Allocation of Resources

I don't know where that journalist was going with this.

If the point is that poor people in China and India are now able and willing to pay more for food, and that this is driving up food prices in rich countries, then it's hard to get overly upset about it. ('Hey, would it be too much of an inconvenience to go back to the part where you guys were starving?')

If the point is the switch to ethanol, then the solution is pretty obvious: dump the ethanol subsidies.

[url=http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/02/ethanol_subsidi.html]Jim Hamilton provides the smackdown:[/url]

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Growth of ethanol as a fuel source in the United States has resulted from tremendous subsidies at the federal, state, and local level... The IISD estimated that such subsidies currently sum to $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon of ethanol.

What this means is that the economic value of the resources that are used to produce a gallon of ethanol are nearly 50% greater than the value of the product to the consumers. Some have argued that ethanol is actually a net energy loss, requiring more energy in the various inputs than is contained in the final product, though the U.S. Department of Energy and a National Academy of Sciences study have endorsed the claim that there is some modest energy gain. But even assuming that ethanol does effectively add slightly to our net energy supplies, what sense does it make to pay attention only to the inputs of energy that are required in order to produce ethanol from corn, acting as if the inputs of land, labor, and capital can be valued at zero?

With 14% of the 2005 corn crop already going to ethanol production, devoting even more of the crop to making ethanol means higher prices for corn-dependent products ranging from soft drinks to bacon. The price of tortillas in Mexico rose 14% last year, a significant hardship for those who depend on corn as their dietary staple.

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Ah. So the problem really is that people who were once were poor now wish to buy food that is bad for them. Good catch!

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Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
[b]Ah. So the problem really is that people who were once were poor now wish to buy food that is bad for them. Good catch![/b]

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China was a fourth world basket case in the 1950's. By 1976, China's infant mortality was better than India's rate today. That wasn't neo-Liberal voodoo. That was Mao.

Prior to giving the last emperor and U.S.-backed Chiang Kai-shek the heave-ho, it was difficult for the Chinese to appreciate life past the age of 30. According to World Bank statistics, Chinese life expectancy doubled during Mao's time, not Deng Xio Ping and not due to the Liberal capitalism that followed.

Jerry West wrote in [url=http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=006668]the previous thread (carbon tax)[/url]

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There is more to quality of life that what you mention. Open space, biodiversity, replenishment of endangered species and low population densities are also desireable.

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It’s certainly desirable in terms of population density. But clearly, as the info I linked to shows, the main factor in ensuring sustainability is not so much the number of people out there as it is how they (we) interact both with one another and our environment.

As others have pointed out already, the fact is our very anti-democratic and unsustainable fundamentally capitalistic economies, which focus on accumulation of wealth and power by various elites via exploiting labour at the expense of people’s needs or wants, the commoditization of everything and everyone to service the above process and the monopolization over markets and control over governments to ensure this process is maintained, is the main cause of ecological harm.

It’s also one reason why so many people in poorer countries are forced to have more kids: high infant and child mortality, low wages and poverty, scarcity of needed goods and services, wars and threats of wars, and grossly inadequate or non-existent social safety nets or retirement security. More kids are often seen as a way to increase household income and pool resources to try to survive these conditions—especially where the parents get older.

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And the fact remains, the fewer the number of people making demands on a system the more there is to go around and the more tolerance that system has for abuse.

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That’s numerically true. But as we see today, and have seen throughout history, it’s that abuse that is the main source of the problems. It shows that, while sadly all economies are mainly capitalist-dominated in various forms, when we look at the more socialistic-influenced economies of, for example, Scandinavia, which has some of the best ecological practices in the world, we see higher living standards and greater freedoms and greater security for people.

That tells me that greater ecological sustainability compliments greater freedoms, higher living standards, and better security of life and more opportunities, and vise versa.

Jerry West wrote:

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Coming from an agricultural background I would say that food prices in the developed world have been too low for a long time.

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And I would disagree with this one big time. If food prices had been “too low,” we would not see 60 million people die of starvation each year.

