The Dominion - farming

It Takes a Village to Raise a Vegetable

hillarybain — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:58:54 +0000

Food consciousness coalesces at ACORN conference

HALIFAX—“Farmers need a shitload of support,” says Amy Lounder, an organic farmer who runs Avon River CSA (community-shared, or community-supported, agriculture) in Centre Burlington, NS. “And not just financial support but support in a lot of different ways, like support in information, of learning how to problem-solve.”

The support network of farmers has been continually diminished over the last several decades by the harsh realities of an industrial food system: a depopulated countryside devoid of tightly-knit agricultural communities; a greatly reduced number of public agricultural research stations; and a capitalistic mechanism that encourages competition over collaboration.

The annual Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network (ACORN) organic farming conference and trade show, which took place in Dartmouth on November 11–13, aimed to support organic farmers and farming by providing a forum for knowledge-sharing. The conference offered over 40 workshops on topics ranging from pastured pork, permaculture and post-harvest vegetable handling to urban beekeeping, pasture renovation, direct marketing and soil health. The conference brought together a broad range of farmers representing diverse agricultural communities.

“We have more young folks here this year than ever before,” says Lucia Stephen, ACORN conference coordinator. “It’s nice to see a more well-rounded demographic since a new generation of farmers is needed in the Maritimes.”

Statistics Canada data tell us that the average farmer in Nova Scotia in 2006 was 53.2 years old, which is also a rough national average.

The event showcased some of the innovative methods by which a new generation of Atlantic Canadian farmers and organic food producers are bypassing the industrial food system and supplying high-quality products to their communities.

Lounder apprenticed in CSAs in Ontario and New York before returning to her native Nova Scotia, where she has been running her CSA for two years. She has taken an unconventional path to growing that tailors her winter CSA on the Noel Shore to suit her diversified lifestyle. “Distribution starts in the middle of October and runs until the middle of February, so, unlike the classic market garden, I’ve broken up my work,” explains Lounder. “I grow in the spring and summer, harvest in the fall and do distribution in the winter.”

Lounder, who spoke at the conference, is a musician and a civil servant in addition to being a farmer, so finding a balance has been imperative. “Being able to split up my workload has been really beneficial to me. I started my seedlings in March in my backyard in the city...I was able to go to work, come home, check on my guys, water them, and kind of maintain both lives.”

The CSA model, explains Lounder, brings the consumer and grower together, and yields benefits to both parties. “In this type of vegetable system, the consumer invests at the beginning of the season their full dollar amount, regardless of what’s going to happen actually in the season. The grower therefore has so much more support and security; and there’s a social support, people know and they care about the farm and about the farmer.”

“I really think there’s a renewed energy and I think some of the more senior people within the food movement are realizing that maybe we’re getting to a point where we can really start creating some change,” says Av Singh, Organics and Rural Infrastructure specialist at Agrapoint. Singh has attended several ACORN conferences in the past and usually knows most of the people attending; this year he recognized roughly half of the attendees. “The turnout, the energy, it’s helping break that mindset where oftentimes our more experienced farmers are saying ‘Hey, we tried that, it doesn’t work.’”

It’s been working for Jessica Ross, who runs both a bread and preserves CSA in Halifax.

She rents a space from a bakery and bakes in the commercial operation’s downtime—thereby avoiding the need to own her own kitchen and equipment—and delivers her product via bicycle to between forty and sixty homes. She also has a table at the Historic Farmers’ Market.

“I generate about 30 hours per week of bread work for most of the year between the delivery and Farmers’ Market. I’ve avoided having to invest a lot in equipment and infrastructure through sharing and renting; and the bicycle delivery means I don’t have to rely on a storefront or commercial space,” Ross explains.

Ross has also been running a preserves CSA, or CSP, for the past two years with Katherine Marsters, co-founder of the Halifax Honey Bee Society. “We decided to use the CSA model and ask people to pay us $300 and receive in exchange a winter’s worth of preserves come November.”

They collect half the money in July, which constitutes their canning budget for the season; in November each shareholder receives 60 jars of goods, including stewed tomatoes, jams, pickles, fruits in honey syrup, and salsa. They supplied 20 families this year, canning over 1000 jars of preserves made from local fruits and vegetables.

“It’s been a great way to have a food business without having a conventional path, which is, as I mentioned, to have a storefront and a lot of commitments financially.”

