Friday, April 14, 1967

on grain. Now in the year of 1966 it was subsidies and freight assistance on grain. In 1965 the: was $365,000 paid out in this money, and this, if it was taken up by the farmers In Prince Edward Island, would mean a great thing to them. I think the Gov- ernment would be well advised to try an experimental gram growing in each County of the anince, but robably for the first year grow one hundred acres on an experi- mental btﬂlﬁ. I would) say twenty-five acres in King's, fifty in Queens, and twenty-five in Prince for a start. Grow it under conditions which the farmer would be growing under, nrt under conditions that would be paid out by the Government, not where somebody would be trying to make a bi pile of money out of the Government, but grow then under conditions exactly as t e farmer would be growing, and see if this could bedone on a paying basis. And another item that might be added to this if the Ministerof Agriculture would like to have a talk to me on this sometime. I have some ideas alme on this line that might be helpful to him. We have a great dampness con- tent in tle grain in the fall in this Province, which can be dryed with a homemade, yes I will sa‘: a homemade because it would be made on the Island, grain-drying machine which can be set up with very little expense and this would save spoilage in the grain. Now, if he Govemment had wanted to help the farmer further last fall, to get some mone , alot of the farmers, due. to the poor price of tatoes and the poor market, had to se sane grain to get some ready cash in the fal at forty cents per bushel. Now this is riliculous, forty cents per bushel; you cannot grow grain for forty cents per bushel, aiyone knows that whether he is a farmer or not, so if the Government in the fall of tle year had good storage houses, it does not have to be frostproof to keep

in, all it has to be is dry. Buy the grain in the fall if the farmers were compelled to sell it, if it was a low price like happened last fall, which $10,000 would buy up a considerble amount of grain. I will just take this for a figure $10,000. And when the season rdled around to sell the grain, which is mostly always at a premium in the spring, sdl it back out to the farmer at whatever the going price is. Give to the farm- er who was paid the forty cents or whatever the price happened to be in the fall, give him whai the grain made over the winter in this area. I think this would be a great

help to tie farmer. I think anything we can do to keep the young farmers on the land is going b be worthwhile.

I vill try, Mr. Speaker, to make my remarks as brief as possible, but I find I must gower some of the items in the Speech from the Throne. If you will bear with me for afew minutes, I will try to do that. I think it is getting along near to closing time lotto-day and I will not quite finish, but I will go along as far as 5:30 RM. any- way.

Ncw, “My Government proposes to conduct a potato inspection of all fields"; now this has been quite extensive in the past, but probably not quite extensive enough because d the great disease that is rawshing the potato industry in Prince Edward Island atthis time. Every year the disease in our potatoes seems to be getting greater and to albviate this, I think all fields should be inspected. This is a “must" at this time that we lave all potato fields inspected, and to keep down the disease as much as poss- ible or VB will be one of the lost markets to the world of potatoes in Canada. Prince Edward Island will completely lose its market, I think, if we cannot control this disease further bacause this is getting to be a serious problem in the potato industry to-day.

Nov, for the need of more technical services in agriculture; I think this is quite importan: as agriculture has become, instead of a job, a business. A business to the farmer, aid he must to-day keep all records, books, and what have you, to carry on his operan'on. He has to carry on a eater operation than has been done in the past to make a ﬁrm pay. Any help that t e Agriculture Department can give them and I

think it 's assistance, to further qualify a person to assist agricultural development, that will we of a great help to the farmer.

Nov, crop insurance policy to cover potatoes and grain. In the past, Crop In- surance las not been widely used. Very poor advantage has been taken of Crop Insur- ance. Wlsther we can make it more attractive to farmers or not, I do not know. This seems tobe one of the problems of pa 'ng out money on insurance that they may never get anyth'ng back; but if the crop is ost, then we hear the how] of not having any in- surance! When the insurance is available, I think the farmer should make every effort to take advantage of the Crop Insurance Policy.

Now, _I see something in silos, silo construction subsidy. Now, this may be a good thirg; it may not; I am not quite sure. Silos are a very expensive commodity to

489—