If food prices had been “too low,” we would not see huge mega-monopoly food chains and production firms trading public stock for big bucks and retaining their influence over everything.

If food prices had been “too low,” we would not see huge sums of food wasted or buried or stored just to keep the price up.

Please don’t hand me the [url=http://unix.dfn.org/printer_TheFutilityofAgriculturalSubsidiesandTariffs... neo-Lib/neo-Con BS [/url] about how raising prices will spur all sorts of food production to feed everyone, because it is crapola. Overall across the globe it appears [url=http://www.foodfirst.org/backgrounders/subsidies]food over-production[/url] is a huge problem. The fact that much of that gets dumped in order to keep the prices from falling is a true crime against humanity.

In most Third World and other starvation-wracked economies, people are simply too poor to buy food—much of which would need to be imported, and therefore based on global commodity pricing. They would likely be able to produce food much cheaper if they could do it on a large scale domestically or locally. But thanks largely to the damaging effects of decades of [url=http://academic.umf.maine.edu/~erb/classes/3wp2.htm]colonial/imperial capitalistic economics[/url], with its rape-and-run/use-and-toss practices, much of the local capacity in these economies has been [url=http://www.phmovement.org/pubs/issuepapers/hong03.html]largely wiped out[/url].

The main thing that has spared North America and Western Europe from similar conditions (or, more accurately, getting out of what were fairly common conditions prior to the huge social reforms of the mid-20th century), is lavish use of a whole series of [url=http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0802771.html]agricultural subsidies[/url]—which were brought in exactly to alleviate the starvation and malnutrition, especially in the urban centers of industrialized capitalist economies.

I know that these have become highly problematic and are seen as a damaging barrier to trade, especially with [url=http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/role/globalact/int-inst/2002/0827subsid... countries that see a future in expanding food exports [/url] to the supposedly big lucrative markets in high industrialized economies.

But eliminating those subsidies would cause huge retail price increases and lead us right back to the pre-New Deal starvation days of the past, and would reduce consumer markets for food, due to so many people not being able to afford to purchase anywhere near as much as now, thereby shrinking potential markets for Third World food.

So why can’t the Third World countries subsidize their agriculture or, better yet, re-build what’s been destroyed?

Mainly, it’s because those same capitalistic colonial/imperial forces, or their inheritors, are still in control—like the IMF and the World Bank, which have squeezed many of these nations with such [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/2036019.stm]crippling debt and vicious "structural adjustment" scams to make them pay it forever[/url], they can’t afford to do anything else.

In fact, many of these starvation-wracked countries are literally rationing and [url=http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/daniel_davies/2006/07/dumping_dumpin... their own populations even further in order to export food [/url]to more profitable industrialized markets. So much for their hopes in the supposed prosperity in exporting food (especially since that seems to mainly benefit the various [url=http://themanitoban.com/2003-2004/1203/co_05.html]capitalistic power cliques in these countries[/url], not the farmers or the community).

SO the question is not that food prices are too low; or even how effective subsidies are or their side-effects. Rather, it’s where’s most of the money going? It’s not a non-profit or cooperative socialistic industry. Obviously it’s not the starving people. It’s not the farmers or farm workers. It’s not most of the subsidizing governments, since they’re actually paying out on this. SO who’s getting it?

[url=http://www.greenpartysask.ca/GPS_Bulletin_Board/Agribusiness_Profits.htm... for yourself[/url]

It seems clear to me that one of the biggest parts of the solution to world hunger is that of being able to efficiently produce and distribute fresh quality food in sufficient quantity at affordable rates to local markets. That means putting an emphasis on local cooperative and community economic development, not mega corporate or state capitalism or variations of either, and their failed prescriptions for everything.

Some interesting efforts on these:

[url=http://www.fao.org/docrep/W6199T/w6199t12.htm]Land democratization [/url]

[url=http://www.ernac.net/cirkel/]Agri-coop research (registration required)[/url]

[url=http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2006/10/farmers_coopera.html]... Co-ops[/url]

[ 23 June 2007: Message edited by: Steppenwolf Allende ]

Phonz wrote:

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But that's in the undeveloped world. In the developed world, we have too much food -- and its resultant obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart disease. Couldn't these two half-world problems be solved somehow?

