I write in regard to “Falling prices deliver a blow to cherry farmers” in the Aug. 22 Penticton Western News. I feel badly for the cherry farmers and I suppose also for the co-op who has to give them bad news about falling prices and an oversupply of cherries.
Today’s farmers have so much to worry about these days compared to hundreds of years ago and I wonder if they’re still getting by with information passed down to them from generation to generation? It seems to me that one disadvantage facing a farmer is that perhaps they are not “natural business people” and in fact are in danger of being taken advantage of by sales people (especially those who work for disreputable firms), suppliers and banks, if not realtors and auctioneers too.
I dare say that the farmers might benefit from information that comes through college courses and other sources of information, such as how to market themselves and their products, selling to the general public, to restaurants as well as the co-op and any other interested parties. If they rely only on the co-op then sadly they may be set up to fail as the co-op is hardly the most lucrative source of purchases for any farmer, right?
The fact is that the world has changed a great deal since I was a child. I first took computers, not in elementary school and not at all in high school, but through leisure services in Richmond, then it wasn’t until college that I again learned about computers.
The fact is that the name of the game in business is greed and profit and often at the expense of one’s own employees, suppliers (if possible) and customers.
Banks are especially guilty of living off of the wealth and work of others rather than creating wealth themselves.
As for colleges, they too can be guilty of hawking courses that may ultimately prove to be obsolete by the time that a person graduates (if they do so) and charging high prices for their courses and supplying inferior instructors and or course materials.
If I were in a position to do so, I would recommend criminal investigations into banks, financial services companies, security firms (that provide mobile patrol, security guard and other services) as well as into the ministry that directly oversees the licensing of security guards as I believe there may well be a scandal or scandals there to be revealed.
Patrick Longworth
Okanagan Falls