The crisis facing farmers in the United Kingdom stemming from the refusal of the British government to compensate rural producers adequately for the destruction of their livestock and incomes as a result of its actions to stop the spread of hoof and mouth disease, vividly demonstrates the international character of the struggle of working farmers for survival. The deepening world capitalist economic crisis has pushed millions of working farmers into desperate depression-like conditions.

Through their massive March 14 National Day of Action farmers across Canada have thrown their weight into this struggle. The action was unprecedented in its Canada-wide scope, and striking in the fighting unity shown between Quebecois farmers and those from the rest of Canada. Working people and their unions should throw their weight behind the farmers' demand for $1.5 billion dollars in emergency aid from the federal and provincial governments.

Through tractor convoys, demonstrations, sit-ins, and rallies, the farmers reached out to explain the conditions they face to workers in the major urban centers in order to put pressure on the capitalist governments in Ottawa and the provinces to act.

For several years, prices for most farm commodities have slumped globally. Under the capitalist system working farmers are forced to be price takers. The grain merchants and packinghouse bosses dictate the price farmers get for their products, and the farm implement corporations, energy, and chemical companies set the price for the inputs they need to work the land. The result is a cost-price squeeze in which working farmers do not receive enough of the value they create to survive.

The demands of farmers in the United Kingdom, Canada, and elsewhere for emergency aid and adequate prices to meet the costs of production are every bit as just as the demands of workers for a living wage, job security, and adequate benefits. Workers should also support a moratorium on bank foreclosures on the land of farmers.

Allying with working farmers strengthens the fighting capacity of our unions and reinforces the struggle of workers and working farmers against our common class enemies--Canada's ruling billionaire families and their government in Ottawa.

There is no solution to the devastation the capitalist system is bringing to the lives of working people short of a revolutionary struggle based on an alliance of workers and working farmers to replace capitalist political power in Ottawa with a workers and farmers government.

Socialist Cuba's workers and farmers government is the kind of government that farmers and workers in this country need. As a result of the conquests of the Cuban revolution, farmers in Cuba can count on security of land tenure, markets for their products, and prices that provide a decent income. It is Cuba's revolutionary example that explains why the Liberal government in Ottawa, which has turned a deaf ear to the demands the farmers raised March 14, has barred Cuba from participating in the April 20–22 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.
 
 
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Farmers rally across Canada for aid now
Farmers in UK devastated by livestock virus
 
 
 
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