4 - Sunday, January 31, 198K - North Shore News BoB HUNTER THIS SUMMER, Canada will chair the next economic summit mecting, where a chance will come to strike a blow against the worldwide farm subsidy programs, including Canada’s, which have turned tea party. Ronald Reagan will still be in power. One of his final acts wil] be to push for the elimination, over a 10-year period, of all American agriculture export subsidies, all barriers to farm trade, including tariffs and quotas, and all domestic subsidies affecting farms — providing other countries agree to do the same. Ina phrase, he wants the global elimination of farm subsidies. Brian Mulroney has welcomed Reagan’s proposal, as well he might, having just had to promise to shovel $3.2 billion from Ot- tawa's depleted treasury to Cana- dian farmers merely to keep them alive over the next decade (or in any event to keep the Tories alive). L n the 12-member European Community, the situation has reached crisis proportions, with the trade ° bloc spending 70 per cent of its total budget to maintain its inefficient farms and: subsidize sales of European Soodstuffs, thereby stealing export markets from the more effic cient growers, like Canada,”* ‘ ey If, at the end of;that period, we could look forward to breaking out of the end-game of the in- / dustrialized countries having to check each other’s subsidy moves with subsidies of their own, we will be able to greet the new millenni- um with a hope of a return to agriculture sanity. But it would be naive to bet on it. Farmers’ lobbies are powerful, especially i in the European Com- munity, the U.S. and Japan, which, between them, spend $80 billion (U.S.) a year to protect their agricultural sectors. Right now, farmers in the developed countries receive an / astonishing 61 per cent of their in- come from the state. In the 12-member European Community, the situation has reached crisis proportions, with the trade bloc spending 70 per cent of its total budget to maintain its in- efficient farms.and subsidize sales of European foodstuffs, thereby stealing export markets from the more efficient growers, like Canada, | , Meanwhile, mountains of un- sold food pile up in Europe — so much so that the Europeans recently unloaded 400,000 tonnes of butter on the Soviet Union for one-tenth the cost.of producing the stuff. Over in the Third World and Communist countries, farmers have been experiencing mega-doses of the opposite medicine, being | farming into a Mad Hatter’s forced as a rule to subsidize con- sumers, with famous disastrous results, Ethiopia being the ultimate, awful example. The overall effect has been to peg food prices at high levels in “wealthy countries and keep them down in poor countries, thereby discouraging food production where it is desperately needed, and encouraging it where there is already an overwhelming surplus. The fact is that there is no shortage of food in the world, nor is there any lack of ability to pro- duce plenty more for the addi- tional billions of hungry people who are duc to arrive in the final years of the century. ‘There is reporiedly enough stockpiled wheat on hand to feed the entire world for two years. Production isn’t the problem. Distribution is the problem. And even that isn't a physical problem, it is purely political. ‘The situation we have right now is twisted beyond belief. Take Japan, for instance, where the price of rice, the basic ingredient in their diet, costs five times the world price, $o that local farmers can sell their produce. If you try to smuggle a five- pound bag of rice into Japan, you can go to jail, like a common drug-runner, Although it is a moot point whether Saudi Arabia subsidizes its dairy farms in the desert slightly more heavily, Japan is the worst national offender in the world when it comes to pumping tax * money into farmers’ wallets. The Japanese, in their agricultural protectionism, are followed closely by the Nordic countries, who shelter their farm- ers from the cold winds of interna- tional competition so meticulously that low tricks must be played to counter their methods. Canadian meat inspectors, for instance, recently ruled that 32 out of 34 slaughter houses in sparkl- ing-clean Denmark, of all places, were too ‘‘unhyzienic’’ to permit cheap Danish bacon and ham to reach the dining tables of Cana- dians, Gimme a break! This is Canada playing the same kinds of cynical games to shield our farmers from competition as the Danes are doing in the first place. The more each state intervenes to protect the interests of its farm- ers, the more distorted the inter- national agricultural marketplace becomes. Today it is a house of mirrors, with some people left thin as skele- tons and others horribly bloated — and everybody getting poorer ex- cept the banks. A sad story, the state of modern agriculture. Something’s got to give. © On the North Shore since 1955 Consumers warned FEDERAL CONSUMER = and Corporate Affairs Minister Harvey Andre warns consumers not to give out credit card numbers over the telephone to sales people or other unsolicited callers. Canadian con- sumers who give numbers to fraudulent American promoters cannot be protected by Canadian law. Our Once a Year One Two Three of a Kind Sale Now On EXAMPLE: America’s leading chiropractic back mattress iImited quantities at savings of 50 % over These are not gimmick labels. 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