The Dominion - Agriculture

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

Sludge Storm

hillarybain — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 06:31:37 +0000

Conference organizers want biosolids out of Nova Scotia

HALIFAX—Learning that kiln-baked sewage sludge, also known as "biosolids", is being marketed and sold across Nova Scotia as fertilizer, came as a shock to Lil MacPherson. MacPherson owns The Wooden Monkey, a Halifax restaurant that emphasizes local, seasonal and organic ingredients.

“I'm out there, trying my best, through the restaurant, to promote local foods, and promote sustainable agriculture,” says MacPherson. “Then all of a sudden I get this news, that we're using seriously toxic sewage sludge spread throughout Nova Scotia, which eventually goes through our food system, and I was horrified.”

MacPherson was troubled that much of Halifax didn't know what happened to their waste once it went “flush.” Looking to plunge Haligonians into the light, she and long-time friend Ellen Page are staging an event coined The Nova Scotia Soil Conference, on March 13, 2011.

The purpose of the conference is to discuss whether Halifax Regional Municipality's (HRM) baked sludge is safe for soil application of any kind. A wide range of speakers will be on hand, including internationally renowned microbiologist, and US Environmental Protection Agency whistle-blower, Dr David Lewis, as well as President of Minas Basin Pulp and Power, Scott Travers. Travers is slated to discuss the potential for energy extraction from sludge.

Sludge is the substance that falls to the bottom of a settling tank in a waste treatment plant, and human fecal matter is just the tip of the sludge-berg. Sludge from a typical city's sewers can, and often does, contain heavy metals, pharmaceutical residues (excreted traces of the drugs that so many of us ingest on a daily basis), hospital waste, as well as an array of substances termed by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME) as "Emerging Substances of Concern." ESOCs include personal care products, flame retardants and musks, to name but a few.

Fighting alongside MacPherson, and also slated to speak at the March 13 conference, is Jason Hoffman. A former Iowan cattle farmer, Hoffman has a PhD in plant physiology and biochemistry, and is now a Compost Consultant in the HRM. He advocates extreme caution when dealing with sludge, and certainly doesn't recommend using it, whether cooked or raw, as fertilizer.

“The problem is not with the human excrement itself,” says Hoffman, “it’s everything else. Although even if you were just dealing with the human excrement, you still have the not inconsiderable problem of pharmaceutical residues...and the scale is huge. [The] drug industry assumes no responsibility for that aspect of it.”

Hoffman also warns of the practice of applying biosolids to pasturing lands, a practice which is endorsed by Nova Scotia as safe for biosolids.

“I know how cows eat grass. They get a mouthful and they pull it up and there’s often a lot of dirt hanging on that.” says Hofman, explaining one of the ways that biosolids can enter the food system. “So it’s a direct ingestion problem. Then there’s the whole question of fat-soluble accumulation in the milk. The dairy people ought to be very concerned about that. [Milk products are] the last place you want to put biosolids.”

“Not everybody buys into the notion that what we put into our drain ends up back in our food chain. People just can’t make that connect because we are disconnected from how our food is grown,” says Marilyn Cameron, also slated to speak at the conference, and Chair of the Biosolids Caucus of the Nova Scotia Environmental Network (NSEN). “It’s going to take a long time to restructure society and get us to be more responsible for what we put down our drains.”

Cameron notes that in the meantime there are technologies for processing sludge that are “absolutely incredible.”

One of those technologies is the Canadian-developed, and internationally renowned Plasma Assisted Sludge Oxidation (PASO) system, which uses a plasma torch to oxidize the water trapped within the sludge. Heat energy, which can be potentially captured and used, is released as a by-product. Hydro Quebec developed the technology, and Fabgroups, a Quebec-based company, has signed a licensing agreement to develop, manufacture, and market it. Fabgroups has set up a test PASO system in Valleyfield, Quebec, and has been entertaining big-time investors from the US.

“Basically it reduces [sludge] to sand-like crumbs,” says Ted Mulhern, Director of Business Development for Fabgroups. “Typically you have a 20-fold reduction in volume.” Jean-Paul Gendron, Coordinator for Water and Environment for the city of Valleyfield, notes that their PASO system reduces Valleyfield's 8,000 metric tons of sludge to 900 tons of end-product.

“At a plant at full capacity,” says Mulhern, “with an oven that can handle four-and-a-half wet tons of sludge per hour, you're generating at about 12 million British thermal units per hour. That translates into about 3.5 megawatts of thermal energy every hour [and the system is] designed to run 24/7."