Sandie Troop believes the CSA model can significantly lessen food waste. She and her husband Danny run Bruce Family Farm, a beef CSA, in Annapolis County. Through direct marketing and allowing their customers to tweak their monthly boxes, the shareholders receive an amount of product suited to their eating habits.

Food waste is a telltale illustration of our culture’s detachment from our food and farmers. A 2010 study by the George Morris Centre, a not-for-profit agricultural research group based in Guelph, Ontario, estimated that Canadians could be wasting up to $27 billion worth of food per year.

“When we get a new member we try to talk to them and get an eater’s profile—how big is their family and what do they normally eat. Some months we have a couple members that’ll just want six pounds of hamburger [the standard is ten per month] for that month, and I feel we’re better off selling you a bag of what you’re going to eat than a bag of what I want to sell you,” relates Sandie.

The Troops have also introduced a trading system into their CSA that allows members to trade box items to suit their particular tastes or food needs at a given juncture. “If you want four T-Bone steaks but don’t want your four pound roast, you can trade one for the other; four T-Bone steaks don’t weigh four pounds but the value is about the same. We try really hard to work with the members of our CSA to find out the kinds of meat they want to eat and to help them find ways of getting what they like to have.”

The conference, aptly themed Farms and Communities Growing Together, addressed this need for communication between farmers and the communities they serve.

“We’ve seen for the past few decades now that the industrial food system doesn’t work,” posits Singh, who is devoted to revivifying rural communities through championing community-oriented small-scale farming.

“If we continue to use the old models, we’ll continue to see rural exodus. I think we have to start looking at more creative ways of creating different models of retention. So, whether that’s more ownership over farms by community members, or communities taking a more active role, where community members are saying ‘here’s what we value and here’s how we’re going to support you.’ That allows for young farmers to say ‘it’s worth it for me to stay here.’”

“And Nova Scotia is in a good position for small-scale community agriculture because we don’t have a lot of big farms,” he adds.

But we need more farmers.

According to Statistics Canada, farmers constitute less than two percent of the country’s population.

“A food-secure vision, both locally and globally, may require food producers to represent ten or more percent of the population. In some countries, governments are quickly realizing that a cheap urban labour force from a depopulated rural landscape is not as ‘cheap’ as once thought and are now looking at incentives for having rural citizens return to once again produce food,” explains Singh.

Steven Wendland is from Harmony, Nova Scotia. He likes pie.

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op

Amy Lounder

Beets

Bye, Bye, Wheat Board?

Tim McSorley — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:27:59 +0000

Small farmers raise concern as Conservatives prepare to cut board's monopoly

WINNIPEG—Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is preparing to pass legislation to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on exports and milling of prairie-grown wheat and barley.

“The Wheat Board was brought into place, basically, so that grain buyers wouldn’t take advantage of farmers,” explained Jo-Lene Gardiner of Manitoba Agriculture, Food, and Rural Initiatives, which is based out of Pilot Mound, MB.

From it's offices in Winnipeg, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) markets Canadian grain to world markets and for domestic consumption.

Opinions among grain farmers are divided on the issue. As it stands, grain farmers in western Canada can only sell wheat and barley to the CWB. The Wheat Board therefore decides which varieties of wheat and barley farmers can grow, buys grain from farmers and markets it to buyers domestically and around the world.

One benefit to farmers under the current system is that payment of grain is meted out over a year period, and the CWB attempts to provide farmers with the best price possible for their grain by paying them the average price of grain on the world market over the year.

“If when you sell your wheat, [the] price is five dollars a bushel, and by the time the end of the year came along the price was nine dollars a bushel, under the new system you’re stuck with five dollars, end of story,” said Jan McIntyre, a mixed cattle and grain farmer near Cartwright, MB. “Under the Wheat Board, you would get the average price, which would be the difference between your five dollars and whatever the final average was.”

Currently, the CWB provides all grain farmers with the same price for their grain, "no matter if you have 100 bushels or 100,000,” said Gardiner. “If you have No. 1 wheat at 14 per cent protein, you would get the same price [per bushel] as the next guy. Everybody is treated equally under the system.”

“[The Wheat Board] takes a certain percentage [of wheat] right off the combine right to their elevator,” Derek Marvin told The Dominion. Marvin is a 31-year-old elementary school teacher in Winnipeg, but during the summer months leading up to harvest, he returns to his family’s farm in the rural municipality of Elton, MB, to help his father run their 2,300-acre operation.

