It's not so much that reporter Jessica Leeder is dishing out the facts that big companies are suffering losses, it's that it plays the farmers as the bad guys. The farmers shell out tons of money for fertilizers they've become dependent on because of the cash-crop mentality, the more, more, more of industrial agriculture, and in return can hardly make a profit. Government encourages this behaviour, because it's the big companies that turn a ridiculous profit and benefit the money-economy, and not the farmers who are usually just trying to stay afloat. Now, farmers have had enough, and are weaning their land off a reliance on chemicals, in turn benefiting the environment, surely, our health, most likely, and their already meagre income, and we're supposed to feel bad for the big guys? Wow.
PotashCorp is banking on the expectation that the farmers will wake up and realize they've made a mistake by decreasing their intense use of the company's product, which 'nourishes the soil.' This is a quotation from the company's CEO, William Doyle: "Food production is too important to put at risk. Farmers know this and they will start feeding their soil again. the question is not if it will happen, but when the rebound will begin." I hope he's wrong, I really do. Not because we can afford a serious decrease in our food supply, but because there are other good farming methods available out there. Organic. Bio-Dynamic. Methods that are easier on the land, that allow the land to nourish itself, and not be exhausted by over-production, and heavy fertilization. If this is the kick in the pants that is needed to get more organic farms, I'm all for it.
Farmers are made out in the article to be at the whim of the Agri-Business giants. No farmers are interviewed for this article, no farmers' voices are heard here. They are made to seem like children throwing a temper-tantrum who will eventually 'come to their senses' because 'mommy and daddy are older and wiser.' But what would the farmer say? Maybe they've been sucked into this, and have had enough of the way things are done. Maybe they want to be self-sustaining to a greater degree. Maybe they are putting their foot down, saying, "I do so much to feed people in this country, and I'm sick and tired at not being able to pay my bills while I fork over a big chunk of my profit to yet another Big Business Fat Cat."
Food on my plate is just as important to me as it is to anyone else, and I know that if farmers don't grow food, then I don't eat. If farmers can't make a living, then they quit farming. If they quit farming, not only do the fertilizer companies lose, but I lose too, and so do the farmers. If the farmers can find other ways to produce food, which they WANT to do (like hell they're going to sit around and wait for their yields to drop without a fight - they're going to find other methods to sustain their yields at a more economic, and hopefully environmentally sustainable cost), then they come out on top, I get to eat, and really, it's only the Big Guys who suffer. Food supply can only be reliable if it's sustainable, and the way it's being done now is obviously not sustainable, economically, or environmentally.
Farmers, I got your back.