According to Mulhern, that's enough energy to power a conventional waste treatment plant, typically a city's largest energy expenditure, with enough energy left over to feed the grid. Given Nova Scotia's current fixation on coal of questionable origins, sludge-derived power may not be so far-fetched.

“It has great potential to generate alternative forms of energy at a very low cost,” says Mulhern. “Typically your cost of producing electricity is at about four cents a kilowatt, so it's a very interesting technology.”

While the test plant in Valleyfield is not set up for energy capture quite yet, Fabgroups is preparing to install this key piece of technology in the near future.

But while Valleyfield and other communities look towards the future of waste management, Nova Scotia remains knee-deep in its own sludge.

Since 2008, Greater Halifax’s sludge has been handed over to a company called N-Viro Systems Canada LP. NVS, whose facility is located in Aerotech Park, near the Halifax Airport, adds a hearty dose of cement dust into the mix, and bakes the whole mess in a kiln.

The end product is trademarked as N-Viro Soil, and is sold across Nova Scotia as a Canadian Food Inspection Agency-approved fertilizer. CFIA seal of approval notwithstanding, critics, including Hoffman and Cameron, claim that applying N-Viro Soil to the earth is introducing a mysterious mix of potentially harmful ingredients right into the soil.

A recent study by the CCME found that a plethora of pharmaceuticals were turning up in survey samples of N-Viro Soil. ESOCs with proven cancer-causing track records, such as Bisphenol A, were also present.

“The problem as I see it is that this material just has too many contaminants,” says Hoffman. “When you look at the CCME study, the findings are in nanograms, which is parts per billion. And it’s very easy to dismiss any one of these compounds individually. But collectively there are thousands and thousands. Doing what? We know not.”

Hoffman also takes issue with N-Viro's addition of cement kiln dust into their end-product.

“What they try to do in Nova Scotia,” explains Hoffman, “because we have acidic agricultural soil, is...promote ‘liming’ [from cement kiln dusts]. Cement kiln dust comes with its own basket of ‘what’s in it?’ and that needs to be looked at.”

The Canadian Horticultural Council (CHC) and the CFIA, the very agency that licenses N-Viro Soil as a fertilizer, agree. The CHC and CFIA developed the Food Safety Program (FSP) which is a series of guidelines that large-scale produce buyers, such as Sobeys and Loblaws, use when selecting growers to supply their stores with produce. The FSP does not allow for Canadian produce-growers to apply municipal waste, N-Viro Soil included, onto crop-growing soil.

“The concern...is with possible chemical contaminants to the biosolids,” says Heather Gale, National Program Manager of CanadaGAP, the CHC's On-Farm Food Safety Program. “That might be things like pharmaceuticals or even something like personal care products that might get concentrated in the waste.”

NVS, for its part, claims that N-Viro Soil is safe for crop application of all kinds, and that it has the science to prove it.

“The only place that [N-Viro Soil] is not being applied to agricultural crops is fruits and vegetables in Canada. Nowhere else in the world,” says Lise LeBlanc, of LP Consulting Ltd, speaking for NVS. “And NVS is going to re-debate that, because [they] recognized that it’s not based on science. It is based on what most scientists call the 'yuck factor.'”

The "yuck factor", or "wisdom of repugnance", is not why CHC has rejected N-Viro Soil, says Gale. She says they have seen NVS's science, and they aren't impressed.

“So far”, says Gale, “NVS has not been able to provide the information that our technical working group is looking for that would put their mind to rest around it.”

For the moment, only NVS knows where the N-Viro Soil goes. Cameron has filed a freedom of information request for a list of NVS's customers, but has yet to receive it. In the interim, Cameron has collected the signatures of over 400 Nova Scotia farmers who have made the promise to never apply biosolids to their land.

MacPherson, in setting up The Nova Scotia Soil Conference, and in her buying practices at The Wooden Monkey, is showing solidarity with those farmers.

"Biosolids is not for The Monkey", says MacPherson, "and we don't support that. We support and focus on buying from Nova Scotia farmers, and we will not buy any products that are grown using biosolids. Biosolids [are] not about recycling, it's just pollution transfer. It's not for the future of farmers in Nova Scotia, and we are supporting the farmers that are taking a stand with us."

Miles Howe hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and currently calls Halifax home. He has a Masters degree in Sociology, plays a wicked harmonica, and ferments a mean kimchi.

Toilet Sludge

Murky Waters

Moira Peters — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 10:02:19 +0000

Contentious mink farm development given green light

YARMOUTH COUNTY, NS—A proposed mink ranch development on Sloans Lake appears to be moving forward, much to the consternation of area residents who had been under the impression that the development application had been rejected under a municipal land-use bylaw.