“Without it, farmers are going to have to bring it back home in their own storage bins on the farm, and so you’re going to have to buy new bins and find more storage and find more space for it all," he said. "A grain bin holds 40,000 bushels, and that’ll cost you $100,000. That’s like buying a house!”

Opponents of the CWB’s monopoly argue that farmers ought to have the right to market their own grain, and decide which varieties to grow and when.

“An open market will increase the number of buyers bidding on our wheat and barley,” federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said told reporters in October, according to the Globe & Mail. “Unlike what some people may claim, the sky will not fall in an open market. Instead, the sky will be the limit.”

“I think it’s going to be a positive change,” said Barry Critcher, who has been farming grain for 28 years. Critcher farms 3,200 acres between Dawson Creek and Fort St. John, BC, one of British Columbia’s most productive grain growing regions. “I think it’s going to be positive to my farm, because I can sell my grain to who I want, when I want, and I can do the things I want to do on my farm without having to worry about letting somebody else do the marketing for me."

The prairie provinces have been experiencing a rural demographic shift since at least the 1970s, which kicked into high gear since the 1980s. Rural populations are diminishing, small towns are dying, and economic control over food systems is held by an increasingly smaller number of players, with money flowing out of small communities and into corporate headquarters, such as those of agribusiness giants Vittera and Cargill, in urban centers.

How will the changes to the CWB affect this demographic and economic transition?

“I think it will perpetuate the problem,” said Marvin, whose family has been farming grain in Elton, MB area for three generations. “It’s already to the point where rarely can a small family farm exist on its own. It needs other income. When I think of all the farms around my community, all the farmers who were farming smaller acreages than us have dropped off. They’ve sold a few acres to us, a few to the Hutterites, a few to some other neighbors, because it’s just too tough to keep up.”

While it is impossible at this juncture to confidently predict what effects the changes to the Canadian Wheat Board will have on farmers and rural communities, there is no doubt that grain farmers and farming communities in western Canada will have to adapt to the new economic reality—and fast.

Most expect that the proposed legislation will go through; if it does, as of August 1, 2012, the Canadian Wheat Board as we know it today will be gone.

Sheldon Birnie is a writer, editor, and musician living in Winnipeg.

Golden Wheat

Farmland Frontier

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:47:04 +0000

New wave of agricultural land-grabs reaches Canada

MONTREAL—In an age of escalating food insecurity and financial uncertainty, large corporations, investors, and even nations states have been stalking the globe in pursuit of an age-old and certain commodity: farmland. Bought up on a large scale to secure food for cropstarved countries or to make a safe investment, farmland is becoming the lucrative prize of a new resource frontier. The sweep of agricultural land grabs has stripped small farmers in Africa, Latin America and Asia of control over vital tracts of fertile land. And quietly, these modern-day land marauders are coming to Canada—undermining family farms, compromising local food sovereignty, and harming the environment.

This past July the National Farmers Union (NFU) sounded the alarm. In a report entitled “Losing Our Grip: How a Corporate Farmland Buy-up, Rising Farm Debt, and Agribusiness Financing of Inputs Threaten Family Farms and Food Sovereignty,” the union documents how foreign ownership of farmland in Canada is no longer a theoretical fear. It’s happening.

Investor group Walton International is buying up farmland across Alberta and has now moved into Ontario, converting farmland into “development-ready property”—what critics say is a euphemism for development geared towards urban sprawl. According to its website, Walton “manages approximately 36,000 acres on behalf of over 35,000 investors worldwide.”

News has broken recently about Quebec-based Monaxxion, representing Chinese financiers, which seeks to purchase 99,000 acres of land across Canada. La Terre de chez nous, the publication of the Union des producteurs agricoles, the Quebec farm union, has reported that Monaxxion describes its clients as “high net worth investors”—one investor, according to the report, is looking to pick up $30 million in land, and another has a personal wealth of $2 billion.

And Agcapita, a Calgary-based investment fund, has scooped up between 30,000 and 60,000 acres of farmland, mostly in Saskatchewan. “I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time,” US commodities guru and advisor to Agcapita Jim Rogers told Fortune
Magazine in 2009.

Kevin Wipf from NFU’s head office in Regina believes such sentiments are cause for grave concern.

