Corporate bribery?

[grassfarmer]

I got a phone call today inviting me to view some crop plots out near Rocky. I was told the date and that it would take about 2 hours to walk through and fill in the necessary questionnaire afterwards. AND they would pay me $75 for my time!!

This was a novel idea so I told the girl to continue with the details.
After asking if I was in the beef business etc etc the "qualifying" questions turned to how much land I had suffering from weeds and brush encroachment. When I answered that I didn't have any intention of getting involved in the junk science of selectively spraying herbicide on my land to control supposed weed problems she denied any knowledge of what the plots were about or which company was behind the program. It was patently obvious to me that it was the Grazon or Remedy makers.
Why on earth would they pay you to view their test results? - is it simple bribery by corporate America to get hundreds of signed references from producers about their products. Or is it about them gaining regulatory approval for a new product that Cowman was hinting they were working on?
I have no interest in allowing these drug parasites a foothold in my business to further reduce my income so I sent them packing. I'm not for sale to corporate America - for $75 or any other price.

[WoolyBear]

I think the first thing I would ask for was to see the money, then the plots.

Anytime I can take my "much better 1/2" out for supper on someone elses dime, I will...... and enjoy the fact that if I tell a fib or two, an American company is all the better. About 95% of the time when we leave the farm (aside from getting parts) is to attend something free. It might be an auction sale, a chemical meeting, or someother farm related meeting.

I have never been a fan of telephone surveys. Especially the ones that waste 5 minutes of my time, only to inform me that my "size" category was full, or my acrerage of wheat wasn't significant enough. Have you noticed that most chemical rebates now require you to use such and such on atleast 320 acres? Take all of my acres, divide by 320 and I would if I only grew 3 crops and sprayed them with 2 chemicals. Not good
to maintain the same "rotation" year in year out if all you are doing is farming the rebates.

I admire you conviction grassfarmer........I do the same most of the time. And ALL THE TIME with Stats Can

[farmers_son]

Organizations often use peer groups for product development. Paticipants often but not always get paid for taking part and the companies benefit from the opinions that are expressed. I am sure you would have been able to provide them some useful insights had you participated as I do not see you as being shy with your opinions.

I took part in a peer group years ago when Agri-ville was being put together and have been involved with others as well. I do not recall that the Agri-ville people paid their group participants so I guess no bribery there. There might have been sandwiches. I doubt $75 dollars could be considered bribery however, it is a way to say thank you for participating.

You might be wrong to assume chemical companies are American. Bayer and others like them are based in Europe.

[farmers_son]

Participating is one thing but if it involves being inundated with telephone calls, letters etc. pressuring to purchase products then I would have to agree with grassfarmer and tell them to keep their money etc.

I guess its not much different than the pharmaceutal companies that pay to have our local vet host his clients at a nice dinner after which we listen to their pitch for their products, or the open house at the local feed shop where the livestock handling equipment manufacturer buys the donuts and the sales pitch is free !!!

[cakadu]

I would be hesitant as well grassfarmer and it would be along the lines of wondering what would be in store for me in the future in terms of signing up.

Quite often, as producers, we are expected and even encouraged at times, to come and sit at the table and offer opinions on various things. The Ag Summit comes to mind as one such event - despite the fact it lasted 2 years. When we do go and participate, quite often we are not on the same playing field as the others in the room and by that I mean some are there because it is a function of there job and are getting paid to be there. As a producer that isn't always the case. Companies, organizations and even the government realizes that as producers it is not always easy for us to get away and nobody is paying us to be there. The feeling that sometimes permeates a room is that your opinion is not as valid because you are sitting there for "free." This could be a step for wanting to pay for your time, even though there could be additional strings attached. Focus groups are often compensated for their time, as farmers_son has stated.

[cowman]

I don't believe it ever hurts to take a look? Especially if you are getting paid! Who knows, you might actually see something that makes sense.
If nothing else you get to see what the opposition is doing and get out and talk with fellow producers and see what they think?
Personally I always try to keep an open mind and I never miss an opportunity to see how the other guy does it.

[silverback]

Why would you pass up an opportunity to get paid, drink their beer, and then debate how bad (or good?) their product or ideas are?

If you believe that strongly that they are greedy, self serving companies, why not get in their face and let them try and convince you otherwise. That is the best way to get your point to them, no?

[silverback]

Linda, the Ag Summit process did involve individuals who were geting paid as government staff, some elected officials were being paid a honoraium for attending but there were numerous volunteers involved as well. I was one of them, and in my view the volunteers like Harvey Buckley and Bob Anderson were the ones that made a difference.
I always feel that if my opinion is worth anything I should be willing to give it without expecting to be paid compensation for doing so.

[cakadu]

I understand about the AG Summit process all too well. I was one who chaired a team, was project manager for another and sat on 3 more teams because I believed in what the Ag Summit was supposed to do.

It came out of my own pocket and I strongly believe in giving back. There are times though when I think that my volunteer work has ended up becoming a detriment because I have worked for "free" for so long. While people like to see volunteer work on a resume, it doesn't amount to the same thing as paid work, even though one may have had responsibilities etc.