“The health of the Wentworth-Carleton watershed is already seriously strained by high-density fur farming at its headwaters,” says Debbie Hall, an area resident. “It’s very depressing. Sloans Lake is one of the last clean lakes in the watershed.”

On October 28, 2009, following years of worsening lake conditions and the continuing proliferation of blue-green algae blooms, the Municipality of the District of Yarmouth (MODY) voted to amend a municipal land-use bylaw, increasing, from 328 to 500 feet, the required minimum setback distance from lakes and rivers for buildings, manure storage facilities, and burial sites for the disposal of dead animals used in conjunction with fur ranches and hog and fowl farms.

An application submitted by R&N Farms Limited for a mink ranch development on Sloans Lake, roughly 20 kilometres north of Yarmouth, was initially denied because the development proposal did not meet the new setback criteria. But R&N revised its application to meet the demands of the revised bylaw and has since been granted 14 building permits for the same location.

MODY Development Officer John Sullivan confirmed that the project is moving forward but could not give specific details.

“It looks like we won the battle but lost the war,” rues Hall. “The community had hoped that the bylaw amendment would curtail the development altogether.”

There has been much discussion over the last several years as to the source(s) of the excess nutrients that have caused blue-green algae t overrun several Yarmouth and Digby County lakes. Possible contributing factors include faulty lakeside septic systems and run-off containing agro-industrial fertilizers, but many residents of southwestern Nova Scotia believe under-regulated mink ranching practices are to blame, and the primary causal source to be improperly disposed carcasses, manure, urine and waste feed from mink ranches located near the Wentworth-Carleton headwaters in neighbouring Digby County.

A report released in October 2010 by the Water and Wastewater Branch of Nova Scotia Environment (NSE) confirmed that several lakes in the region are showing increasing nutrient levels and deteriorating water quality due, at least in part, to nutrient inputs from human activities such as mink farming.

The blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, that are thriving in many Yarmouth and Digby County lakes is a toxin-generating microscopic plant that flourishes in water containing high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen. The algae's prevalence has raised concerns about health and safety, reduced property values, damage to local ecologies and the proper regulation of industry.

“It’s clear to the people who live in this area and are directly affected by the water pollution that the problem is getting worse as the mink farming industry expands,” says Debbie Boudreau of the Tri-County Watershed Protection Association, a nascent Yarmouth-based community group devoted to bringing relief to the affected lakes. “Our environment is suffering under the weight of 1.8 million mink; what will happen as the industry continues to expand?”

The 2010 NSE report, entitled A Water Quality Survey of Ten Lakes in the Carleton River Watershed Area [of] Yarmouth and Digby Counties, lists mink farms, a mink food processing plant and an aquaculture operation as “three large nutrient sources which could potentially be stimulating algal production in [the headwater] lakes.”

According to data cited by the Tri-County Watershed Protection Association, there is a pollution problem when total phosphorous levels in a lake have reached 50 micrograms per litre. A 2008 NSE water quality survey found total phosphorous levels in Placides Lake—a headwater in the Wentworth-Carleton watershed—to be 740 micrograms per litre at surface and 5200 at a depth of seven metres.

“Our lakes are seriously polluted,” affirms Boudreau. “The situation is dire.”

On April 29, 2010, Nova Scotia Agriculture Minister John MacDonell introduced Bill 53, a legislative measure proposing more stringent governmental regulation of the province’s fur industry. The bill was passed the following week; draft regulations being developed under The Fur Industry Act are scheduled for completion in the latter half of 2011.

Though acknowledging that The Fur Industry Act could be a step in the right direction, Hall remains skeptical.

“There hasn’t been any apparent consultation with non-governmental environmental groups, the public, nor with water quality or nutrient pollution experts external to the government,” said Hall, referring to the content and thrust of Bill 53, and the process of drafting the regulations that are to comprise the Act.

“The only consultation was with the Nova Scotia Mink Breeders Association, the entity that needs to be regulated,” says Boudreau. “It seems a conflict of interest. The Department of Agriculture—both supporter and regulator of the fur industry—shacking up with that same industry to mutually formulate the regulations that, ostensibly, will govern it.”

According to the province, the Nova Scotia mink industry generated roughly $80 million in export sales in 2009. One and a half million minks are raised in Nova Scotia each year on almost 80 mink farms, according to the CBC. Roughly 85 per cent of provincial production occurs in Digby and Yarmouth Counties.