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This is a very good question, because it deals with yet another horrific side effect of monopoly capitalism, especially in the food industry: cheap lousy subsidized junk food pushed via mass consumerism.

[url=http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/22/philpott/]Tax-subsidized Ill-Health[/url]

[url=http://www.sugarshockblog.com/junk_food_marketing_advertising/index.html... Pushes Junk Food[/url]

[url=http://banzhaf.net/docs/sidney.html]Fat People, Fat Foods, Fat Profits--and a Fat Fight-back[/url]

The solution, I think, at least in part, relates to the last paragraph in the last post I made here:

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It seems clear to me that one of the biggest parts of the solution to world hunger is that of being able to efficiently produce and distribute fresh quality food in sufficient quantity at affordable rates to local markets. That means putting an emphasis on local cooperative and community economic development, not mega corporate or state capitalism or variations of either, and their failed prescriptions for everything.

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Try to check out the movie [url=http://www.supersizeme.com/][i]Supersize Me[/i][/url], if you haven’t seen it already. It’s a funny-but-scary poke at the fast food industry.

Stephen, the problem isn't you or I paying more for food The problem is for those who can barely afford food as it is, both in rich and poor countries, but especially in poor countries. And yes, we should kill ethanol subsidies. The emissions from the tailpipe are virtually the same, and when you consider that fossil fuels are being used in the farming process, I can't see the total impact being much better than just using oil.

(The above is for corn ethanol, at least. I've read that sugar cane ethanol is a bit of a better deal, at least.)

Farmpunk, I'm not sure why you're trying to blame this on unionized government workers. The workers take their orders from non-unionized management, who takes their orders from (right wing Liberal and Conservative) governments. If the government told them to research and support sustainable agriculture, that would be their job and they'd do it. The problem is that governments are in the pockets of agribusiness, and with trade agreements designed to stop governments from doing anything that could have any negative impact on corporate profits.

The Farmpunk wrote:

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Unfortunatly I have to blame, in addition to the consumers, also the bureaucrats (unionized, ahem) who run the various departments tied to food-ag in Canada for our brainless approach to domestic food production and consumption.

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Two points. First, blaming the "unionized ahem" workers is crazy, since it's these people who do the useful work of coordinating, inspecting and enforcing (as much as they can) health standards, monitoring impact, assessing market changes, tracking inventory, etc. They aren't to blame for anything.

The much more capitalist-minded senior bureaucrats and corporate executives in the government ministries, including agriculture, who are often corporate flunkies themselves, are the ones consistently buggering up the process by defending the corporate special interests out there, along with their own money-grubbing power-grabbing agendas (as you may already know, I consistently criticize sate capitalism in our public sector, as well as in the economies of nations overall).

Second, blaming consumers is also way off base, since most people are denied easy access to food-related information, including around health issues, while they are constantly being bombarded non-stop by corporate propaganda via advertising and the major media.

Sure, consumers "make choices," but they are doing so under an oppressive regime where their choices are being influenced and manipulated for the benefit of corporate capitalist interests--not in a free environment where their own interests and those of the broader community are openly debated on equal terms and all info is readily available.

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In fact, I'd suggest there is a strong desire to maintain the status quo, which we all know is unsustainable, if for no other reason that many office jobs will be lost (unionized jobs, cough), many high paying, white collar people who currently work for the public, in the ag sector.

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With due respect, this is, to use an appropriate industry term, hogwash.

First, as said, there should, and likely will, always be union jobs for government agricultural workers and professionals in the form of monitoring, developing standards and enforcing them, assessing markets, etc. Actually, I think we should create more union jobs doing this work (especially food health and safety, quality control, monitoring and enforcing working conditions, farmer education and training, etc.).

Second, it's clear, as just mentioned, that the desire to maintain the status quo and preserve the capitalistic bureaucratic power structures over the process comes from the senior bosses and bureaucrats, executive managers, consultants, etc. themselves--not the union cough workers.

