By Sharon Rempel
Re: Creative farm ideas needed, Opinion, Jan. 11.
Local food – a great idea until you figure out the true costs of production for ‘food’. It’s a lot more than just access to land.
Appropriate seed, fertile soil, adequate water, equipment to till soil, weed, plant and harvest the crops, labour, drying and storage facilities are part of the process of agriculture. Farm specific management is based on management of landscapes that contain the farm because water is often dealt with regionally and municipalities dictate how to use land.
Let’s zoom back in the 1980s.
Local, provincial and national governments are inventorying the forests, wetlands, wildlands and agricultural lands on the island. Working with academics, scientists, land management groups and a diversity of grassroot stakeholders would have been doing 25-100-year management plans for the land.
The carrying capacity of the land is identified based on agricultural lands, industry, farming and other uses for water and land. The landscape is planned to ensure deer and predator habitat are intact. Developments reflect the carrying capacity of the landscape to support people and other island life forms.
Funding is set aside for extension agronomy support through federal, provincial and university services to produce ‘local food’ with a vision food security for the island in 2011.
Zoom ahead to this week.
The ‘best’ agricultural lands have been carefully nurtured and soils enhanced naturally for food production. Forests have been logged sustainably and watersheds supported with diversified land management strategies. Ocean and water food resources are stable and regenerative.
Holistic landscape management Island-wide provides opportunities to identify micro climate niche market opportunities and agritourism strategies to bringing people to our island to experience sustainable resource management.
Deer don’t live in our front yards and all houses have food production in front and backyard areas.
Reality check in time.
If planning with local food production had been done regionally, provincially and nationally, we would still have a tax-base funded agriculture infrastructure in place. Economists and governments have tried to feed people from a global food supply relying on cheap labour to farmers.
You don’t make $100/hour farming grains and legumes. The ‘true cost’ of food production makes ‘local food’ with affordable wages unattractive in a global food marketplace.
Social issues of low-income housing, collapsing middle class, pension concerns and medical systems are part of the farming picture.
Today we need to find ways to develop local food and do it in a low-input way.
Set up an agriculture faculty in one of the many Island universities and design equipment and methods to sustain food production locally. Build physical seed collections and root storage facilities in every community.
Set up a local research station that collects weather data and correlated information about soil, water, crop variety adaptation and nutrition.
Create education programs about ‘food and seed literacy’, which is next to nil within academia and government. Seed is the heart of food security and the Norway gene bank’s collection is not of value nor accessible by people in Nanaimo.
Tax dollars would have been better invested in keeping federal and provincial agriculture research stations operating, funding agriculture departments in universities to work with local small scale, low input agriculture. Governments have invested in agribusiness high input biotech driven food production with crop development centres in the East or on the Prairies. This doesn’t help ‘local food’ concerns.
We are in a very desperate situation as a nation. We are affluent in some areas yet seed poor in all regions for food sustainability. We pour money into sports and military and can’t feed our own country. Land grabbing is probably giving away huge tracts of farmland to overseas interests with cutbacks to a few in government.
We have no national water conservation agency so likely our water supplies are being sold to the highest bidder. We have climate change concerns and nobody doing ‘on farm’ variety trials to figure out what food to be growing in regions coast to coast.
There are royal commissions and institutes and forums but little sharing of information, government money to do the infrastructure and education. Non-government organizations (NGOs) are trying to find ways to do the work but with no support from governments, land managers and politicians.
Seed literacy and food literacy is very low in all sectors of academia, government and the public.
Sometimes it feels that I’ve been preaching the gospel of landrace seed and the evils of high input agriculture to deaf ears the past 25 years.
Until our culture is threatened by famine it is very unlikely we will make the concerted effort it will take as communities to sit down and find solutions with decision makers and government working in good faith for the people, including themselves as a part of a dynamic living ecosystem that is connected to all of Earth.
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Nanaimo resident Sharon Rempel has a bachelor of science degree in agriculture and a master’s degree in conservation studies.