Steven is a writer from Harmony, NS. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Murky Waters

Hemp Wanted

Moira Peters — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 05:59:20 +0000

Once illegal material promises dizzying array of green energy uses

HALIFAX—Wanda Beattie, president and CEO of Atlantic Healing Hemp, paces the floor of her flagship store in Berwick, Nova Scotia. She is a woman on a mission. The shelves around her are lined with hemp salves, hemp balms, cold-pressed hemp seed oil and vacuum-sealed bags of crushed hemp seeds. The hemp is top quality and Canadian grown, but it’s definitely not local—and that's something Beattie would like to change.

“At the moment I’m bringing in hemp oil in large quantities from Winnipeg," she says. "That’s the hemp heartland. There was an attempt to grow hemp in Nova Scotia, back in 2000, but it wasn’t feasible because there wasn’t a market for the product. There was some amateur processing being done, but nothing of any scale."

Beattie's mission: to resurrect the deep-seeded relationship between Nova Scotia soil and hemp.

Port Royal, Nova Scotia, was the site of North America’s first recorded hemp crop, in 1606.

But by 2009, Saskatchewan had 5,090 acres licensed for hemp and Manitoba had 6,015 acres. Nova Scotia had none.

“The issue is not related to soil,” says Beattie. “There is wonderful soil here in the Annapolis Valley. You can grow hemp here. Top quality hemp. In 2000, Nova Scotia farmers proved it could be done. There’s simply not enough of a market.”

The hemp plant has had many uses. Christopher Columbus swore by hemp sails. Hemp rope, even 50-year-old hemp rope, is still highly sought after for its water-resistant qualities. Anything oil, lumber or cotton can do, hemp can do better. The seeds can be eaten or pressed into oil. Both methods of ingestion are extremely healthy.

As Beattie will tell you, hemp seeds contain all the essential fatty acids. Her hemp cream also goes on smooth after a shave.

Re-education is a large part of Beattie’s campaign to get hemp back into the Nova Scotia diet and consciousness. She and her husband Brian offer weekly, one-hour information sessions out of the Berwick store. She also offers free presentations to Nova Scotia groups and businesses.

“People in the area just don’t know about the benefits of hemp. We grew up in a generation that didn’t hear anything about hemp. Consumers are looking at our products now, and they know they have a value, because they have been used for thousands of years. Younger people are using hemp as a preventative, incorporating it into their diets to stay healthy." Others use it to treat chronic health issues like sciatic nerve pain, eczema, psoriasis, arthritis, acid reflux and to lower chloresterol levels.

Hemp was banned in Canada and the US in 1938. Jack Herer, in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, highlights the link between DuPont’s patenting, that same year, of the processes of making plastics out of petroleum and paper out of wood pulp, and the continent-wide ban on growing hemp. In 1998, amid growing interest in textile alternatives, Health Canada lifted its ban.

Hemp requires a relatively small up-front investment for processing infrastructure. Compared to oil, pulp and cotton, hemp is of higher quality and is much cheaper. Hemp is therefore a logical alternative to many of the products the Western diet currently consumes at an alarming rate.

Travis Truso is the owner of Hemp Haven in Regina, Saskatchewan. He has been in the hemp selling business for six years, and he is the main contact for the Saskatchewan Hemp Association.

“I’ve talked to 100 farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and only one of them even baled his stalk," says Truso. "The rest just burned their stalks or cultivated them back into the soil. Ninety-nine per cent of farmers are just selling their hemp seed. There is zero industry in Canada for fibre and stalk.”

The fibre and stalk of the hemp plant is where so many of its benefits are found. When processed, the fibres and hurd (stalk centre) can produce a multitude of products.

“There are quite a few encouraging things going on in Canada with hemp right now," says Truso. "Motive is a car company out of Alberta. They just created an electric car, and the body of the car is made out of hemp composite. The car has been reviewed really positively, and they want to commercially launch it by 2013."

“I see hemp fibre board as being a very promising industry with lots of room to grow," he says. "Right now the government annually subsidizes the lumber industry with $1 billion of taxpayers’ money. You cannot produce paper from lumber for the price we buy it at in the store. The entire industry is subsidized. And once you cut a forest down, your next crop isn’t ready for 100 years. Why have we built a society that takes trees for paper? It’s insane.”

Truso argues that when it comes to textiles, hemp doesn’t just compete with cotton, it’s far superior.

"The absurdity of growing cotton for textiles... Pests love it, and the only way it could have evolved was through intensive labour. Cotton needed slave labour to evolve. And then the product is just a short, brittle piece of fibre that wears out in a year. Hemp makes the strongest fibre, and it doesn’t wear out, it wears in. Levis jeans were originally made from hemp.”

Truso also points to hemp's potential energy efficiency.

“Henry Ford grew hemp, and his first diesel engine ran off hemp oil at 90 per cent cleaner and 60 per cent more efficient than fuel oil. It’s got the most biomass per crop, per acre, of anything grown.”