[cakadu]

I did feel that the Ag Summit was beaurocratically driven to some extent but once we had our team focused on issues things went well enough even though we had some major differences with the co-chairs. That was the one thing that I never did understand, is how the co-chairs or chairs of the various action teams were selected. We had some excellent people on our team and several excellent potential chairs.

[cakadu]

There were several methods for choosing the chairs that I'm aware of. A couple of them stood up and said that they would like to be chairs and one or two of the co-chairs stepped up about a year into the process, others of them were picked because they were deemed to be the one to lead and others like myself were asked to step into the role later in the game. Which team was it that you were on - it was LUCAT wasn't it? I know the environmental team was on top of things right out of the gate and never looked back.

Actually, at the start of the process there were very few government people involved. It wasn't until the major reshuffle was happening that many of them got onto teams as a means of helping to justify their positions. In some cases, the team was more government folk - provincial and municipal - than it was industry. Just the way it ends up sometimes.

I think overall the teams felt that they had accomplished the goals that they had set out. There should be a retrospective coming out at some stage on the Ag Summit - 5 years later - as the chairs have been interviewed over the past couple of months. I don't know when it is going to be coming out - we weren't given that information, but when I am, I will post it here so people can have a look.

[Horse]

Cacadu was this the workshop for rural alta, I was asked to sit on that one but declined because it is my experence that this govmt always has thier answer and then asks the question ,I Wonder how many studies are sitting on the shelf never opened.
That way the govmt can always say they studied the situitation whitch is all B.S. , now my name isnt worth much but I wont let them use it on the bottom of a report that they didnt even look at IE The Thurber report on crown land , The focus 2000 and quite a few more.

[cakadu]

Horse there have been several of these types of things over the last few years so I'm not sure which one you are referring to. The actual AG Summit was started in 2000 and was an effort by the Agriculture and Food Council and Alberta Agriculture. There were several months of meetings with various stakeholders across the province i.e. biotechnology, rural development, free market access, sessions for processors etc. This was done between about January and June 2000, thereafter the action teams were put into place, of which there were 13 in total, with a couple of them being merged along the way because it was felt that they had many similarities.

One big conference was held - The Land Supports Us All in January 2002, which was a really good conference and the organizers deserve a lot of credit for an excellent overview of where we needed to go.

At the end of March 2002, the work of the action teams was completed and it was turned over to Agrivantage - an industry, Alberta Agriculture and Agriculture and Food Council group that then took all of the reports and went through them to sort them into categories and come up with suggestions on how to go into the future. Agrivantage wrapped up late 2004 and the Ag and Food Council team is now moving forward with some recommendations from the province. There is a team set up to deal with the future. Where that is at I'm not sure as there is to be something released but I don't know when.

Just after the AG Summit, there was the Growth Summit and the Rural Development Initiative and Research and Development Initiative. From the Growth Summit came the $20/$10 ($20 billion in raw products and $10 billion in value-added) by 2010, which is unlikely to be met now as it called for a 20% increase in beef production. Well, I guess in a way we have that, but there is no where for the beef to go, which was one question some of us kept asking even before there was a BSE crisis.

So the long and the short of it is I guess there were a number of initiatives and plans, many of which had to be put on the shelf because of the border closures.

Hope this helps.

[grassfarmer]

Getting back to the original topic it just frustrates me to see how much many farmers welcome the companies that are making it hard for us to survive into their businesses. We are all aware of the "running to stand still" we do with rising input costs and static or declining outputs yet the middlemen taking our profits are buying their way into everything. You can't pick up a mainstream farm magazine that isn't full of multi-page colour ads by the big wealth extracting corporations plus the articles in the magazines are totally biased to backing their advertisers products.
In the latest Stockman Grassfarmer mag there is an article about some tests run by a woman in the US where she was teaching some of her young cattle to eat selected weed species. By educating them to taste a variety of different feeds she got them to eat Canada Thistle, Leafy spurge and spotted knapweed. Realising that these weeds have a feed value similar to alfalfa this is a great breakthrough. It only takes a few animals in the herd to learn and they will teach the rest - replacement heifers are the obvious choice as you would presumably only have to teach one year and the calves would learn it from their mothers in future. This kind of research never makes it to mainstream beef papers because there is no money to be extracted from producers by using this system. We have got to learn, as an industry, to beware of the way we are being coninually fleeced by people who have no interest in helping our businesses or bottom lines.

[WoolyBear]

yes grassman we did go on a tangent. We put our ewes into a small pen while we were waiting for them to dry up after weaning. Not a whole lot of grass, but lots of nettles. They weren't too fussy about them until they got tired of the straw that we were trying to dry them up on. Some of them looked like they had some minor eye irritations, but after washing those eyes out they cleared up.

ANYWAY........ after a couple of days they decided that the nettles weren't tooo bad and as soon as the pasture was ready, out they went. A good portion of the them on their tour of the fenceline found an old scrubpile with nettles, and the whole group left the green grass, and spent enough time there to annialate the nettles........ Works for me.

We have also noticed that lambs seem to have a preference for dandilions. Not sure if its the color, or what. Too bad I didn't have the nerve to let the whole flock out on the front lawn this spring!

There are lots of ways to kill weeds, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings if I could spend less time and money on those chemicals.