“Farmland is food land and we believe protecting the family farm and protecting local food systems is vitally important,” Wipf said. “When you have foreign investors coming to purchase land solely for the sake of investing, you are losing the sovereignty over food land, those local food systems and control over your land base. And they won’t have the same concern for the environment and sustainability that we believe a local farmer would have.”

Devlin Kuyek is a researcher with GRAIN, an organization that supports the struggle of small farmers and social movements for community-controlled food systems and agricultural biodiversity. He has analyzed the global trends bearing down on Canada.

“These land grabs are happening on a large scale,” he said.

The overall numbers are staggering. GRAIN estimates that there is $100 billion sitting in global funds for the purchase or lease of farmlands. At least fifty million hectares of farmland has already been acquired.

“In 2008 the [food] prices skyrocketed and you had many countries who are quite dependent on food imports start looking at different ways to secure food,” Kuyek said.

The Gulf States, China, Japan, South Korea and most of Western Europe in particular have since been trying to increase their access to agricultural land in poorer countries.

“You also had the people in the financial sector start looking at farmland as a secondary assets class that they could invest [in] to give them returns that they weren’t seeing otherwise,” Kuyek said.

GRAIN identified 120 investment groups specifically set up to buy up farms. These include investment funds, investments from wealthy individuals and banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

“You have a bunch of apologists trying to frame this as some sort of agricultural modernization or some way to capture or harness private sector investment in agriculture,” he says. “There are larger forces that are bearing down, and Canada is definitely being targeted. People are not aware of what’s happening. Those looking to invest in farmland have access to millions of billions of dollars that they can mobilize rapidly and instantaneously.”

According to Wipf, such developments portend the demise of viable farming.

“The ability to produce food, the ability to have a local food system, is really what makes a community viable,” he said. “When you have foreign interests controlling a large part of an important resource like farmland—which is often not viewed as a resource—you lose your autonomy.”

The NFU believes a perfect storm of factors is undermining the family farm. Farms are burdened by a crushing debt—for each dollar earned, farmers are 23 dollars in debt. Under financial strain, farmers are forced to turn to agro-corporations that are increasingly financing farmers’ seeds, chemicals, and fertilizer—and farmers then return a share of their crop to the corporation.

Farmers who are in debt and bound by contracts to corporations are easily outbid by wealthy investors
who see farmland as a hot new commodity.

“We do know there are investors looking at Canadian farmland,” Kuyek said. “There are over 20 major investment funds that are being set up across the country. Some of them have been here for years, and others are more recent. Some are trying to find loopholes in the regulations in order to be able to channel private investor money in the acquisition of farmland because of provincial restrictions.”

Canada does not currently have any federals laws to protect against foreign interests investing in farmland. Provinces are responsible for regulating farmland purchases, with regulatory frameworks varying across the country. In 2003 Saskatchewan changed its provincial laws to allow out-of-province investment in its farmland.

According to the NFU, far from protecting small farms, the Canadian government has been paving the way for a non-farmer buy-up of Canada’s food land.

Crown agency Farm Credit Canada acts as the main financier for many of the country’s biggest farmland investment companies—providing multi-million-dollar loans and helping facilitate the sale or lease of land.

Michael Hoffort is a spokesperson from the agency and spoke with The Dominion regarding the NFU report.

“I wouldn’t say we are seeing a large amount of foreign investment coming towards farmland in Canada,” Hoffort said. “Often when it is a foreign investor, it is a farmer who is looking to immigrate into Canada, buy a farm and be a member of the community.”

But Farm Credit Canada has been very friendly to the largest Canadian farmland investment company Assiniboia, offering generous grants. The company has grown rapidly over the last two years, tripling its holdings to its current 100,000 acres.

Assiniboia’s primary source of capital is the taxpayer-owned Farm Credit Canada. In 2009, the company signed a mortgage agreement package that will see it receive an additional $9 million in borrowing capacity at “very low long-term rates,” according to an Assiniboia report.

When asked what data Farm Credit Canada has collected to compare how much foreign investment has been carried out over the last few years, Hoffort couldn’t give any figures.

“We haven’t done the analysis of crunching the numbers to find out how much farmland has been purchased domestically or by foreign buyers,” he said.

Hoffort explained that Farm Credit Canada only provides loans to applicants with a Canadian backer in the package, but he did not disclose what the percentage of the holding had to be Canadian.

