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Farmers are Canada’s peacekeepers

In a recent Advocate op-ed by Greg Mason, the economics professor puts forth the opinion that myths are driving Canadian farming policy.

In a recent Advocate op-ed by Greg Mason, the economics professor puts forth the opinion that myths are driving Canadian farming policy.

One statement that makes me laugh is that “Farmers are often represented as deserving a special place since they produce one of life’s necessities.”

Yeah. That’s right professor. They do deserve a special place because you have to eat.

But Mason goes on to argue that since we export two-thirds of the total value of annual production, we probably don’t need all that food in the first place. I disagree.

Many Canadians are enamoured with the bigger myth of our nation as peacekeepers around the world, but in that case they like to think of the Canadian Forces in jaunty UN blue hats. True, we have a proud heritage there — but I say, look out in the field at that combine and grain truck. There you will see the true peacekeeper and trooper of Canada in a jaunty blue cap. Salute the guy or gal on the heavy equipment under the hot sun.

What’s food got to do with war and peace? Lots.

I say that Canada holds a position of fair respect around the world, thanks to our farmers and the Canadian Wheat Board.

Despite our relatively small population, our food distribution to diverse countries has given us a disproportionate power. And throughout time, one of the most powerful weapons in war and peace has been . . . food.

The Canadian Wheat Board exports to some 70 nations around the world. And its not just wheat — imagine Canucks are selling chickpeas and lentils to the Middle East. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is buying our wheat for their pita bread. Venezuelans eat our duram.

Food is a much better “weapon” than warheads or value-added goods — grains are staples — essential to a society’s diet and to its stability. As Julius Caesar noted as early as 122 BC, “Bread and circuses” is an efficient means of keeping the population controlled and peaceful. Canada supplies the bread to much of the world . . . et voila, we are half of creating world peace.

Going back to Mason’s op-ed for a moment, he notes that preserving rural family farms is a rather nostalgic and not a very economically sound investment. He forgets that the roots of Canada’s culture sprang up from the seeds of immigrants who fled the Black Famine of the Ukraine, the potato famines of Ireland, the bare scrapings of oats and haggis in Scotland, the poor streets and poor houses of England, the rationing of Great Britain in the Second World War, the desperate hunger of post-war Germany, and on and on.

Our forbearers knew what it was to be hungry, so hungry that you died from it or you were forced to kill to survive. This is the source of our ‘nostalgia.’ It’s called learning from experience. Or wisdom.

Mason’s approach to farming would be like the oil industry looking at the oilsands and saying: “Well, we can’t possibly use all of that. Let’s not develop it. It costs a lot of money and we’ll just have to sell it to someone else.

“I know, let’s turn that land into an amusement park instead and make a ‘real’ business out of it.”

It’s true that Canadian taxpayers have had to help out cattle farmers through the BSE crisis and associated trade issues; more recently, the pork farmers needed a hand.

All farmers will from time to time face such challenges — trade barriers, over-production, dramatic shifts in commodity prices, or radical shifts in consumer preferences. And we the taxpayers will have to help even out those trends because animals eat what we can’t eat and they turn it into food we can consume.

But as Mason points out, and in this I agree with him, there are many creative ways to build businesses related to farm operations — just as long as we don’t destroy the family farm in the process.

I am adamant about that.

The family farm is the one remaining place that is self-sufficient in terms of its own daily bread.

It is the one place where the seeds of knowledge of how to produce food, from that land, in this specific climate, are passed on through the long apprenticeship process of growing up on the farm.

It is the one place where optimistic, ever-resourceful farmers work with often limited resources of labour or cash, but they create volumes of food. It is the one place where children are raised to do-it-yourself — everything — and where the environment forces you to simply come up with a solution for your problem.

That kind of skill and character development doesn’t happen anywhere else, and no one else in Canada produces such a massive volume of saleable, exportable product with so little staff on so much unpaid overtime.

Citizens, every time you open your mouth to take a bite, every time you get to vote or speak your mind in this democracy, thank your local Canadian farmer for ensuring that you live in peace and with a full belly here in the True North strong and free.

Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a Ponoka freelance columnist.