Real Estate - Agriculture Works

Supply Management Reform – Dairy Industry - Conference Board of Canada

Supply Management Reform – Dairy Industry - Conference Board of Canada

It is clear that in Canada the supply management system needs to be reformed, specific to dairy, the interests embedded in the present regulatory modality of conduct are retarding the industry's growth. As an individual who wants to enter the industry at a scale and at a pace that is practical, as an individual who attempted to seek the support of the present industry complex to engage in business and was in effect rebuked for my efforts, there is no one more enthusiastic to see reform here. I believe there is a viable place on the WORLD stage for the Canadian Dairy industry; the question is “how to shed the baggage of the present supply management system”. This posting is in response to the Conference Board of Canada’s Report – REFORMING DAIRY SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, THE CASE FOR GROWTH. This is an outstanding work and warrants study by anyone who wants to see the Canadian Dairy industry removed from the constraints of the past.

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 The report does an excellent job of quantifying the industry and the cost of supply management. It understates or, to some degree, neglects to stress the mass of capital that is sitting latent at a market value of 23 billion dollars; the cost of quota ownership zaps the industry of vital resources. The report shows the 600 million dollars or so each year that it costs farmers to finance quota, it fails to project where farmers would be if they had those resources deployed toward production rather than licensing.
 Also absent was a quantification of the regulatory overhead the industry now carries, other industries are absent Boards to manage them, and the market manages itself. The incremental increase in the product of $260 per family per year would be more tolerable if farmers were getting it, but much of it flows to the administrative aspects of the regulatory process.

 The new industry vision is a welcome expression of a brave and viable way forward with a strong argument to support it. There is no doubt that the present state of the industry and the regulatory regime is affected and stunted, both domestically and internationally. I personally attempted to start a dairy-related business that in no way diminished incumbents in the industry, was innovative and at scale and would eventually integrate with the present system – it was met with near-violent opposition.
 The present industry quota value of $23 billion is massive, yet the report suggested that we buy the industry out at approximately $5 billion. One understands the rationale presented in the report, the vintage of the quota affects the cost or benefit of ownership; the fact remains, however, that any dairy farmer now in possession of the quota can sell it for fair market value – to institute a transition strategy that deviates from fair market value is going to meet resistance from the industry regardless of whether one can pencil out a justification. The challenge is that Quota is viewed as an asset with a market value, and producers, if not reimbursed at FMV, will be in a position of loss relative to the status quo. One can make the argument and demonstrate a relative advantage to one producer over the other; however, you are saying to the industry with a quota valued at 23 billion that the buyout is 5 billion - it is a hard sell.

 The quota system was developed by the government, and it generated a quota that had value at issuance as much as later. The presence of value is substantiated both by the rationale for creating quota and by the subsequent valuation that evolved via government-sanctioned and created exchanges. The report states, “And the policy can be justified because, as a matter of law, new entrants were required to buy quota as a condition of entry into the business whereas the initial quota allocation was issued at no cost." This approach takes the position that farmers should not need to realize a capital gain on their quota asset funded by taxpayers or consumers.” This is analogous to the government asserting that because a family has had land since it was homesteaded or granted by the government, then it should be valued less upon expropriation than a family's land that was purchased shortly after. The key consideration here is that the government defined and permitted the quota system to evolve, and the value of the quota was a product of government intervention in the marketplace. The government chose to effect a subsidy, and the license to garner that subsidy had and has value. The transition needs to be equitable Yes, the math does count, but it must be just as well. It is unfair that consumers have subsidized approximately $260 / household/year – the government intervention in the market generated this unfairness. It would be unfair also to take from farmers an asset that has been held and sustained at the cost of opportunities foregone. 

The transition needs to be as rapid as possible, and the government will have to pay. The farmers should receive the FMV for the quota over ten years, said rights transferable by sale.  The government can finance this transition from debt, and the increase in production and expansion of industrial activities via the export markets will likely go a long way to paying the bill over the buyout period – it surely will over time.  