“We lend to farms of all sizes,” he said. “The vast majority are family managed, and they come in many shapes and sizes. Farms in general have been growing in size for years—it is just part of the economy.”

Hoffort did have words to reassure the public. “Our focus is very much on agriculture, agricultural producers and the majority of those are by and large family farms. It has been in the past that way, and I can assure you that it will be that way in the future.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates there are currently over a billion people on the planet who suffer from hunger. The number continues to grow.

Kuyek believes the new phenomenon of agricultural land grabs provides important lessons about the failure of the market, and the failure of the global food system.

“We must get food production back in the hands of small farmers, ensuring their livelihood and ensuring that people are fed from the food system and that it isn’t about profit,” he said.

The urgency will only grow as these problems are compounded by climate change.

“The question is not ‘what do we do with all this private sector interest in farming that has sprung up,’” he said, “but rather ‘how do we create a system of farming, how do we create a food system that actually feeds people.’”

Amy Miller is a media maker and community organizer who resides in Montreal.

Land grab

The Land that Feeds

hillarybain — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Rural community divided over proposal to rezone farmland

GREENWICH, NS—A proposal to rezone 380 acres of active farmland in the hamlet of Greenwich, Kings County, has raised public concern over food security, cultural history, and sustainable community-planning in Nova Scotia’s fertile Annapolis Valley.

“Removing the agricultural district zoning will take away the Greenwich farms that helped build Kings County,” says Tom Cosman, a Greenwich honey farmer who believes the proposal is short-sighted.

In August 2009, five Greenwich landowners submitted an application to Kings Council proposing an amendment to the Kings County Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Land-Use Bylaw which would allow the involved agricultural lands to be rezoned for residential, commercial or industrial purposes—a Comprehensive Development District (CDD), as the MPS labels it.

The proposal roused an immediate outcry from several Greenwich residents who want to preserve the fertile farmland.

“The proposed development is intended to remove almost 75 per cent of Greenwich’s prime agricultural lands, which the current owners themselves claim to have been farmed for 700 years collectively,” states Marilyn Cameron, a Greenwich resident and active member of No Farms, No Food, a community coalition devoted to the protection and preservation of Nova Scotia farmland.

Three of the five landowners own, operate, and supply three popular farm markets in Greenwich, and their businesses form the core of the community’s identity. No Farms, No Food have accused the landowners of selfishly disregarding their responsibilities to the community and stewardship of the land.

Doug Hennigar, a fruit and vegetable farmer and owner of one of the farm markets, believes those residents are unwilling to accept the reality of his situation. “My soil could be considered prime if we were only talking about Nova Scotia, but globalization has put my land in competition with soils from all over the world. I have to compete with farmers from countries that have better soils, longer growing seasons, cheaper labour, and high government subsidies,” he relates.

In the global competition for Nova Scotians’ food dollar, local farmers are losing out. A report released Tuesday by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Ecology Action Centre, found that for every dollar spent on food in the province in 2008, Nova Scotian farmers got 13 cents. “The study examined over 60 products and found that, on average, the food products were traveling nearly 4,000 km from farm to plate,” says Marla MacLeod, co-author of the report entitled Is Nova Scotia Eating Local?

This needs to change, says MacLeod, who believes the province should prioritize food security and food sovereignty. “I think it’s important to retain the capacity to grow our own food here,” says MacLeod, who argues that a local agriculture system has environmental, social, economic and health benefits. “It doesn’t make any sense to depend on everyone else in the world to feed us.”

Given the significant public opposition to the proposed amendment, many Kings County residents are irate that Kings Council used $36,000 in taxpayer money to have consulting firm Environmental Design and Management Ltd. (EDM) process the contentious application. The resultant 20-page EDM report was submitted to the Kings Planning Advisory Committee in May 2010—it recommended that the “subject site be made available for development by creating a CDD and designating the area a new Growth Centre.”

Hennigar says those opposed to the proposal are simply afraid of change. “They’re trying to preserve an agricultural past that is dead—they want to make this place an agricultural museum. We need to balance high-paying business opportunities while also preserving our best farmland. We’re an aging population, and we can’t have a successful regional agriculture if we don’t have a variety of solid employment opportunities for our youth.”

MacLeod believes that farming, given proper support, could be a viable and sustainable employment opportunity for youth. “There are young people interested in farming, and interested in doing it differently,” she says, pointing to new models like Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and direct marketing.