Hemp is also one of the greenest crops grown. “All the farmers that currently grow hemp in Saskatchewan do so keeping organic practices in mind," says Truso. "They are growing it in rotation with wheat, rye and grain crops. Hemp pulls an enormous amount of toxins out of the soil, and I’ve got it from a representative from Health Canada who says that if hemp were grown in three consecutive years on the same land, that land would be free of other weeds. You can virtually drop the seed in the soil, come back in 120 days, and combine your yield.”

Canadian law, however, makes it hard to be a hemp farmer. “Hemp is the only legal crop in Canada that requires a license to grow. You have to go through so much paper work. You need to have a criminal check, and you need to have your crops tested for THC content twice yearly. For a lot of farmers, the hassle is just too much.”

Processing the stalk, on an industrial scale, requires a processing plant, which would cost several million dollars—so far a prohibitive sum for investors. Various levels of Canadian government have had several opportunities to build a Canadian hemp processing plant, and each time they failed to seal the deal.

Truso talks about one that got away.

“In Craik, Saskatchewan, a company called Natural Alternative Technologies (NAT) approached the town with the idea of building a hemp processing plant. That was in 2004. At that point we had a New Democratic government in Saskatchewan, and they were for it. They offered up half the capital for the plant if NAT could raise the rest.

"From 2004 to 2008, NAT developed its technology, and raised its capital. In 2008 Saskatchewan elected the Saskatchewan Party, which is a far right party. In their first week of being in office they cancelled their contract with NAT. Since then NAT has gone bankrupt, and has sold its technology to Haines Underwear.”

Despite growing almost 20,000 acres of hemp, Canada remains without a plant to process it. Canadian hemp stalks, for lack of a buyer, are burned. Hemp-stalk products, among them hemp textiles, are largely imported from China.

“Almost every Canadian designer that’s manufacturing hemp clothing is getting their yarn from China," says Truso. "The floor of my store is made from hemp fibre board. It’s twice as strong as plywood and will last twice as long. I bought it imported from China.”

Without government assistance, and without a processing plant, hemp farmers across Saskatchewan are still growing over 5,000 acres of hemp. Only the seeds are being harvested.

“There are no government subsidies for hemp seed," says Truso. "The farmers need to go out on their own, and find all of their own contracts. At the end of the year, a lot of them still have 50 to 100,000 pounds of hemp seed left over.”

Truso says any initiative for processing stalk will have to come from the grassroots. “A company called Hill Agra in Ontario has invented a portable fibre extractor that can fit behind any tractor. The base model sells for $80,000. Several have been sold to Europe, and quite a few to China, but so far none in Canada. In the spring this extractor would decorticate your fibre and your hurds [process the stalk]. You’d be ready to stamp fibre boards. You’d be ready to mix hemp concrete."

"And," he adds, "hemp is still illegal to grow in America, so you’d have a huge market for your product. You’d be creating a groundbreaking industry."

For more information on applying to grow your own hemp, contact the Controlled Substances Division of Health Canada, at 1-613-948-6408.

Miles Howe hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and currently calls Halifax home. He has a Masters degree in Sociology, plays a wicked harmonica, and bakes a mean banana cake.

Hemp seeds

Hemp yarn

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

Prison Farms on Death Row

Moira Peters — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 05:04:16 +0000

Feds invest $9B in prisons, progressive rehab program phased out to save "pocket change"

MONTREAL—The movement to save prison farms has intensified in recent months as increasing numbers of Canadians have voiced concern about the Conservative government’s overarching plans for the federal prison system.

Twenty-four people were arrested during protests on August 8 and 9 outside the Frontenac Institution in Kingston—one of the six prison farms across the country that the Conservative government has slated for closure. Correctional Services Canada (CSC) was attempting to transport Frontenac’s dairy herd out of the facility when protesters formed a human barricade to prevent livestock trucks from passing onto the prison grounds.

Police attempted to break the blockade, periodically grabbing and detaining protesters, but they remained numerically outmatched.

“Sunday was a major victory for the campaign,” said Andrew McCann, a member of Urban Agriculture Kingston and one of those arrested. “Over 500 people held the blockade for two hours. They started to drag old women and young women away to intimidate people, but the line just grew.”

By the next morning, an estimated 150–200 Ontario Provincial Police officers had been called in. Several more arrests were made and the protest was eventually broken up. McCann stated that he and the other 23 defendants plan to plead not guilty at their first court date on September 14, 2010.

The farms employed about 300 inmates, and their produce fed inmates throughout the neighbouring CSC institutions, while surplus was typically donated to food banks. The prison farms program has existed in Canada for well over a century.

