Food sustainability

The National Farmers Union is calling on consumers to ask their MPs to launch a federal investigation into the price of beef. In a meeting at the Parksville Community & Conference Centre on Wednesday last week, NFU members said packers and retailers have tripled their take, while farmers are getting less and consumers are seeing no benefit.

The result, says former NFU board member Jan Slomp, is that independent cattle producers are going out of business, young people aren't going into the business, and food sovereignty is being lost to corporate giants.

In Canada, he said, processors XL Beef and Cargill also own or control (through unpriced contracts) most of the cattle slaughtered in Canada. In peak weeks, he said, 67% of the cattle slaughtered here are theirs.

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Jan Slomp: Corporations are "undermining food sovereignty."

When the price for a steer gets too high, they simply stop buying cattle until the price drops. This 'captive supply' system means farmers are being paid the same as they were getting in the Dirty Thirties, he said. "So no wonder farmers are going out of business."

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is forming legislation to address this, he said, but Canada's federal politicians "have not shown any attempt to even look at this."

Canada needs to have similar legislation, he said, and the federal government needs to investigate "where the dollars go." "It's definitely undermining food sovereignty," he said. "If people understood how unsustainable it is for the producer, they would want to fix it.

"We need to explain to MPs that our whole food system is in jeopardy," Slomp said. "As an eater, I would be concerned."

Worried about the local food supply:

Food produced on Vancouver Island is becoming scarce as more farms are plowed under

By Neil Horner - Parksville Qualicum Beach News

Published: March 12, 2009 7:00 PM

It wouldn't be hard to get just about everybody on Vancouver Island to take the issue of food security seriously. Just stop the ferries for a few days.

That message was front and centre Saturday when Qualicum Beach planner Luke Sales welcomed food producers and other stakeholders to a special Oceanside Community Food Initiative forum, held at the local Community Hall.

The event, Sales said, was designed to enhance the availability of locally-produced food in the community.

"This is a capacity-building event," he said. "The idea is to bring interested community members together to talk about food security and move forward on our food system."

Sales noted only three per cent of the food consumed on Vancouver Island is produced there, and while he doesn't expect Qualicum Beach to be able to become food self-sufficient, he believes improvements can be made.

"There will always be trade," he said. "We will always import specialities from other parts of the world, but we don't have to import potatoes from Washington State when we have acres and acres of fertile fields where we could be growing our own."

Opening the one-day event was Kim Recalma-Clutesi, who spoke about the food security issue from a First Nations point of view.

"Our people never went hungry," Recalma-Clutesi said. "We used to sustain villages of 5,000 and even 10,000 people, and there is a reason for that. Root vegetable gardens were on every estuary on the coast of British Columbia. These gardens existed for thousands of years."

The plants harvested in the gardens, she said, were root crops, including tlicksim (silverweed), toksus (indigenous clover), kwanee (chocolate lily) and lupine.

"Saying our people just lived off salmon is like saying your people just eat T-bone steaks," she said.

Recalma-Clutesi said while meetings such as Saturday's was good, it's going to take a lot more than this to address what's wrong with the food system.

"Until it really impacts on us where it hurts us, in our pocketbooks, we are not going to make the fundamental changes we need to make," she said. "Profit is the motivating issue [in the current food system] and we have to change that. We can have lots of workshops, but unless we fundamentally change each other's thinking about food, not much is going to change."

Some of these changes, she said, included eating local food when it's in season.

"We don't need to eat strawberries from Mexico," she said. "We need to move our bodily rhythms to the seasons. You eat certain fresh things at certain times."

Sandra Mark, speaking on behalf of Edible Strategies, a local food-promoting organization from Snug Haven Farm at Fanny Bay, said food security is more complex than just asking producers to increase their output on Vancouver Island.

"The producers face huge barriers, and we need to understand these," she said. "There is a huge demand for Island food, but the supply is diminishing. We lost another five farms on the Island this year."

A large part of the problem, she said, involves the globalized food system, which nurtures a cheap food mentality, with the majority of profits going to food transportation companies, rather than farmers.

"There is a real cost to cheap food," she said. "Farms and businesses that support farmers are going out of business ... In Canada, we spend about 10 per cent of our disposable income on food," she said. "In other countries, that goes up to 50 per cent."

Indeed, she said most Island farmers are forced to work at a job away from the farm in order to make ends meet, essentially subsidizing the low prices they can demand for their produce because of the international trade agreements.

Sales said he was pleased with the event.

"I thought it was fabulous," he said. "I was very encouraged by the turnout and all the idea brought forward are being compiled."

One idea he said could prove of use was to have a year-round farmer's market.

"This would help the agricultural community," he said. "If people knew they had a venue to sell their winter produce, they would start planting it."

Sales stressed the need to keep the discussion about food security positive,.

"It's not going to be negativity or guilt that makes people change the way they eat," he said. "When people realize eating healthy, local food is more appealing, that's going to be what helps make the change."

Sales said he plans to hold followup meetings in an effort to come up with a food action plan, as well as some immediate projects.

news@pqbnews.com

Article below: Children need to be taught self-sufficiency, says Dirk Becker, as Qualicum Beach politicians speak on food security.

