Editor: Re: Farmers smell a bad
idea, Jan. 30
Is this a case of too many bureaucrats with too little to do? The idea of imposing "odour fines" smacks of bureaucracy run amok.
Let's see how this might play out. First, the bureaucrats along with pliable politicians impose a fine on farmers for doing what farmers do. Then, as suggested by John Savage, the price of produce increases.
Next will come complaints from consumers that something must be done to reduce the price of local produce. Then the bureaucrats will huddle and come up with a plan to tax the citizens a small amount - to be added to annual tax - so the price of local produce might be reduced by a small rebate to farmers.
In the end, the taxpayers will have paid a handsome sum for bureaucrats' ability to not smell the roses.
This is pure fabrication but it just might be closer to the truth than some - especially pliable politicians and over-eager bureaucrats - might imagine. My fabrication does not include non-farm systems; they can fend for themselves.
As a youngster growing up on a farm in Saskatchewan about 80 years ago, I knew the odour of the farm was a sign that progress was happening. Even during the Great Depression, we had food because we had farm animals that, as animals are wont to do, created a heck of a lot of odour from what they deposited for us to use as fertilizer.
Horses, cows, hens, turkeys were our fertilizer producers. Without them, and the odour their deposits produced, we would have been on the road bumming our way looking for a meal somewhere.
For those who were there, they understand; for those who were not, well, not much can be done about that other than to listen to today's farmers who know truth from fiction.
Bob Orrick
