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Too many hands in our pockets
Here are some recent headlines:
U.S. selling Wheat at a pace not seen for six years
Deere & Co. profits soar
What good does all those sales do? Three dollars for sixty pounds of wheat--we got this same price in 1949--what a joke.
I've farmed for 50 years and it's the same rotten deal every year. We work holidays, Sundays, don't quit until the work is done, only to see the prices go to pot.
Every time the government comes out with their crop reports, the price goes down. We have a short Wheat crop. Some didn't have a crop at all and no price. Now the government thinks we're getting rich so we may have to pay back some of these big payments we didn't get.
Why do we let the Board of Trade set our prices? Why don't we set our prices? General Motors, Deere, Ford all set their price and we either pay it or do without.
We have the product. We grew it. We should price it. The co-ops price their fertilizer, fuel and all the things we buy. We can set our prices also instead of letting someone else put a value on our labor.
We've got these so-called crop reporting service organizations that send their people out and snoop around our crops. Then they scream "surplus" and the bottom falls out of the market.
The WTO is telling us how to run our business and what's good for us while we feed them. All these countries have money to buy war material and other things they don't need. Some of these countries have subsidies $300 to $400 per acre. I get $15.27 per acre on wheat. Is that fair?
The Canadians want the border opened to their beef, citing NAFTA provisions. They want to sell us beef, but have you tried to buy Canadian farmland? I have. You don't just buy it and start farming. They have a nominee program you have to qualify for, then you have to provide financial proof that you have $500,000 or more to invest or you don't buy their land. If we are going to have free trade, let's have free trade.
Next Monday morning, let's announce to the world that our price is $6 per bushel on wheat. They will pay it.
Canada and the U.S. feed the world with cheap food and the producers foot the bill year after year. We take what we're offered and go raise more. These grower organizations are a failure. If they were doing their job, we would have a price. There are too many people with their hands in our pockets.
--Daniel S. Janda, Newkirk, Okla.
Date: 9/22/04
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