How to make CAIS work......

[farmers_son]

ABP and CCA does support removal of caps so you are right when you say that. And the removal of caps does mean a greater portion of limited government spending on direct farm support goes to a handful of very large operators. I am not sure how a packer owned feedlot like Lakeside fits into that, if they participate in CAIS or not. One of the reasons there used to be caps on farm support programs was to keep that money out of the hands of packers and other very large organizations that had vertically integrated down to primary production.

I never thought of CAIS as a conspiracy. Yet the fact remains that farm gate margins have declined on a per unit of production basis since the 30s. Not a conspiracy but still a fact. So any farm program based on past margins will be expected to offer less and less support going forward.

While there may not be a conspiracy to put small and medium sized farms out of business the reality is those farms tended to be diversified and everyone agrees that CAIS does offer more support to single enterprise operations at the expense of diversified operations. And the removal of caps means more support for mega farms and thereby less support for family farms because government support money for agriculture is not a bottomless pit. Funds are always limited.

I think it is fair to say that CAIS has done nothing to slow the loss of small and medium sized farms and for that matter has done nothing to slow the loss of the Canadian cow herd. That I see CAIS as hastening the loss of average sized farms in rural Canada while offering more and more support to large mega farms is just my opinion.

One of the so called pillars of support was to be some kind of disaster program. While “disaster” is yet to be defined it would be burying our heads in the sand if we did not realize that 2009 has some potential to be a disaster year (assuming we have not yet seen the full impact of the economic crisis and make no mistake about it there is an economic crisis). Maybe the disaster component will serve a useful purpose because any program such as CAIS which is based on past margins is not going to do anything at all for a cattle producer in this country.

And I do think we need to make our vote count in these federal elections. We can chat about how to tinker with CAIS all we want but as long as we have federal politicians that think the declines in the cattle industry that we have seen in the past 10 years is OK then nothing will change.

At some point we hit the wall and I think that is going to happen in 2009. Maybe it is time we started our own conspiracy and conspire to make our votes count in the upcoming federal elections and we pretty well know the next election is not far off. If the MPs actually cared about our vote they would be falling all over themselves to do something about the crisis the cattle industry is in. If you want to make change happen in CAIS then change your vote for MP because right now your vote is taken for granted.

[dfarms11]

So who exactly are you saying we should vote for? The liberals? What the hell have they done for the ag industry during their last 3 terms? The only thing they have done is look the other way.

[grassfarmer]

Truth is it doesn't matter who we vote for in a Federal election. If every cattle producer in Canada decided to vote for the one party it wouldn't alter the candidate elected in a single constituency.
On the other hand if every cattle producer influenced their federal or provincial cattle organization delegates by actually voting that could have a huge effect. There is much talk of the need for beef producers to speak with one voice when approaching Government - unfortunately at the moment the prevailing voice funded by our compulsory levy is saying that beef producers support packer ownership of cattle, oppose BSE testing beef and back unlimited CAIS payment amounts to mega sized agri-businesses while the program continues to fail family sized farms.
As you say farmers_son, you get what you vote for. I did not vote for this type of representation - did you?

[kato]

I also believe there should be a definite cap on the size of payouts. The only operations who get these mega payouts are the very large single enterprises, who are actually really well disguised subdivisions of larger corporations. These bigger enterprises can be split into separate entities for disaster relief, yet they are not really single enterprises. They are actually smaller pieces of larger companies.

I agree that the one thing CAIS has done more than anything else is totally discourage diversified farms. It has gone farther toward encouraging single enterprise operations than just about anything I can think of. It's the reason we did OK for the first couple of years in CAIS. We had neighbours who took the same beating on cattle as we did, yet got not one cent because of the grain side of their operations.

This is not right. It's not good for a healthy agriculture sector, and it's not good for the future of family farms.

As for the vote, that's always been a problem for as long as I can remember. The election is usually over by the time our votes are even counted. The only way to affect a national election is to recruit help from the people who's votes do count. Consumers. This is where those votes we cast for our industry representatives can help us. It should be the responsibility of our associations to take our concerns to the next level, and if that means going directly to consumers, then that's what they should do. The government can choose to ignore us, but if they get the same pressures from the general public, it gets a little harder to ignore.

Canadian consumers have stood with us in the past. All we have to do is think back to 2003 for that. They're more dependable than politicians in my opinion.

[farmers_son]

In my constituency the vote has always, I mean always, been strongly for one particular party. It doesn’t really matter which one it is but you can guess. I see that the farm vote is not as important as it once was and part of that is there are fewer of us but part of it could well be that we can be counted on voting as we always have whether or not federal policies are in our best interest or not.

I am sure we all can think of special interest groups that are politically influential even though they have very few numbers. The reason is they vote strategically, they vote for the party that supports their views and all the parties know it. Agriculture is a special interest group too only we haven’t figured out that we can make our vote matter.

It is one thing to hang onto the cow’s tail but should we hang onto one parties tail all the way into oblivion? Minority governments are a fact of life in Canada. Parties tailor their policies to gain votes in those swing ridings whose vote can go either way. It is time that rural ridings become swing ridings too. A few people who vote with their heads and not their hearts can influence federal policy. If we want policies that support the average sized farm, if we feel the cattle industry is worth saving, then we need the federal government to pay attention to the cattle industry just like they pay attention to other interest groups. To do that we need to make them work for our vote.

Grassfarmer. You insist on making everything about ABP. I always vote at the ABP fall meetings. So do a lot of other people. I understand those delegates elected by hundreds of producers do not necessarily always reflect your unique point of view. And it is a challenge for agriculture to speak with one voice. However nationally the cattle industry does speak with one voice with a consistent message. The challenge is to have that voice heard in Ottawa over top of all the other voices and right now there are more voices than ever. I am merely suggesting the way to get our voice heard in Ottawa is to make government work for our federal vote instead of voting for a particular party year after year, election after election, no matter what.

[kato]

As they say in Ottawa. Hear Hear!

I agree totally. A minority government is a real blessing in my opinion. Imagine if the current Tories had a majority? Would they ever listen to us? I doubt it. I feel that it's only since they started getting pressure from the opposition that they started to listen to anyone, let alone us.

They've got big problems now, and are probably in a better mood to open their eyes and look around. They've alienated Quebec with their "Separatists and Socialists are trying to take over the country" rant, and they know it's going to hurt them badly in the East.

I'm not getting into this debate, but whether you are a CWB supporter or not, the way they have done their best to stomp it into oblivion by whatever means necessary is just plain arrogant.

And now they have a Liberal party to contend with that has a leader who shows some potential to do them some real damage. I don't think this one will be so easy to demean as the last one. I also think there's going to be an election coming out of it.

So now's our chance. What are we going to do with it?

[grassfarmer]

Where is the opportunity? I thought every rural constituency in Western Canada had a Conservative politician elected last time around? That's where the countries cows are and even in the heavy cattle areas I doubt there would be enough producers to influence the election. We have no chance as producers to influence federal elections through the ballot box. On the other hand we could influence who represents us in the cattle organizations that deal with Governments. Farmers_son prefers to divert attention away from that option for some reason.