1/10/2001 / by Kristin Danley-Greiner / Agweb.com
Droves of Canadian farmers are considering taking a yearlong "sabbatical" from farming in an effort to boost grain prices. By not growing any crops for one year and creating an eight-billion-bushel hole in the international grain market, they say they could drive up the commodity prices that have been depressed for three years. The movement is being called Focus on Sabbatical, and has garnered much support from the North American farmers.
"We've been brainwashed into thinking we have to grow more, and that's essentially what's killing us. We're overproducing," explained Morris Freeston, a Saskatchewan producer who's setting up local meetings for Focus on Sabbatical. "I'd like to see 4,000 to 5,000 (signed up) by this spring."
So far, approximately 1,200 Canadian farmers have spent $250 each on a membership in Focus on Sabbatical. The group wants to convince tens of thousands of producers across North America to take a year off from working the land in 2002 or 2003. If the group unites enough farmers and convinces them to remove their land from production for one year, it would be simulate a drought or a major crop failure in the marketplace -- events that usually boost world prices for wheat, oilseeds and feed grains, explained Ken Goudy, the brains behind Focus on Sabbatical. "Farmers have supplied the world with a comfortable surplus and the market sets a price that virtually robs the farmer. The farmer's alternative is to take away that comfortable surplus," said Goudy, who's a 30-year veteran of the farm chemical business in Canada. "We've started with a non-profit corporation to find out whether farmers have the will to do this." If 150,000 farmers come forward, the group will offer $35 to $70 per acre. The money would be pooled and invested in the rising futures markets while paying farmers a wage in the year they don't farm. "It would be structured in a way that if they break their word and go (plant a crop), there would be a fairly significant cost to them," Goudy said, who recently moved to Iowa to establish a U.S. base for the movement. Since then, he's signed up 100 American farmers and is organizing information meetings in Iowa and Ohio, while 10 Canadian directors, including Freeston, work the Prairies.:
