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Unparalleled opportunity to regain wealth by Paul Beingessner
(Thursday, Aug. 7, 2003 -- CropChoice guest commentary) --
Dear Readers:
The following email appeared in my inbox a few days ago. It seems like
such a good opportunity, but I am worried it could all be a hoax.
Perhaps readers could give some helpful advice.
Dear Sir:
With due respect to your person I kindly wish to ask for your attention
and consideration just for a while.
My family and I are in dire need of assistance. Our late grandfather,
who was the paramount ruler of our farm and also the undisputed leader
of our region, left behind a great deal of wealth and treasure which
most of our elder uncles and members of our family have for the past
decades exploited upon. By breaking up this virgin soil and developing a
network of small towns and communities complete with all the services
one's heart could desire, my late grandfather and his counterparts paved
the way for decades of prosperity. They developed marketing
institutions, research facilities and always understood that they had to
work together to maintain their way of life.
Unfortunately, the wisdom of my grandfather and his equals seems to have
dwindled away with each successive generation. Now we are left with a
situation whereby the great wealth inherent in our farm and our rural
way of life has been stolen from us. It has been taken by the very
people we trusted and whom we also helped to attain great wealth. I am
talking about those people who for generations have sold us the very
things we need to continue our farm operation and who have bought from
us the fruits of our labors. Complicit in the actions of these people
have been our governments which have made the rules that allow us to be
exploited.
While we were busy running our farm and raising our family, these
sellers and buyers have increasingly joined together through the
marriages of their families, which they call mergers, and the less
congenial unions called hostile takeovers. The end result has been that,
where there used to be many buyers and sellers, there are now only a few
and they seem so friendly with each other. This has caused an untold
hardship on us.
Some of the vestiges of the old ways still persist. My grandfather was
involved in the development of a marketing agency, the Canadian Wheat
Board, that he entrusted to sell his wheat for him. The enlightened
rulers of his day decreed that this Canadian Wheat Board should be the
only seller of farmers' wheat. That way, the buyers could not play us
off against each other.
Now, a small number of my uncles, who have apparently taken leave of
their senses, think that it would be better if the Canadian Wheat Board
were destroyed. Unfortunately, this fifth column in our midst has a very
powerful ally in the giant neighbouring country to the south. That
country, the United States of America, wants to see the control of our
grain industry turned over to its multinational companies. It employs
continuing guerilla warfare against us in the form of trade harassment
and complaints to the World Trade Organization. It loses every one of
these actions, but these never-ending skirmishes are bleeding us to
death one bit at a time.
Now this same country has attacked our cattle herds, by refusing to let
them cross the border to graze, claiming they might be sick. This is a
much quicker way to bring us to our knees, since these same cattle will
eat us out of house and home if we cannot send them across the border.
Nor will the United States tell us what we must do to satisfy its
demands. You can see what a predicament we are in!
But now, I am very happy and glad that our family attorney just informed
me in confidence that my late father, God rest his soul, confined in him
the secret by which we can regain our prosperity and our former status.
The secret is a simple one which I am willing to share with you in
complete trust and confidence: farmers must begin again to work
together, and abandon their foolish independent ways to defeat the power
of the large companies that control our lives.
I am writing to ask your kind assistance in regaining control of our
lost wealth. If you consent to join with me, I promise you will share in
the prosperity that is so rightfully ours.
This is the only opportunity for us to reclaim this treasure and hand it
over to the generations that succeed us and thereby secure our future.
If you please, you must urgently write to me and let me know that you
are on side. If you do not, we will continue to be exploited by the
ruthless and gigantic companies that now are the only ones to prosper
from our toils.
Awaiting your kind and anticipated consideration and co-operation.
Yours truly,
Joseph Farmer
To reach the author, Paul Beingessner, send an e-mail to: beingessner@sasktel.net | |