Food security needs change in thinking

By Neil Horner - Parksville Qualicum Beach News

Published: March 12, 2009 7:00 PM

If Vancouver Island is to ever become food self-sufficient, there is going to have to be a revolution in people's thinking, says Dirk Becker. Dirk Becker is well-known from his enthusiastic promotion of local agriculture.

That change in thinking, said the Lantzville organic farmer, involves Island residents thinking more about gardening and less about golf.

"Do you want your grandchildren to be able to grow food on Vancouver Island? If so, we need to have an honest discussion about how many more golf courses we can build," Becker said. "There should be no more discussions about developing ALR land. The question should be, can you grow food on it? Is there soil and water and exposure? If so, it needs to be tied up."

Becker is a regular at the Qualicum Beach Farmer's Market and he uses that platform to spread his message about bio-intensive farming, the production of large amounts of organic food from small parcels of land. He uses other venues as well, such as a recent feature speaker appearance with the Qualicum Beach Garden Club. When he does, Becker doesn't pull any punches, particularly when it comes to the topic of educating the younger generation.

"We need to learn and teach self-sufficiency, and the best way to do that is for the grandparents to pass their skills on to their children and grandchildren. We have a responsibility, all of us, to take our grandchildren down to the local store, buy some seeds, plant them together and grow them together. Stop taking your grandchild to fast food outlets and planting them in front of the TV. Plant some pea seeds instead and engage them in the magic of planting."

The cultural shift needed is similar to the one experienced with smoking.

"It needs to be culturally uncool to not have a clothesline. We can all put up a clothesline, tear up the lawn and grow food."

A first step, he said, is for people to buy more produce from local farmers, creating a demand, and thus, an income for Island farmers. However, this can only go so far.

"If the University of Victoria took all the food grown on Vancouver Island, it would only meet 10 per cent of their needs. We need to get people outside, digging.

Agricultural land under attack

By Richard Boyce - Parksville Qualicum Beach News - April 18, 2008

In days gone by Grafton Avenue ran through orchards and field of berries.?? Royalty in England ate jam from Errington on their scones and crumpets with afternoon tea.?During the early part of the 20th century Vancouver Island farms produced 85 per cent of the food that was consumed locally.

Over time, the petroleum industry has dominated the food industry by providing increased transportation networks, as well as cheap chemical fertilizers.?So then suppliers could ship produce around the world and monopolize on cheap labour forces in other regions.?Limitations of weather dictated by the seasons could be overcome by ordering produce from thousands of kilometers away, even from the other side of the equator.?Consumers began to depend upon these supplies and the low prices with little thought for the cost to the planet.

In other countries pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and genetic modification can be used with little or no regard for standards or regulations in place where the consumer is buying the produce.?People working the fields, preparing the food, and packaging it for transportation are faced with extremely low wages, dangerous work conditions and long work weeks.??

The Brazilian rainforest is being cut down and burned to make way for soya beans, beef cattle or corn to produce bio-diesel.?The soil is so poor it has to be abandoned after a year or two and the process is repeated.?The lush jungle of the rainforest will take tens of thousands of years to grow back.?The produce is then shipped around the globe to provide consumers with cheap food or fuel.

Located around lakes and rivers that can provide water for cultivation, low valley bottoms and estuary deltas have provided humanity with fertile soil to grow the majority of food needed for the growth of civilization.?Populations grow with the abundance of food and increasingly demand more land to build houses and commercial structures.?This balance between farmland and development has been going on for as long as civilizations have conquered the natural world.

Today, some people in British Columbia, and in particular around Oceanside, want to remove land from the Agricultural Land Reserve in order to subdivide their land for housing development, building golf courses, and industry.?Their claim is that the land is standing fallow so it should be put to use.?

The fact is the land can bring in more immediate cash today with a heightened real-estate market than it could in the short term as a hay field or low yielding farm. For the most part, farming has become a losing proposition locally since it is extremely hard to complete with the global market controlled by multinational corporations.

On April 18, 1973 B.C.'s Land Commission Act came into effect. The provincial government appointed a new commission, to establish a special land use zone to protect agricultural land. The Agricultural Land Reserve was established in collaboration with local governments and protected five per cent of B.C., which was the most critical to the province's food production.

Today, Vancouver Island is almost completely dependant on the rest of the world for food. Try going to any grocery store locally and find an item that was produced on Vancouver Island.?If you find one buy the item and tell your friends.?A few local markets during the summer provide local farmers with the opportunity to sell their produces.?A few local farms do sell their produces locally including Cormie's Farm and the Little Qualicum Cheeseworks.

The demand for food worldwide continues to increase, world hunger has reached epidemic proportions, and the human population is exploding.?How long will starving countries allow the export of their food to countries with power??

Consumers are the only ones who can change this trend by demanding that local farmers be represented in local stores.?Paying more for local produce makes sense when you factor in the costs to the plant. Resurrecting agriculture on Vancouver Island will take time and public demand.

Please let your mayor and council, MLA, and regional director know how you feel about allowing agricultural land to be developed locally.

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