I have been on a cross-Canada “Food for Thought” tour since June of 2008. The purpose of this mission is to listen to what people have to say on the issue of food security and food sovereignty. As a result of this tour, my party will be presenting a report to our federal government, which will hopefully assist in the development of a national food policy. In the more than 25 meetings that I have attended, there have been a number of recurring themes: the need to strengthen local food initiatives, the effects of trade on farmers, and the two competing ‘visions’ of agriculture that we currently see in Canada.
The first ‘vision’ for agriculture, also the most dominant, is the industrial model involving large scale operations, with heavy carbon footprints and a high use of chemicals. I believe the US Time magazine August 21, 2009 article entitled “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food” describes this model fairly accurately. It states that the U.S. high energy and intensive food system uses 19% of all fossil fuels and is responsible for the obesity epidemic which costs $147 billion a year in medical bills. The author, Bryan Walsh, describes a US hog industry where pigs raised in close confinement are fed corn grown with chemicals. Their toxic waste ends up contaminating streams. The overuse of antibiotics in this concentrated system is responsible for antibiotic-resistant bacteria which costs the U.S health system an estimated $5 billion per year.
According to the article, America uses 23 million tons of fertilizer per year for all crops. The run-off from these crops has created a 6000 square mile dead-zone in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where there is almost no oxygen and therefore, no sea life. This represents a loss of 212,000 metric tons of seafood per year. There are 400 similar dead zones in the world. It would appear that this intensive high-input corn-based industry produces a high-calorie food at the expense of destroying one of the healthiest sources of protein - seafood.
The U.S. industrial agriculture model is not unlike what we have in Canada. What is equally disturbing is that farmers locked into the large-scale production model are very often not able to make a half-decent living. Clearly something is not quite right. In the Time article, Walsh states that the industrial model has to end sooner or later and proposes an alternative: the promotion of sustainable food.
This model presupposes the scaling down of the food distribution system, and emphasizes the development of local food movements, a reduction of “food miles”, and a return to the family farm. Walsh presents examples of farms where cattle are grass fed and talks about a network of small-scale farmers that sell all-natural pork, beef, and lamb to retailers and restaurants. I visited a farm in northern Ontario where a young couple is actually making a living on less than 100 acres of land whereas, as a rule, over 70% of Canadian farms that are locked into large-scale industrial agriculture need off-farm income to survive.
I would like to say that the solution does not exclusively lie with one model or the other, but rather in a pragmatic approach to best produce good quality food for Canadians while ensuring that farmers can make a living doing so.
There are alternatives to large-scale, high-input farming which we need to move towards and look at more closely. As we seek to support our farmers and encourage more local production to secure our food sovereignty objectives, sustainable farming could be a way of getting Canadian agriculture back on track. What do you think?
Tags: sustainability