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S-A blames capitalism, and the system isn't helping. But neither are our ag various departments, entirely publically subsidized, working for Us but I would suggest working for agri-business and themselves.

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They are SUPPOSED to be working for us. But the fact that the public sector is structured very much in the corporate capitalist mold, the bosses and senior bureaucrats are awarded with a large degree of dictatorial power and fairly limited accountability (hence the big fat salaries and bonuses they pay themselves at everyone else's expense--while screwing and laying off the productive union workers under their elite control).

SO they obviously begin to develop a class interest of their own and begin to either set agendas outright or unduly influence the agendas set by governments to advance their own capitalistic power interests first and foremost.

That's why, from a socialistic perspective, these institutions are predominantly capitalistic influenced, even though they are public sector, and need to be democratized in order to remove that predominant influence.

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The US, on the other hand subsidizes the production of commodities like corn and soybeans, maybe cotton. But fruit and vegetables are "specialty crops", and are not subsidized. Ag department policy.

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This is exactly why you can go across the border out here where I live, and see milk, eggs and various meat products being sold at half the retail price as in Canada (which is why many Canadians go there to shop), while many other products, like many vegetables and certain canned goods, etc., cost about the same.

This is like talking to children.

No, worse. Because children listen and learn.

Dogbert: of the people I know involved in the ag political process, and I humbly submit I know more than most, it is decidedly not the politician's fault. Farming issues are never dealt with properly because if a pol uses it as a local plank, it will backfire (Pol to Ag Ministry: Let's change this around! Ministry: That's bad for business). Because we have a comfortable status quo for a massive industry, public and private, that cares not a whit about farmers or consumers. I'm suggesting the current ag policy in Canada is to have taxpayers pay for argi-business, or at least create an environment that is agri-business friendly. NAFTA, anyone? And that the ag departments are partners in crime with business interests on the food file. How in fuck could it be otherwise?

Think about it, S-A. You're arguing for everything but paying people to grow the food for the public. That makes sense to me how? Safety? Perhaps you refer to the Food Inspection Agency. Have you ever dealt with those assholes on an ag-producer's level? Do you realize that increased levels of "food safety" for Canadian farmers is a boon for multi-megas?

I love this "coming down on the unions" bit. I agree, somewhat, and feel for the pain of the lefties out there who have to argue in favour of unions, no matter what. Perhaps what is needed is a ratio of public servants to farmers, nationwide, counting federal ministries (thinking here, for a second, and just a second, that ag doesn't impact most health-environment related departments - why confuse the poor bureaucrats?), then I think we'd see the beginning of the problem.

But I know who gets benefits, vacation pay, and, gasp, security...?

So everyone wants me to grow cheap food, and pass it around like popcorn. For free.

Did I mention that land is taxed? That as land prices increase in certain warm, pretty parts of Southern Ontario (ditto for other provinces as well, I bet; the farmer I refered to earlier paid 30 grand per acre for his land...), my taxes go up because of land values. Not because of what I can do with the land. Speculation. Capitalism. Urban sprawl. So I have bills to pay my land can't cash.

But, yes, I'm too hard on the ag unionized. I just wish I had some of the same perks. Jealous, I guess.

The Farmpunk wrote:

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This is like talking to children.
No, worse. Because children listen and learn.

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Really? So tell me, super brain, why posting some facts, links, info and some perspectives you obviously hadn't considered constitutes "talking to children" or worse.

It seems, with your attitude here, you're the one who doesn't want to listen to anyone else or learn.

I read your posts because, as a labour unionist and socialist, I respect the work you do as a farmer. Why can't you do the same?

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Think about it, S-A. You're arguing for everything but paying people to grow the food for the public.

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See what I mean. Why don't you actually read what I post BEFORE you dismiss it as garbage.

The examples I linked to and quoted on how to help resolve the situation are, in part, saying just THAT!

Why do you think the original agricultural reform programs of the New Deal in the 1930s in the US were such a big hit for farmers? Because they were based, in part, on paying farmer to grow food. That alleviated starvation in the cities and poverty in the country.