In recent months a groundswell of support for the farms has spread—from environmental groups to prison activists and former inmates, to the National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Union of Solicitor General Employees (USGE), of which the prisons’ correctional officers are members.

“This issue touches on everything from food security, food banks, rehabilitation and self-sufficiency,” said McCann.

He emphasized the rehabilitative aspects of farm work, which research has corroborated. “I toured the farms back in June 2009. ...I met people who have murdered, and talking about the impact of working with cows, milking them, taking care of them while sick—it’s a really profound change in their lives, and I can’t think of a more effective way to make Canada safer.”

Part of the government’s rationale for closing the farms has been that less than one per cent of former participants enter the agricultural sector after their release from prison, though critics—and several former inmates—have argued that the work experience is broadly applicable.

“We think the skills you can learn in the prison farms are useful, even for those who don’t go directly into farming,” said NFU Executive Director Kevin Wipf. “We don’t see the sense at all in taking away such an important method of rehabilitation.”

The 2007–08 annual report of CORCAN—the rehabilitation and employment-training arm of CSC—indicates that prison agribusiness is costly in contrast with its manufacturing programs, which bring in more money than they cost.

In an email to The Dominion, CSC Senior Media Relations Adviser Lori Pothier stated that the decision to close the prison farms was the result of a “Strategic Review process” which she said is meant to ensure that “all existing government programs be reviewed on a four-year cycle to ensure the programs are effective and efficient, and are meeting the needs of Canadians.”

NDP MP and Public Safety Critic Don Davies stated that a program’s expense should not dictate whether it is scrapped. “It’s not unimportant, but it should be seen as secondary to the primary goal of rehabilitation,” he said, adding that the availability of rehabilitative training programs is already far too limited. According to the CSC’s 2008–09 financial statement, only 0.4 per cent of its $2.2 billion annual budget went to CORCAN programs.

The Ministry of Public Safety, headed by Vic Toews, emphasizes that the program loses over $4 million annually, but has refused to disclose the full cost of outsourcing its food services to the private sector.

“There’s a lot they’re not telling us,” said USGE Labour Relations Officer Fred Sadori. “They haven’t even disclosed the numbers, so they haven’t given us a very good reason to believe that [closing prison farms] is a good idea.”

In her email, Pothier stated, “CSC does not anticipate any increase in the annual cost of food procurement due to the closing of the CORCAN farms. CSC will purchase food and products through existing contracting authorities and mechanisms, including the government tendering system.”

McCann said the privatization of CSC’s food services might save some money at first due to competitive bidding, but would likely lead to cost overruns in the future as firms attempt to ratchet up the price of their contracts with CSC.

The $4 million annual expense, said McCann, is “pocket change compared to the billions of dollars they plan on spending on expanding the prison system.”

McCann was referring to the $9 billion that Treasury Board president Stockwell Day recently requested for the expansion of the federal prison system in early August. Day claimed that the expansion was necessary due to an “alarming” spike in unreported crime. After being pressed for his source on this, Day pointed to a 2004 StatsCan report indicating that 66 per cent of criminal activity nationwide went unreported, up from about 58 per cent in 1993. (Reporters and bloggers were quick to point out the irony that only minutes earlier Day had criticized the long-form census as unreliable for being as much as five years out of date.)

Two weeks before Day’s announcement, StatsCan released data indicating that the national crime rate has declined by 17 per cent in the past decade. This encompassed a 22 per cent drop in StatsCan’s crime severity index, and a marked drop in violent crime, with homicides, attempted murder, serious sexual assaults and crimes against children comprising less than one quarter of one per cent of all reported offenses.

The Harper government's approach to the prison system, according to critics like Davies and McCann, has largely been shaped by a policy paper released in October 2007 entitled “A Roadmap to Strengthening Public Safety.” The document calls on several occasions for the CSC to “strengthen its partnerships” with the private sector, and recommends CORCAN in particular for private sector involvement.

The panel that authored the report was chaired by Rob Sampson, formerly the Minister of Corrections in the Ontario government of Mike Harris. Sampson was a staunch proponent of prison privatization during his tenure there, and established Canada’s first ever privately run prison. The Central North Correctional Centre was built to replace three older provincial prisons and was managed by the Utah-based Management and Training Corporation. (The Liberal government of Dalton McGuinty refused to renew Management and Training’s five-year contract once it expired in 2006, noting that publicly run jails offered better security, prisoner health care and rehabilitative programs.)

Following the precendent set by the Central North Correctional Centre, the Roadmap also calls for CSC to establish “regional complexes”—prisons that would accommodate several times more inmates than current federal penitentiaries, and encompass minimum-, medium- and maximum-security blocks. Neither Davies nor McCann have faith in the ability—or the intent—of such institutions to deliver meaningful programs to inmates.