MacLeod says we need to support people who are farming now, and invest in programs that promote mentorship and learning for young and new farmers. She believes a long-term view is needed: “once you’ve built over land, you can’t get it back,” adding that Nova Scotia will need that land to feed itself in the future.

“In a world with an ever-increasing population, the looming threat of peak oil, and shrinking farmlands, it is destructive to allow the loss of this agricultural resource,” says Cosman.

Tensions were recently heightened in Greenwich when, on July 6, 2010, Kings Council voted to rezone 167.5 acres of prime farmland in the neighbouring village of Port Williams for residential purposes.

Council’s motion has led to a redoubling of opposition efforts in Greenwich. “If the present owners don’t want to farm that land, it should be banked for farmers that do,” says Cameron.

If the application for rezoning continues to move forward, two readings at Council and a public hearing will be necessary before it is handed over to the provincial Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, Ramona Jennex, for final approval. Jennex would then have 60 days to either reject or approve Council’s motion to develop the farmland.

Regardless of the outcome, farmers need more support if land is going to be protected in the future, says MacLeod. “In many cases [the land is sold] to help fund farmers’ retirement plans,” she says.

MacLeod asserts that if farmers had pensions, extended health care plans, and a viable income, they’d have more options when they stopped farming—and more people interested in picking up where they left off.

“Put your energy into protecting the farmer and you’ll automatically protect the farmland,” says Hennigar. “Farmers only make up about 1.5 per cent of the Canadian population—we need help and support from the public.”

Steven Wendland is a writer, vegetable gardener and filmmaker from Harmony, Nova Scotia.

With files from Hillary Lindsay.

Save Our Farms

Tom Cosman

Growing Farmers

Moira Peters — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:35:35 +0000

Canada needs policies to support young farmers: NFUY

HALIFAX—"Between 1991 and 2006 the number of farmers under 35 years old decreased by over 60 per cent," said Kalissa Regier, a 31-year-old organic grain farmer.

That's a trend that Regier and other young farmers, who gathered in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, over the first weekend of March, are hoping to change.

Regier, President of the National Farmers Union Youth (NFUY), flew in from her farm in Saskatchewan to join a dozen other young farmers (some aspiring, most already farming) from across the country in a NFUY workshop and training weekend.

The barriers to young farmers are huge, said Regier, and the global industrial food system makes it difficult for farmers to sell their product at a fair price. The NFUY, the youth arm of the National Farmers Union, is committed to building a different kind of food system, one that is socially just, locally focused and economically viable for family farms.

The group's Campaign for New Farmers—a focus over the weekend—aims to increase the number of farmers in Canada.

To start farming you need access to land and equipment, said Cammie Harbottle, a 28-year-old vegetable farmer and Vice President of the NFUY. She said many young farmers have difficulty finding a bank willing to lend them money for start-up costs. Harbottle, who farmed for six years in British Colombia and is entering her second season in Colchester County, is having difficulty securing capital to build the packing shed she needs in order to wash and pack her vegetables for market.

Tyrel Murray, who has been farming for three years with his brother Chad on family land in Pictou County, faces similar challenges. The Murrays need infrastructure, specifically greenhouses and barn space, but lack the capital to take their operation to the next level.

Advocating for policies that support young farmers—like policies that provide access to capital—is just one of the aims of the Campaign for New Farmers, said Harbottle.

In the meantime, and despite the odds, the young farmers who crowded into a room at the Tatamagouche Centre are choosing to farm, and to feed their communities.

Regier will return home to plant more than 1,000 acres of grain in Saskatchewan. The Murrays have started a farmers market in New Glasgow that is gaining momentum and popularity. Harbottle has begun seeding in her greenhouse and plans to expand her markets in Halifax and Tatamagouche.

When asked why she farms, Harbottle didn't hesitate.

"Because I love it and it makes sense to me," she said. "It's always made sense to me to grow food. We need to show people how to grow food and how to connect with their food at the local level."

In a profession that Murray described as "working like hell and not making much money," the feeling of optimism and enthusiasm among the young farmers is difficult to ignore.

"There's been a shift in the current," said Murray. "A shift in the thinking [about local food], enough to lead me to believe that it could be a healthy industry again."

Hillary Bain Lindsay is coordinator with the Halifax Media Co-op and a member of the National Farmers Union.