     

Prosperity Mine Project - FEDS SHUT IT DOWN - SHAME

Lakes sacred, well maybe, what is sacred FOR SURE is the health, happiness and wellbeing of children, in this case the the local band's children's future is at stake - now the prospect for a prosperous future for them is diminished. Spiritual contemplation, the act of attaching metaphysical contemplation to a geo physical aspect is fine I suppose, until the human condition is impaired or harmed, this makes as much sense as any other radicalised religious act. This mine is exactly the kind of project that could contribute to the band's prosperity and all of our prosperity. The fact that a federal body has intervened and arrested a mining project in British Columbia is another example of the feds overstepping their bounds, this is our province and our backyard we are absent the need for Ottawa to tell us how to run it - I resent their heavy-handedness in this matter. There is nothing pretty about mining - but for dollar return / square foot of environmental impact, it is hard to beat. I wish the band well, subsistence must agree with them.

http://globalnews.ca/news/1175296/federal-government-rejects-new-prosperity-mine-project-west-of-williams-lake/

Business – Agriculture is a land play

There is a propensity in the world of high tech and escalating knowledge sector to overlook some of Canada’s mainstay industries; I am eager to draw your attention to agriculture. By way of example, the Cattle industry while experiencing a positive place in the cycle now, has traditionally been a “marginal” business. The cattle is trade heavily commoditized & well supplied, and as such, the prices garnered for cattle at sales hover around the industry wide average cost of production; so the reality is that cattle essentially take care of themselves financially – the people and assets to care for them but not the land base.

The Land associated with Cattle ranching then needs to stand on its own as a holding, and it does – over the course of the past decade it has exceeded inflation by good margins pretty consistently. The demand for agricultural land and the land’s resulting value is in no way related to the ability of the land to produce income through agriculture; if it were, agricultural land for ranching would be worth nothing, given the industries track record. The value for agricultural land comes from the western cultural imperative to own land and / or the speculative value of the land as a real-estate development and / or as a pure holding.

So why have cattle, well because, all the land will do is raise cattle in most cases and cattle provide a means by which to “maintain” ownership, in that, the process of ranching sees to the land asset’s care and wellbeing. So, while cattle-ranching is a more or less breakeven endeavor, with a grand spiritual surplus, it has value. The good news comes in the other opportunities that land base provides for companion enterprise, the cattle and land provide an essentially “free” place for other related businesses to function. Never underestimate the stability and opportunity that comes with accessing one of Canada’s mainstay industries, agriculture was here to get Canada started and it will be with us for a long long time.

Please see link below for past agro enterprise concepts and proposals

https://sites.google.com/site/midfraseragro/

Law, Legislation and Civil Liberty – Freedom of Association – Boundaries on Association

Law, Legislation and Civil Liberty – Freedom of Association – Boundaries on Association

The enlightenment finds its roots in the desire for freedom, it is nearly trite to say “freedom” now, people have heard it too many times; many are so convinced they have it in Canada, and the west in general, they are apathetic about preserving what they do have. As a person of Scottish lineage, I have a genetic predisposition for “having my own way”, “having your own way” is a good thing and is the basis for liberty. So when I encounter societal circumstances that seemingly ignore the foundations of liberty and the laws that support liberty, I become very concerned.

Freedom of association permits choice in association – it is a simple concept really – there is a group, they gather or associate for reason X, they have tenets XYandZ and rules 1 through 10 – the “group” communicates the above and the free person decides if they want to be a part of that group or not. The individual has the RIGHT to set boundaries on their association with others, that is to say, if a group has a practice breaking their member's leg as an initiation, the individual can say I want to avoid having my leg broken – then the “group” has to respect that and the “group” can then to refuse “membership” should they choose to.

In Canada we have rebuked all forms of conscription, we had a little at the close of WW2 – after that, we have never had conscription – in fact, the Canadian government has been sympathetic to Draft Dodgers from the United States. So for the past half-century, we, in Canada have held as a value the rebuke of conscription into the military or any other government institution. If this is true of Government, it most certainly extends to commerce or extra-legal organizations. It is a perverse circumstance that in Canada with a legally expressed rebuke of conscription, Canadian institutions can be turned on the citizenry to displace, conscript or otherwise curtail the liberty of a citizen.

