Dear Editor:
Very few young men and women who grew up on the farm have chosen to remain on the farm as their career choice. Why?
Growing up on the farm they know that farming is a very difficult, low paying, high risk, high investment career choice.
Agriculture financial experts tell us that we need a 10,000 acre operation to be financially viable in the present environment.
In other words an investment of $4 to $6 million, a huge amount of money must be borrowed from the lending institutions, interest payable.
To operate a modern grain farm we require machinery, fertilizer, herbicides, seed, fuel, rail services and borrowed capital. These services and goods that we must have and can't farm without are all controlled by a few trans-national corporations who seem to be more powerful than governments of many countries.
During the last few decades these agricultural corporations have amalgamated, consolidated and bought each other out to the point where they are almost able to perform as a monopoly and often do.
Competition between the few agriculture trans-national corporations seems to be a part of the past.
Example: Two years ago when world grain supplies plunged to a worrisome low, grain prices to farmers increased substantially. Almost immediately the suppliers of farm inputs raised their prices, some as much as 400 per cent.
As quickly as we gained a much-needed raise for our grain they took it away from us. They now have the power and ability to do just that. Farmers are little more than economic slaves for the trans-national corporations.
Young men and women who grew up on the farm understand and know this.Therefore they reject farming as a career choice.
George HickieWaldron, Sask.