“The Conservative approach to the prison system is entirely ideologically motivated, not empirically based,” said Davies, adding that he doubts the government will expand vocational, educational and rehabilitative programs in tandem with the rest of the prison system. “They just want to pursue their tough-on-crime agenda, which appeals to their base.”

Day’s push to expand the prison system has been matched with initiatives for longer prison terms and more convictions. One of the Roadmap’s recommendations is an end to statutory releases, and the implementation of a system of “earned parole.” (Under the current system of statutory releases, convicts are granted mandatory parole after two-thirds of their prison sentence has been completed, unless they have been identified as a significant threat to themselves or others.)

The Ministry of Justice under Rob Nicholson has also been angling to increase the country’s prison population. The day after Day revealed the planned prison expansion, Nicholson announced that crimes such as betting, keeping a bawdy house and trafficking in cannabis and barbiturates are now treated as “serious offenses.” This builds on legislation passed in 2007 that abolished conditional sentencing for serious offenses and enforced mandatory minimum sentences for gun crime, robberies and fraud.

Pothier stated that in the 2008 federal budget, “the Government announced its intent to fundamentally transform the federal corrections system, and one of the objectives was to provide more employment and employability skills for offenders.” She did not elaborate on what those skills would be, how much money would be allocated to those programs in the future, or what would be done to replace the prison farms program in the short run.

McCann noted that under Canada’s Corrections Act, the government has an obligation to offer some sort of employment training to supplement the farms program, but said he remains skeptical.

“I honestly feel that the Conservative government’s vision for the future of corrections in Canada is not to do corrections, but to do punishment.”

Niko Block is the Features Editor at the McGill Daily and sits on the Board of Directors of CKUT Radio in Montreal.

Prison farm blockade

Prison Farms Umbrella

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

Algae Blooms Controversy

hillarybain — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:48:09 +0000

Nova Scotian mink industry blamed for water woes

HALIFAX—Tensions are running high in Yarmouth County. A proposal for a lakeside mink ranch near Carleton, Nova Scotia has resulted in a call for the provincial government to declare a moratorium on the establishment of new lake- and riverside farming developments.

Residents are worried their lake will be condemned to the same fate as many other water-bodies in the Carleton River watershed, which have been overrun by blue-green algal blooms.

“The pollution is so bad," says Carlene MacDonald, a Carleton resident. "The mink breeders choose to use 100 kilometres of river systems as their toilet and the government allows it by not responding.”

Blue-green algae, known as cyanobacteria, have overtaken a number of lakes in the region. Possible contributing factors include faulty lakeside septic systems and run-off containing agro-industrial fertilizers, but many believe the primary source is manure, urine, offal, caustic cleaning liquids and fly control chemicals from riverside mink ranches in neighbouring Digby County.

One and a half million minks are raised in Nova Scotia each year on almost 80 mink farms, according to the CBC. The majority of those mink farms are located in Digby and Yarmouth Counties. In 2006, Nova Scotia ranked first in the country for mink farming, with 49.8 per cent of the country’s mink, according to Statistics Canada.

“Fur, mainly from mink farming, is one of the fastest growing agricultural sectors in NS, and currently represents approximately $64 million in farm cash receipts,” states the Nova Scotia Agriculture Business Plan.

In October, Yarmouth County Municipal Council voted to amend a municipal land-use bylaw, increasing, from 328 to 500 feet, the required minimum set-back distance from lakes and rivers for buildings and manure storage facilities used in conjunction with fur ranches, and hog and fowl farms.

In response to the bylaw amendment, the Nova Scotia Mink Breeders Association and a group of Yarmouth-area livestock farmers filed an appeal with the Nova Scotia Utility and Review board. At the request of the appellants, the hearing has been postponed twice since February, most recently on March 30, and a new date has yet to be announced.

The Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture (NSFA) has sided with industry against the bylaw change. The NSFA was initially named among the appellants but has since changed tactics and is now coupled with the NS Mink Breeders Association to jointly present at the eventual hearing. Donna Langille, operations manager of the NSFA, said the reason for jointly presenting “was that we felt if we combined our resources [with the NS Mink Breeders Association] into a collective effort we would have a better standing.”

In a more recent example of "collective effort," NS Minister of Agriculture John MacDonell introduced a bill to the provincial legislature on April 29 that would require fur ranchers to obtain a site approval permit before being administered their operating license and also would require they have an environmental management plan in place. The bill was drafted by the Department of Agriculture with input from the NS Mink Breeders Association.