We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is the preeminent document for the direction of human interface in Canada, when “groups” conduct themselves in discord with this document we are adrift, we are then governed by massed marauders operating exterior to the government as opposed to government – there is a very real danger in that – as Teddy Roosevelt said, “behind every ostensible government, there is a government of men with no allegiance to the people”. I have no idea who Teddy may have been referring to, but this quote seems to indicate he was privy to the existence of “groups” in society. This is in no way a nihilistic statement toward civil society, on the contrary, I am eager to enlarge civil society – I am suggesting that civil society needs to be careful – be civil so as to avoid sowing the seeds of their own destruction; strong assaults on individuals will drive individuals to governments. Civil Society has a choice, subordinate itself to government and effect change through legislation, or risk turning our daily lives into a power-play where skullduggery and ruthlessness determine who gets what.          

When the government extends power to an individual to execute a mandate, and that individual uses that power to effect actions exterior to that mandate (perhaps for example direct a person to adhere to a group's wishes), that is an abuse of power. When this occurs regularly enough it “corrupts” the government, that is to say, that there is a lack of fidelity between legislation and the actions of the governing. Intent – good or evil – if it moves one to the misdirection of state power, is corrupting – as I like to say to my friends, “what they can do for you, they can do to you”.  

Association has as a base element a consenting participant, the only means by which to determine the presence or absence of consent is through dialogue – in the absence of discourse there can be no consent granted nor interpreted. Consent requires explicit dialogue peculiar to the subject matter at hand; parables, metaphors and the like are ineffective in garnering consent – they are simply too easily misunderstood or they are administered by the simple and/or simplistically interpreted.

A human being is a composite of temperament and culture; it is a rare thing that cultural nuances get recognized even within the same social group, cultural variations are finely tuned and emanate from as fine a  point as a family in as broad a context as a society. If as a group your interest is to draw on all that cultural variation has to offer, you must have a degree of acceptance inherent in your organizational modalities, if homogeneity is your goal, then a thousand flowers will never bloom – you will collide with the reality of all attempts at suppressing the individual and a gray mediocrity will ensue.

This is Canada, we committed some ideas to paper, and they will remain mere words on a page unless we choose to conduct ourselves in accord with them. It is a concern that I witness daily, the blatant disregard for the laws and values set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

Climate Change - New York Times - Comment

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/science/earth/threat-to-bottom-line-spurs-action-on-climate.html?comments#permid=11013209

The entire climate change movement is focused on “obstructing” the use of fossil fuels, there is no other viable option at the moment. The Stone Age never ended because we ran out of stones, it ended because we found a better way. If indeed, global warming has as its primary cause the burning of fossil fuels, and, as is fact, there is no economically viable replacement for fossil fuels – the solution lies in developing a viable energy source. I submit, if all the people mentioned in this article and all the other brain power and influence that has gone to “obstruct” fossil fuel use directed their actions in a positive way, that is to say DEVELOP A SOLUTION, we would have a solution very quickly. It is important to note as well, there has been global warming on earth in pre-industrial times, one would be a fool to believe there is not anthropogenic effect on climate change, one does need to ponder degree however, we may freeze in the dark and the earth may carry on without us – a strong thought process to support adaption and or a two pronged approach.

Law, Legislation and Civil Liberty – Prostitution – Opportunity for a new perspective

The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to end the way we manage prostitution by ruling a charter breach provides an opportunity for Canadian leadership to take a new approach to the immediate challenge of prostitution and the more general challenge of managing the balance of law and morality. The issue of prostitution is the perfect lens by which to view moral issues as they relate to legislation and liberty. In part, one must assume, that the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) recent actions are due to the realization that criminalizing personal choice is generating a circumstance where the exploited are more readily exploitable and the marginalized are more marginalized.

In the contemplation of crafting legislation, one needs to clear the mind of old bias' and endeavour to ask – what are the outcomes we want in this instance? As Stephen Covey counsels us, begin with the end in mind. The next question is, do the outcomes we are seeking have a chance of landing on the map of reality and is there a path from here to there? Prostitution, the world’s oldest profession, is here to stay – that much we all can be certain of – eradication is no option, so managing its presence is required.

The challenge with discussing subjects like prostitution, as with all questions of morality, is that people react to them, kind of a “yuk factor” takes hold. If you've read the story of Joshua in the Old Testament, a key component of Joshua’s success was the cooperation of a prostitute in housing and protecting his scouts. The scouts having been protected and housed by the prostitute instructed her to hang a scarlet scarf on the front of her house, the army was informed. When Joshua’s army took Jericho the entire population, some 15,000 people, were “put to the sword”, the only ones spared were the prostitute and her family. It is hard to imagine what brought this woman to the “business” of prostitution or how she managed the profession in those times – the important thing to remember here is that, though likely marginalized she - “immoral and all” - saved the lives of all her love one’s, an act worthy of respect. I offer this as a means by which to elevate the reader’s view of people in this line of work.