You don't need to go that far. Just look at the CCF/NDP legacy of cooperatives, wheat pools and other democratic socialistic community business ventures that did the same thing, plus empowered farmers giving them some autonomy and independence from and leverage against the big food cartels, while helping pull the prairies out of the worst depression in history.

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I love this "coming down on the unions" bit. I agree, somewhat, and feel for the pain of the lefties out there who have to argue in favour of unions, no matter what.

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Hey Super brain. What I posted about unions, including the federal government workers, isn't some feel-good ideology. It's historic and economic fact.

That fact is without the hard work of those agricultural ministry workers doing just about everything except the actual farming and related work, there wouldn't be much of an infrastructure to keep the industry running, would it.

And no, despite your insistence, it's not the union workers there who are making policy decisions without input or accountability and imposing them on farmers.

It's clearly the senior hacks and corporate flunkies doing this--and they are more about enriching and empowering themselves further off the backs of the union workers' legitimate jobs than they are about helping farmers or protecting the public (that's why it's called state capitalism).

And, BTW, those ag reforms mentioned above that helped the small farmers survive and feed the people were fought for and won by the labour movement and labour-backed political forces, like the NDP/CC etc.

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But, yes, I'm too hard on the ag unionized. I just wish I had some of the same perks. Jealous, I gues

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Now look who's being childish.

First, what they have aren't perks. They are legitimate and essential wage rates and benefits needed to survive and life, at least marginally, with some decency and respect.

Being jealous is childish and a waste of time. The federal government workers organized and worked, fought, bargained, struck, etc. to win those conditions.

Many farmers, both here and abroad, have done and are doing the same thing. On of the sources I linked to in the other posts is the [url=http://www.nfu.ca/]National Farmers Union[/url].

Why don't you check them out and see what they're up to and what you think, instead of hanging around here and playing helpless?

S-A, which of the ten or so links you've provided thus far is petitioning to give me a "legitimate and essential wage rate and benefits needed to survive and life, at least marginally, with some decency and respect...."? I get bogged down whenever I see someone link to Supersize Me. Gasp, fast food is bad for us and is part of the industrial food chain! Revolution!

Here's a link I like to check out from time to time: [url=http://www.agrunion.com/en/index.html.]http://www.agrunion.com/en/index.... Put yourself in my shoes, S-A, reflect back on the most basic farmer issue, income (ask the NFU about this issue), and again explain to me how my Super Brain is missing the point.

I thought socialist thought and policy was supposed to work for everyone. Why doesn't the ag union, 8000 strong, have as a plank that farmers should be supported on an equal level to their publically supported selves?

Or maybe they'll just help implement another horrifically run program like CAIS (ask Shelia Fraser how well that program is being implemented). Or be an on farm foot soldier for the FIA (I personally think the FIA should inspect imported goods as stringently, on a production level, as they do the domestic... would make for a nice trip to Mexico, China, Chile).

I have, I'm afraid, sidetracked this thread somewhat with my "childish" rants.

But as far as allocation of resources go, the one that concerns me quite a lot is money. Can't do business without it, and it's hard to grow food and make it. It's a strange situation to have this enourmous bureaucracy for a failing industry, which also happens to be essential, and one which has been proven to be totally corrupted by the system and the ag status quo. It's hard for me to get my head around that.

Dogbert, S-A, I'm not really cursing salaried Ministry zombies on a daily basis. They're working, I'm working. We all know the system sucks but the changes ain't happening. The workers don't direct policy and no one listens to farmers. There's a disconnection somewhere in there that both sides are apparently unable to change, for whatever reason.

Glad you brought up the NFU, S-A. I've been trying to get ahold of them for a while now and I've yet to get a response. Maybe you have an NFU connection.

Time to go make it rain.

Hmm, I had assumed the point would be self-evident, Fidel.

8000 member Agriculture Union, and how many farmers belong? What are the aims of the Ag Union? I applaud them for organizing themselves and working for their members. But that doesn't mean I have to swallow their mandate whole when I'm the sucker broiling in the sun.

Or doesn't agriculture include farmers?

