Today’s Globe and Mail features an article about the farming crisis in Canada. On close inspection the “crisis” is that Canada has not kept up its share of the global marketplace; that is, it is about our failure to increase exports. Low farm incomes are mentioned with nostalgiac dismay but nothing of the large transnational companies that dominate seeds and fertilizers on the input side of the farm, nor anything about the market power of a handful of wholesalers and retailers on the output side of the farm.
At a time when local food movements are springing up, organic agriculture is booming, and nutritionists are joining with hunger activists, educators and foodies to rethink the food system, this is remarkably shoddy coverage. Oh, and did I mention peak oil and devastation of farm soils, or the cruelty to animals in Big Industrial Ag? Indeed, the cover picture is of a turkey farm – not turkeys out in the field, but packed in beak to breast inside a large covered barn where they get fattened up for slaughter without ever seeing the light of day. You can almost smell the feces, and taste the antibiotics that prevent them from mass illness. True, it is the Globe, and its ever-lowering standards of journalism. And just one story in a series, though it sure looks like the rest of the series plays into the same narrative.
Our recent Climate Justice paper, Every Bite Counts, tried to break out of the industrial growth paradigm by thinking about food through a climate lens, which tells us to more greatly value self-reliance and agricultural systems and practices that are not fossil fuel intensive. I also suggest a great series on food and agriculture in the Tyee by Colleen Kimmett, and a new publication from CCPA’s Saskatchewan office by Trevor Harriot if you are looking for an alternative to nonsense on the cover of the Globe.
Kim // Nov 23, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Globe misses the mark on alot of issues lately, as does the Sun, Province, TC…The best farming method I have seen is the so called French Intensive Biodynamic method, published by the John Jeavons, 1974 Titled, aptly, “How to Grow More Vegetables”.
Darcy M // Nov 24, 2010 at 12:18 pm
You might also have wanted to mention Bill C474 and its requirement for “an analysis of potential harm to export markets … before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.” (See: http://www.cban.ca/) This analysis is key to our ability to export, given the refusal by enlightened countries to buy GM crops and the propensity of seeds to contaminate nearby farms, potentially threatening the livelihood of small(er) farmers by giant agribusinesses.
Dianne // Jan 9, 2011 at 10:29 am
I agree that there are major problems in agriculture and our food production and distribution system. It is a great industry to look at because it is a fundamental reflection on our society. But I think pointing a finger at the large industrial agricultural corporations and industrial style agriculture is missing the point.
What we see in the agriculture and food industry is a reflection of deep deep deep problems with the way our society works and with our values. I could probably write a book on this. However, I will just say that until we realise that food is a security and health issue and deal with it as such we not be able to solve our problems. We don’t expect to be able to provide military security, police protection or health care purely through market mechanisms.
Agriculture is the foundation of our global society. The development of agriculture opened a whole new chapter in human history. It tipped the scales in favour of our survival as a spiecies. Neanderthals went the other way.
It should be screamingly obvious that food, and the systems that produce it, are fundamental to our physical survival. The only thing more fundamental is the global environment and the biological systems that give us breath and life. Yet as a society we seem to think that the global financial and market system is what supports us, and thses are vitally important.
As a society, we just don’t get it. We have become disconnected and confused and we are way way out on a limb.
I think the root of the problem is that we do not realize or do not really grasp the significance of the fact that price is a result of an intersection of a supply and demand curve. It is not a true measure of value. Secondly, there are some fundamental assumptions in economic theory which just do not hold in reality.
For those of you who do follow the markets, the belief that risk could be eliminated by spreading it out and passing it around, which led to the sub prime crisis, is a minor example of a similar delusion. We can distance ourselves from fundamental reality, but as a global society, we can not escape it.
I believe that if we do not figure this out we will go the way of the Neanderthals, who probably were not all that different from us. This is our societies fatal flaw. What works so well for us may kill us in the end.