protest demand action to protect their livelihood.

Pressure against grain boycott

By GORDON MASSIE

REGINA — The U.S» grain
embargo, supported by Canada
against the Soviet Union, is meet-
ing growing opposition in western
Canada. In recent days three in-
fluential spokesmen have come
out against the boycott. Simon de
Jong, New Democratic MP for
Regina East, had this to say in
his Ottawa Report:

“It looks like only our farmers
and our athletes will pay for our
decision to honor the U.S. em-
bargo against the USSR.

““‘While the government has
talked about support for our
farmers and athletes, nothing
tangible has been done.

“Western farmers are losing

$40 a metric tonne on wheat.
Other crops are also affected. On-
tario farmers are losing $25 a
tonne on soybeans and an equiva-
lent amount: on com. Western
rapeseed producers are losing $1
a bushel because of a general de-
pression caused by the U.S. de-
cision not to ship 17 million tons
of grain to the USSR.

‘‘While all this is happening the
farmers in Argentina are making
substantial profits by selling to the
Soviet Union.

.

“Once again the Canadian”

people are paying for our
government’s lack of an inde-
pendent foreign policy. Our knee
jerk reaction is not working. It
will not punish the Soviet Union
... it’s only punishing our

| -farmers.”’

In a meeting, June 10, with

| Hazen Argue, minister respon- ~
‘sible for the Canadian Wheat

Board, James Mayne, president
of the National Farmers Union
again called on the government to
lift the grain embargo. The NFU
president said Argue appeared to
be sympathetic, acknowledging
that the Canadian embargo differs
from that launched by the U.S. in
that the Canadian embargo in-
volves sales of wheat for human
consumption while the U.S. em-
bargo involves grains used for
livestock feed. The NFU is also
on record against using food as a
political weapon and for an inde-
pendent foreign policy.
Embargo Breaking Down

E.K. Turner, president of the
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, an
original supporter of the grain
embargo has now changed his
position. Turner, on June 10, told
about 100 people attending the
1980 Canada-America dialogue
conference in Regina that he
‘‘cannot support extension of the
embargo beyond Juy 31, the end

of the current crop year, because
the embargo is breaking down.”’

Turner expressed concern that
the USA -was breaking its own
boycott through sales to eastern
Europe.

“‘A conservative estimate is
that Canada could have sold an
additional 700,000 tonnes of grain
to the USSR during the present
crop year had we not supported
the embargo,”’ he said. The Pool
president said Canadian grain
prices are now $20 a tonne below
January prices.

He said he is suspicious of the
embargo when Argentine exports -
are at record levels, Australian
wheat exports to USSR are at re-
cord levels and U.S. corn and
wheat exports are at or near re-
cord levels, much of it to eastern
European countries.

Turner said he is concerned
about using food as an inter-
national political weapan because
farmers’ interests become secon-
dary to political considerations,
and farmers can wind up getting
hurt.

Index drops

The Index of Farm Prices of
Agricultural Products mea-
sures (as closely as Statistics
Canada can do it) prices re-
ceived by producers .at the
farm gate. If 1971 equals 100,
the index fell 1.9% to 240.00 in
April 1980 from the March
level of 244.7 — and from 250.3
in April 1979. In the one-year
period all provinces except
Nova Scotia, Quebec and
British Columbia experienced
a drop in the index. The
prairies presented this picture:
Manitoba from 263.4 to 250.3;
Saskatchewan from 270.3 to
260.9; Alberta 253.5 to 245.9.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 27, 1980—Page 9