While in Europe on an agricultural tour about fifty years ago, I got a rude awakening to the haves and the have nots.
As I admired a giant, pristine castle complete with a moat I asked, “Who owns that beautiful castle?” The farmer who farmed there replied, “That’s the landlord’s castle.” When I asked if he (the farmer) lived there the farmer quickly replied, “No, that’s the landlord’s he lives on the French Riviera most of the time, but I did meet him once about six years ago when he spent the weekend at the castle.” I then asked the farmer where he lived. He replied in the end of that 300-year-old barn over there with my wife and three kids.
Like most of the farmers in France, their land belonged to absentee landlords and the farmers only leased the land. The farmers owned the buildings that they were allowed to build on the leased land, as well as the mortgage on them. The farmer could will the lease on the property to the next generation, but most farmers never got the chance to buy the farm.
From medieval and even Roman times kingsmen and tax collectors traveled the countryside and collected their share from peasants and farmers even if they were left penniless and with no food for the winter. If not enough was collected, the people were driven off the land or jailed.
Today, our American farm neighbours are also selling their produce for less than it costs to produce and at the same time encourage producing even more surplus, which continues to keep the prices low.
This price — which is so low that it is less than the COP — allows the food traders to export to many other countries and force their farmers to live in poverty too. During the latest NAFTA trade negotiations Canada, which allowed about 10 per cent of dairy consumption to be imported without import tariffs, was forced to allow even more access to US dairy products while the US only allows three per cent of their dairy consumption to be imported.
The world grain market and price is controlled by only a very small but powerful group of grain merchants. Only lately, when some very predatory trade practices used by our neighbour to the south infuriated the world’s largest grain buyer, was China triggered to stop buying US grain just long enough to cause soybean prices to drop more than two dollars per bushel.
Then China lent the US billions of dollars to bail out the US grain farmers. China has just recently surpassed the US as the world’s largest economy. Even though millions of Chinese people are very poor there are more millionaires in China than in South America, Central America, and North America combined. China has also surpassed the US as the number one country in the world for agricultural research.
Before the last Great War, the leader of Germany began expanding its borders by taking over some weaker, close neighbours like Prussia. The leader of Japan began to take over surrounding islands to better fortify itself. Italy found itself under a dictatorship.
It took the world six years, hundreds of thousands of lives and untold billions of dollars to get that mess cleaned up!
Lately we have watched as Russia expanded its territory to get another sea port, more excellent land, and oil. We have observed North Korea grow its military and nuclear arsenal as many of its people starve. We have watched as the US used very predatory trade practices to bully the rest of the world into submission while their farmers are so desperate that the rate of suicide in the farm community is higher that the armed forces.
It was once said, “A nation that cannot control its own food supply and feed itself is a very weak nation!” Let’s not let that happen in Canada.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon
on land that has been in his
family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
