For more than 50 years, there have been several very large changes in policies that have affected everyone in North America that made some people reflect on the old saying: “when the fox is in charge of guarding the hen house.”
More than a half century ago there was a huge change in crop research from it being done at universities and government research farms to research of developing new varieties handed over to private seed companies. The private companies had been doing seed research for many years anyway and for several years had been hiring the top graduates by paying more than either universities or government departments did.
The government looked at this move as a win-win because they could now sell off some valuable land and cut the research staff. The other large advantage for the government was that most research is expensive and it takes many years to return positive results. By then, there is often a different political party in power and it is that opposition party that gets credit for developing anything that is announced while they are in power even though it was the previous party that provided funding to begin that research.
In the 1960s, farmers were left scratching their heads because the drug companies were starting to buy seed companies.
There would soon be another huge change in funding of all research from a policy of giving government grants to universities (to do basic research and even develop new seed varieties) to a policy of shared funding for research done by universities. Shared funding means that the government would now only pay for a portion of the research and the rest of the funding would have to be found from another source. This other source was usually a pharmaceutical company or other private corporation. This again was a win-win because the government saved a lot of money. Both the private funder and the government wanted results as quickly as possible (less than four years) and the private company now got a major portion of their research paid for by the government that you and I paid for with our tax dollars.
The thing that raises eyebrows here is that most private companies may be more interested in their bottom line than they are about eventual benefits to the public.
Other huge changes occurred in both the marketing and movement of grain. While Canada was engaged in WWII, part of our war effort was supplying grain to countries that couldn’t produce enough crops because of war games tearing up their fields and keeping many of their young farmers fighting instead of farming. Canada then had a lot of control of our railroads and used the trains to move grain from west to east to be loaded onto supply ships. Much of our grain markets then before, during and after the war were in Europe.
The majority of animal agriculture was then and still is in eastern Canada. The crow’s nest federal grain bill then helped subsidize movement of feed grain from west to the eastern farmers.
The marketing of western grains was mostly through the Canadian Wheat Board which was set up and run by farmers, but the control was always under the watchful eye of the federal government.
Private grain merchants made money by both movement and marketing of grains. Some major grain merchants preferred a North-South movement through the Mississippi river system which was maintained by the US government as part of their national security. The grain merchants owned grain elevators beside and grain barges on the Mississippi.
In Canada a lot of grain elevators along the tracks and in the sea ports were owned by the CWB and hence the grain merchants didn’t like either the marketing of grain in Canada (where grain was sold directly from the farmer run wheat pool to other countries or users of grain) or the movement of grain and the grain companies didn’t even get a transport or handling fee.
For more than a half century now, private industry has been known to pay higher wages than most governments. This policy ranges from researchers to accountants and from skilled workers to lawyers. For several decades people have noted a revolving door policy that seems to exist between some private corporations and governments. Since these people are always top people, it appears like either sides are extremely glad to snatch one away from the other. We have noticed some very trusted industry people move both into top government posts like EPA, FDA, Agriculture Canada, Health Canada and other influential government positions. We have also noticed top employees who were department heads from these same government body’s move to private industry into a field that they were quite familiar with.
We would hope that these intelligent, highly paid people would be above divulging private information or influencing future government policy.
We still wonder who’s guarding the hen house?
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon
on land that has been in his
family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