So, in terms of resource allocation, the public funds entrusted to the various ag ministries (and ag related industries, like the Department of National Defense: [url=http://www.agrunion.com/en/membership.html)]http://www.agrunion.com/en/membership.html)[/url] and implemented by the many ag sector pubic servants, is a resource unto itself. A large sum of capital, if you like, presumably invested for the good of us all, as food consumers. I submit that good farming practices aren't policy, that our food supply system is over-regulated and beneficial to big business (we all know how interested agr-business is in quality and sustainabilty, right?), and that the bureaucracy isn't helping. Neither are farmers, especially the ones cashing in on government programs like CAIS.

I accept my share of the blame, as well, for not being involved enough, not paying enough attention to ag developments, not working harder to give a better ground level view of what's happening and for being slightly pissed off that my work forms the basis of someone else's guarenteed annual salary. As a labourer, I should know better than to be treated fairly by our government or business. I'm working on bettering those situations currently, but it's a tough row to hoe.

I'll keep that in mind, Fidel.

It really wouldn't take much investment from the public sector to start to turn things around. Why not have a grant program (because outright cash payments would violate trade agreements, likely), or hire willing farmers to grow food for the many food banks in Canada: [url=http://www.cafb-acba.ca/english/What'sNew-FactsandStatistics.html.]http://www.cafb-acba.ca/english/What'sNew-FactsandStatistics.html.[/url] The ag ministry could support, or create such a program easily, and be in charge of the implementation. Organic, biodynamic, pasture based, conventional, whatever, guarentee some form of financial backing and tie it in with educational programs: in a sense re-teaching farmers to grow food. The only thing growing wheat and corn and soybeans teaches is how to drive a tractor and fix equipment.

The cynic in me thinks that what would happen is an outcry about "free quality food". But I don't like to think about that.

[url=http://www.cafb-acba.ca/english/What'sNew-FactsandStatistics.html]Hungercount Provincial Results[/url]

[url=http://www.agrunion.com/en/membership.html]Agriculture Union Membership.[/url]

Did that work?

Well don't do anything rash like voting NDP, because you're sure to see those things happen with an old line party government at some point - maybe during another 42 consecutive years of conservative government racking up a almost a billion dollars a year in provincial debt for every year in power and through the best "colder war" economies we'll have ever had. Or perhaps a national food plan will finally be realized during another 65 years of federal Liberals at the helm with a ten year-long Brian Baloney part sandwich break part deux somewhere along the line. And then you'll be completely justified in blaming the NDP and unions for everything from FTA-NAFTA to unusually warm and dry weather. In the mean time, we'll keep our fingers crossed for all of Ontario's struggling farmers, and the 120 000 laid off manufacturing and forestry workers, and for way too many children living in poverty, and for native rights and so on and so on

[ 26 June 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Imagine the outrage of the bobbing heads on CNN, FOX, and their many mimics if it could have been reported that poor Iraqis were starving so that food could be grown to feed Saddam's fleet of vehicles.

And here we have a culture that is diverting food crops to feed cars. Of course that's our food, too. And we are not the poorest. Rain forests are being cleared by chainsaw and fire in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, and other countries to produce palm oil to power cars. And those forests are an integral part of a global ecosystem, not just the poor's ecosystem.

And our agricultural system has been, and is being, repositioned for global markets and is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels to produce crops. When we hit that brick wall, what do we, the not poor eat? Where will the three million or so in and around Toronto get their groceries from?

Certainly we are not paying more for food and investing in ethanol and exporting palm oil over thousands of miles because we expect the supply of cheap, crude oil to remain plentiful into the foreseeable future.

I live in farm country. Some farmers I have a lot of respect for. Some farmers have absolutely no respect for the land. But that's not my point. I just wanted to say it. Ontario farmers produce, I think, some of the best strawberries in the world. They aren't as big or as red as some of those imported varieties, but they have loads more flavor. And here in farm country, surrounded by strawberries, I can visit grocery stores, the very same ones the farmers themselves shop at, and not find any Ontario strawberries.

A recent story:

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Strawberry fields forever? Maybe not in Ontario.

