Some of you will be old enough to remember the Dirty ’30s or life during wartime, when food wasn’t the humoungous bounty of the convenient and the exotic spread out before us on a daily basis at our local supermarkets.
Food was not just about what you wanted or what you could afford, or what best fit with the prevailing wisdom being provided by the beautiful and influential people in magazines or on television.
It was simply about what was available and accessible when you were hungry.
Rising grocery prices are not likely to be pushing you into that reality in the immediate future. But they should be serving as a bit of a wakeup call to how much Island residents take for granted what is available.
And it could be time for us to start listening to that call at both a personal and an official level.
How many of us are failing to contribute one iota to our personal pantries? Is there a reason we don’t have chickens in our back yards? Tomato plants on our window sills? Fruit trees on our boulevards?
Is there a reason your farmable land is not being farmed? Why planting and canning and hunting is not part of your annual routine?
Why is our community’s farmable land being used for houses, or golf courses, or why is food being turned into fuel? Why have we abandoned production of our most precious resource to corporations and other countries?
We have become a people who demand the state take responsibility for the most vital things in our lives, like our children, our health and our sustenance.
It’s time we took more responsibility for ourselves.
Cowichan NewsLeader