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The Spider and the Fly

Year Published:  1977  
Pages:  16pp  
Resource Type:  Article

A description of the relationship between family farms and corporate agri-business.

Abstract:  The main aim of this presentation is to look at the relationship between agri-business and the family farm, owner-operated style of farming in Canada. The facts presented in this brief show that corporations and farmers are locked together in a spider and fly relationship. In this unequal struggle, the farmers stand to lose a whole way of life.

That the corporate web is everywhere is illustrated by the fact that fertilizers and chemicals, feed and seed, machinery and gasoline, building materials, food processing, brokerage, wholesale and retailing are now parts of huge corporate complexes beyond the control of any farmer and often, it seems, beyond the control of the government.

What's so bad about corporations? Corporate spokesmen hypocritically preach about the value of competition and free enterprise yet privately work out schemes to avoid having to compete in the free enterprise system by forming monopolies and manipulating prices and profits. Corporations, moreover, do not pay their fair share of taxes, and the majority of the risks they take are with the consumer's money collected as taxes and given to them by governments as grants or guarantees.

The final section deals by way of example with the methods and practices of McCain group of companies which already own over 4500 acres of the best farmland in New Brunswick. At the same time that McCain has been receiving financial help from both the federal and provincial governments, over 3000 farmers between 1966 and 1970 were forced off the land in New Brunswick.
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