An original version of this article was published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Young Farmers Circle

The Tar Sands and Canada's Food System

dru — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:01:07 +0000

Are beans the only cure for natural gas?

Tar sands opponents point out that burning natural gas, a relatively clean fuel, to extract oil will result in massive increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, some experts say the implications of using natural gas go far beyond global warming.

North American agriculture is deeply dependent on natural gas. Nitrogen fertilizer is chemically produced using a process that -- currently -- cannot be conducted efficiently without large amounts of natural gas. This fertilizer, in turn, is an essential nutrient in North America's food production system. "In a fairly direct way," says Darrin Qualman, Director of Research at the National Farmers Union, "natural gas is a primary feedstock for our food supply."

While "peak oil," the point at which global production of oil begins to decline, is subject to speculation, natural gas peaked in North America in 2003. Since then, more wells have been added, but production has declined slowly, while prices have increased sharply.

As a result, says Qualman, fertilizer companies are closing up shop and are moving their operations to places like Qatar, Egypt and Trinidad, where natural gas is cheap and plentiful, for now.

Canada has thus begun to import natural gas. At least 10 Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) terminals are planned in Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where liquified gas will be brought in from Saudi Arabia, Russia and other producers.

It is, he says, a cause for concern in the coming decades.

"If you're farming in Saskatchewan or Manitoba, using a fertilizer supply based on natural gas from Alberta looks workable," says Qualman. "But if tomorrow our fertilizer is made from natural gas sourced in Russia or the Middle East, we in effect become dependent on offshore, highly unstable supplies for our food system."

In terms of fueling the current food system, there are few compelling alternatives to natural gas. Coal is a possible source of nitrogen but is not nearly as efficient. In some scenarios, nuclear power plants can be used to produce fertilizer.

A more fundamental alternative, says Qualman, is to begin restructuring the food system. Traditionally, nitrogen fixing is performed by crops like beans and chickpeas. Or, it is recycled to cropland from animal manures. Using crop rotation and natural sources to provide nitrogen and reducing energy inputs to agriculture requires changes to diets and far more intensive use of human labour.

Says Qualman, "Given the industrial food system and given a meat-based diet, nitrogen and natural gas are absolutely essential."

This basic fact has global implications.

Vaclav Smil, a professor of Environment & Geography at the University of Manitoba, estimated in his 2004 book Enriching the Earth that 40 per cent of the protein in human bodies worldwide could not have been produced without the use of synthetic nitrogen. He concludes that roughly 2.5 billion of the world's 6.7 billion people could not exist without synthetic fertilizer.

The number of people who depend on synthetic fertilizer for their existence will increase as the world population increases by an estimated two to four billion by 2050.

For Canada, the problem doesn't stop at the food system. "When you think about the Middle East using up its gas supplies," says Qualman, "that's a non-recoverable resource, but those places aren't cold. Canada depends on natural gas for heating. It’s going to be cold here for thousands of years and we’re using up our natural gas supply in decades." According to Natural Resources Canada, nearly half of all Canadian homes -- over six million households -- are heated with natural gas.

Climate change -- propelled by industrial projects like the tar sands -- is also slated to have an adverse impact on agriculture. "Climatologists will tell you that evaporation trumps rainfall," says Qualman. Small increases in temperature could mean much drier growing conditions on Canada's prairies, even if rainfall increases.

The decision to invest huge amounts of natural gas into the tar sands will have ripple effects through the Canadian food system, says Qualman. "As North America becomes natural gas short, as we pass peak and become net importers, we're going to set up a competitive trade-off between the uses of natural gas" -- tar sands, food, heating and power generation among them.

"We really should have a long-term plan around fertility and food before we even think about ramping up production in the tar sands...we have to look at the next 100 years of agriculture and the next 100 years of heating."

"We should be saying: 'Show us the 100-year plan for agriculture and then show us you've got a surplus left over that can be used for the tar sands.'"

In theory, some of the business world seem to agree that "letting the market decide" may not be the most sound energy strategy. A January 2005 article in Canadian Business asserts that "with no long-term guidelines and no surplus capacity, the only thing the market can deliver is 'volatility.'"

The article concludes by quoting the president of a Calgary-based LNG company, saying "Economics 101 will solve the mess, but the trouble is it will do so with a machete...It will hurt."

Harvester