In contemplating prostitution one needs to remember that the “exploited” should never be punished, very few little girls when questioned say they want to grow up to be street workers that sleep with men in risky circumstances – most people find their way to prostitution, due in large measure, to need for money – the fact they got to that point is a failure of society as a whole in conjunction with the individual – a circumstance that warrants mitigation as opposed to punishment. Criminalizing prostitution pushes the activities of the vulnerable (mostly women) further out of sight of authorities and more into the influence of the exploiters. 

   

There are women, well-informed, well-educated, that choose to enter into the “sex trade” for their own reasons – there are men who choose to use these women’s services for their own reasons. If their actions are carried out in private, with private arrangements and in a way that has no effect on anyone else, on what basis can the state intervene. You can disagree with their chosen interface on a moral basis, but how can you justify state intervention. Moral matters, matters of faith and religion, are matters to be dealt with in civil society. You have the right to advertise your view, to speak your view – the state has no basis to intervene save to manage externalities that arise from such arrangements. People who hold the moral view that this sort of interface is unholy have the right to life absent influence from it, which is an imperative. So it is right and proper for the state to say scantily clad women are disallowed from soliciting the public to engage in sexual actions in exchange for money – clearly, there are a number of undesirable effects that can flow from this practice. As Mr. Trudeau said, the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation; it is fundamental to a free society that people can educate themselves and make choices, different choices; however, the various sectors of society must conduct themselves in a manner that permits the other sectors to function “unaffected”.  

The dialogue in the press around prostitution is clouding the issue with ancillary issues like; human trafficking (which is often related to sex), abuse to women (it is often the case women in the sex trade are abused, it is not necessarily the case), exploitation of women (it is often the case women in the sex trade are being exploited – they are nearly always exploited because of the lack of proper resources – how else can you be exploited), the extortion by males of sexual services (there are laws against violence and intimation to be used here). The involvement of the state in the past in the suppression of “voluntary” prostitution is purely a matter of the state imposing a moral position and this imposition has served to frustrate a constructive approach to the issue – it has been the imposition of a moral with grossly immoral outcomes.

In the legislation of morality, in the case of prostitution, the state has forced women into a circumstance where when they are threatened or abused they have no redress via official channels. The solution offered is to make being a “John” punishable or criminal. It is appropriated to punish violence, extortion, exploitation – it is a gross misdirection of state power to criminalize a contractual arrangement between two free, voluntary and informed people – it is inconsistent to permit people to engage each other absent pecuniary elements and to criminalize relations with pecuniary elements. The criminalization of the “Johns” is offered as a solution only because it is seen as an expeditious means by which to manage the negative externalities flowing from the sex trade as it has been practiced in the past under poor legislation. The criminalizing of Johns has no grounding in law, reason or humanitarian concern.  

So where does the solution lie, given 2000 years, or more, of persecuting women and having no effect on curtailing the practice of prostitution – perhaps – in light of our advancements in technology and health, we should consider another tack. We have developed, or allowed to evolve, a moral complex intended to improve human life – this moral complex as it has found expression in legislation related to prostitution has effected harm. The solution lies in removing government from the personal lives of people and concerning government with the public square. If we permit the sex trade to operate within the law and isolate it from those who are offended by it, we will have generated a circumstance the permits women to seek help when they need it from people in the governance complex – from there if people want to leave the trade there is official help, if they choose to stay it is of their own free will and they will have channels to health advice and the full protection of the law.

All people deserve to be educated and permitted to make choices, the government is there to facilitate effective human interaction, the government is not, and never should be, the enforcement arm for theological concern. I find accord with much of the moral complex that flows from the Christian teaching, Jesus never marginalized or punished or judged harshly and nor should we. The moral complex that has evolved around human sexual relations found its origins at a time when health issues related to human sexuality and contraception where without understanding; we have progressed to the point where these things can be managed to a greater degree, our attitude and management of matters related to sexuality need to advance as well.