Ontario Agriculture

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The enemy to new farmers - OMAFRA

It has been a very busy couple of weeks.  Making headway on rebuilding my grain header, want to get that out of the way so I can start on the tractors and tillage equipment.  So although I was beginning to feel like I was making progress, in steps OMAFRA.  My farm doesn't qualify for the farm tax rate.  In the past, my father had recieved an exemption from the FBR system for religious reasons.  Having taken the decision to join the system rather than appose/avoid it, i opened up a can of worms that will only cost me.  I didn't think much about government bureaucracy before, but now i just plain hate it.  

Our freedoms are being removed.  Why does it matter if someone registers with the government to be recognized as a farmer?  Shouldn't caring for the soil and harvesting crops be enough?  People were once judged by there abilities and endevours.  Now its by what license you hold, or permit you have.  It saddens me a great deal to see the results of past efforts.  Not my efforts, but those who build this system.  I am sure there was no ill intents when regulation was introduced, but the results are not a better more efficient society, but rather a society that spends its efforts in regulations and litigations.  

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear that children can no longer have skating events at school, because not all kids have a helmet.  Why a helmet?  Just in case someone falls down, the school needs to avoid the insurance lawsuit.  

The youth in the world have been rebelling against the old systems, specifically in the middle east.  The occupy movements are attempting the same thing over here.  They are not successful, because we have too much to loose, where in the third world they have nothing left to loose they can only gain.   I had not ever supported these protests, but I think I can now attest to the understanding that our system is stale, and something new is required.  I don't expect to see any changes soon, it will take a revolution and that won't happen until this society has been reduced to the nothing left to loose category.  I do hope it never comes to that, but sadly that means it would never be renewed.  

It makes for quite the dilemma, and I get the joy of being stuck in the middle of it.  It would have been nice to have had the support of the bureaucracy as I start to farm, but alas it becomes my enemy.  Although mother nature may not always favour me I consider that my ally.  I hope my experience is limited and other new farmers have a better experience.  But in my book OMAFRA is.....can't find a polite way to it.

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Comment by Allan Mervin Spicer on February 23, 2012 at 8:14pm

Gus. Couldn't agree with you less. In order to be truly free, we , as a collective community give ups some reasons to be truly free. I lost a friend to a brain injury from a motor cycle acciden prior to he helmet law. Go Occupy Wall Street.
a.s.

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