The farming situation continues to deteriorate. While beef prices are up moderately, pork prices continue at all time lows. What the farmer receives for product still doesn't even come close to covering the bills, it is still an insult to the profession and I'm confused.

Where are the cries of indignation? Where are the screams of outrage that this can be done with no intervention? How can an industry, which is already ignored and disrespected, sit by and allow this to happen to absolutely no reaction? There are people for whom the obscenely low prices being paid for beef and pork is the death knell of their farms. Where are they? How can they passively permit this indignity, this termination of their livelihood to occur? Who has the right to conspire to reduce prices and to destroy an entire sector of our community? Will they (farmers) react when they have to go to the foodbanks?

With all the farming organizations that abound, why does it appear that nothing is being done? Have the farmers of this country been so brow-beaten and abused that their spirit is broken and they don't think it's worth fighting for their lifestyle or their living? Or, do they believe that neither government or the public really care?

So many questions and yet not one definitive answer.

What if every farmer did what they show in that dairy commercial? Simply not get up in the morning. What if there were no Canadian farm products available to the general public? Would the governments simply import enough food stuffs from other countries and write off Canadian farming as a bad venture and not encourage any farming at all? Depend entirely on imported products to feed the public? I'm certain that this move would be applauded by any number of other countries that actually view agricultural products as a viable and exportable commodity. There must be other countries in the world that respect what their farmers do. Other countries that actually encourage farming, that support it.

Somewhere, someone must realize the importance of what farmers do. Even in Venezuala the banks have been told that if they don't conform to the government expectations of lower rates and easier lending attitudes towards farmers, they will be taken over by the current government.

Perhaps Canadian farmers should all emigrate there? After all, we're experts in our fields, have had years of training, sometimes generations worth. We understand the land and our livestock. These are marketable abilities. Somewhere there must be someone else, some other government and public who values these qualities. Just not in Canada.

I simply don't know how this could be allowed to happen. Is the contribution that agriculture makes to our economy so insignificant that it can be ignored? Are the only farmers who are valued the ones who have farmers markets and petting zoos? The rest of us, who have chosen to simply farm and not pursue "niche" markets, don't provide any product of significant value to the denizens of this country? But wait, we can't provide enough seminola wheat for the rest of the world and everyone is talking about the great bushel price for wheat.

But are these farmers getting a fair return to cover the cost of their equipment, the cost of fertilizer, all the other costs involved with farming not to mention their time, for over the years?

I'm sure they can grow seminola wheat in China or Russia, so no need to worry about our farmers. They can subsist on a pittance, they're tough. I mean, they're Canadian farmers, they're used to being taken for granted and being ignored by the governments. They'll soldier on, until the bank takes the farm. Then, fools that they are, they may even try to get enough money together to actually buy another farm and do it again.

Oh those crazy canucks! They just don't know when to quit, do they?

Heather Foster

Orangeville