The farmers who bring you Ontario's sweet strawberries say they are slowly being crushed by foreign imports brought in by big grocery chains.

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[url=http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/06/23/4283919-sun.html]http://cn...

The thing, in my mind, is that we have been sold a bill of goods by the powers that be who are firmly in the back pockets of global corporations. We have been conditioned to confuse cheap prices with value and to not value, except as an artificial commodity packaged by a Starfucks or some evangelical church, community, relationships, interdependence, and sustainability.

I don't know if you read the census report on Ontario farms. It was quite revealing. What was more revealing, though, was the political response to it. I think it was Ernie Hardeman who shrugged it off as a good thing. For him, I suppose it is a good thing. Fewer family farms, fewer farming communities, fewer constituents and pesky phone calls but much bigger campaign contributions. For him it is all win-win.

F-M, agreed. Farmers aren't always a wholesome bunch. Farming a chicken barn is an industrialized process. It's techy and efficient but is separate from the natural process. Similarly, corn and soybean cultivation is hardly a skilled trade, other than the mechanical aspects.

Ontario strawberries are good. We used to grow them, quite a lot in the past. A fairly good cash crop, but enourmous work to do working in a family farm situation. Pick Your Own was good to us before consumers got lazy and decided they wanted the berries picked for them, cost not such an issue. And with the labour shortage around here, the idea of bringing in migrant labour to pick berries didn't appeal. So, no more berries here.

Free-Radical. To repeat some of my earlier comments and comments from other threads: food production in NA is not subsidized. Corn and soybeans (wheat, as well) are industrial products and should be regarded as such. US ag policy is that fruit and vegetables are "specialty crops", and are not directly subsidized.

I'd be more than happy to grow a hundred hectares of mixed vegetables instead of corn and soybeans. But there's a dead certainty that I wouldn't be able to sell that produce to cover the input costs. If I could sell that produce at all. Food is hard to give away in rural southern Ontario. Corn and soybeans and wheat always have a price, always have a buyer, it's a set reliable market. Not always the best money, but it's that economic backstop that farmers crave and need.

F-M, hah, Hardeman. What a dunce. He's one of the worst Cons out there, a completely useless mouthpiece speaking for no one and doing little about anything important in a rual riding. I assume he must have business connections, or he's simply riding the rural backlash against the percieved Liberal-NDP urban bias. Hardeman regularly sends out these moronic fact sheets, and info papers on what he's doing (not much) and what the government is doing. He had the class to send out an info paper on gun control, the registry, bill C-68 (I think), at the same time of the Virginia shootings. My Time magazine featuring that story arrived the same day as Hardeman's gun pandering propaganda.

Jerry, I thought the rise in tortilla price was fueled totally by market speculation. A case of reality not mattering to the market profiteers. There will be revolution in Mexico over tortillas before anything else.

Like you say, beside the point. Hybrid corn is used in so many industrial products they're hard to list. High-fructose sugar is simply one of many uses.

Jerry is correct in how fresh food is marketed. I have first hand experience of this every season, as I try to peddle sweet corn and other veggies by the road. And, on a larger scale, there is enourmous wasteage of fresh Ontario produce. The buyers, the middlemen, who simply turn the produce over and make a profit on it, have very high standards. Jerry mentions cantaloup, but the same applies to any other fresh fruit or vegetable. A dime sized mark on a squash means it will stay in the field.

This, I'm afraid, brings me back to my consumer bitch. The consumers need to educate themselves. The farmers and farm lobby groups can only do so much. It's the people buying the food who have the power, in the end. Pile it high and sell it cheap hasn't worked very well, as a policy.

Fidel, I've often thought that a strong company could be formed to gather low cost produce from down south and ship it up north. It's a realistic same day delivery. A farmer-trucker co-operative.

I often have customers stop in and buy large batchs of sweetcorn, and then they tell me they're going up north (whatver that term means) to re-sell it.

If you're seeing moldy strawberries from Ontario, part of the problem is that the strawberry region has been quite dry. Berries obviously need water. Irrigation messes with the life cycle, and quality, of a berry.

Or you could just be getting second hand, picked over, old GTA produce.