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Agricultural shift needed

Want to make the world a better place? Then get involved in the local food movement.

To the Editor,

Re: Lantzville weighing in on urban agriculture, Sept. 24.

Manure was and continues to be a convenient tool for the simple and the disconnected to beat their loud minority drum with, even though I signed a document 20 months ago promising not to use any.

The issue is actually more complex as it is cultural in nature. Meaning our world view, spirit of entitlement, attitudes, lack of understanding of where food comes from and our aversion to being outside and working hard.

For thousands of years most of us were agrarian in how we lived. Fossil fuel, refrigeration, planes, roads and trucks changed everything. Less than four per cent of our food is grown on Vancouver Island. This makes us very vulnerable to any disruption in our just-in-time food chain where most of our food travels over 2,000 kilometres coming by ship seven days a week. There are only two days’ fresh food supply in our grocery stores.

We simply must grow more food to feed more people closer to where we live, work and play, period.

Urban farming is a worldwide movement by those who understand the basics of life.Those that fight the visionaries of positive change are the dinosaurs of the suburbs created by politicians and planners who still think we can stay on the road of destruction which, is not a cul-de-sac, but a dead end with a cliff.

Want to make the world a better place? Then get involved in the local food movement and put the ‘culture’ back into agriculture.

Dirk BeckerNanaimo