MacDonald calls the bill a "scam" and another example of closed-door policy making which fails to represent the concerns of affected residents.

The blue-green alga that is flourishing in many Yarmouth County lakes is a toxin-generating microscopic plant that thrives in water containing high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen. The algae's prevalence has raised concerns regarding health and safety, property values, local ecologies, and the proper regulation of industry.

In July, 2009, Camp Wapomeo, a YMCA summer camp for local youth that had held its water recreations on the same lake in Yarmouth Country for 81 consecutive years, had to relocate their activities due to the algae and consequent safety concerns. Camp director Kathleen Whyte stated publicly that the algae’s growth is becoming more apparent each year and said she is inclined to attribute declining camp registration to parental concerns over health risks.

Randy Cleveland is a member of the Tusket River Environmental Protection Agency (TREPA), a group comprised of residents and concerned citizens from Carleton. TREPA has conducted its own research and investigation into the community’s water troubles.

Cleveland points to the fact that Nova Scotia’s mink and fur farms are only subject to recommended guidelines for reducing environmental risk in their operations, meaning they are self-regulating entities. He says Carleton needs "bylaws so the municipality would have recourse when it comes to establishing and enforcing regulations for mink and fur farms.”

In its mission statement and progress report entitled Environmental Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Nova Scotia 2009: A Report Card, the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture acknowledges that “manure management in areas of livestock concentration has to be improved,” and that “the mink sector, in particular, is primarily located in an area with a small cropland base, reducing alternatives to effectively manage mink manure and other wastes close to mink farms.”

The Report also states, however, that self-regulation is working. "Nova Scotia’s environmental acts and regulations support [environmentally sustainable farming practices] by encouraging compliance and by establishing a culture of self-regulation, minimizing the need for a harsh regulatory approach.”

Cleveland disagrees: “The waste problem has been acknowledged and the ecological consequences are now apparent, but the culture of self-regulation is not effectively operating. The provincial acts and regulations are either too broad to be useful or not being properly enforced.”

MacDonald agrees: "The pollution is so bad. I’m sure if more people could be made aware of the situation they would scream 'Pollution!’ along with us.”

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

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

Blue Green Algae

Sloans Lake

Cranberry Co-operative Goes Big in Rogersville

Moira Peters — Mon, 03 May 2010 05:07:26 +0000

Ocean Spray to take over 3,400 hectares in New Brunswick

FREDERICTON—Rogersville, a predominately francophone village in southeastern New Brunswick with a population of 1,100 and a greater regional population of 3,500, is set to become North America's largest cranberry-growing farm. In spite of the promise of jobs big agricultural brings, not everyone is supportive of the new cranberry beds.

"Whoever approved this project must not care too much about the environment. This is my opinion,” said Roger Babin, from the neighbouring village of Acadieville. “I've talked to people, some who used to go to this area for pleasure and now they hate to go there for a drive. Seeing what is happening hurts them. Others seem happy that work is being generated. We saw around 30 pieces of machinery working today. Yes, there is work, but at what price?"

Premier Shawn Graham was on hand to break the ground for the operations last June. "This project puts Rogersville on the map as one of Canada's key cranberry growing regions. Having an internationally recognized juice brand such as Ocean Spray choose our province as the location for a potential regional hub demonstrates that New Brunswick is the place to be for business and that we have the expertise to produce world-class agricultural products," said Graham.

Approximately 3,400 hectares of Crown land has been leased to Ocean Spray. The company plans to transform 775 hectares into profitable cranberry beds and expects to employ 100 people. Ocean Spray has invested $8 million in the first phase of the project and plans to invest $90 million over five phases. More than 100 acres have been planted this spring and another 200 acres will be planted in the spring of 2011. The first yield of cranberries is expected in 2012.

The government of New Brunswick granted conditional environmental approval to Ocean Spray to develop the cranberry bog on May 29, 2009. The project will involve withdrawing water from Lac Despres and impounding South Lake, about 20 kilometres west of Rogersville. Ocean Spray is required to monitor pesticide residues, in-stream total suspended sediments, groundwater levels, stream flows, effects to Lac Despres and South Lake and effects to endangered and rare species such as the Southern twayblade. The Southern twayblade, a rare bog orchid, has been found at only six sites in the province.

At the end of the project, Ocean Spray must restore to functional wetlands those areas lost to infill from the project. Babin wonders whether restoration of the wetlands is possible.

"What will happen to the water around the project if pesticides are used? Now there are many jobs, but once the project is running, how many people will be needed to keep it going?" asked Babin.

Babin, a 64-year-old father of seven, grandfather of fifteen and great-grandfather of one, has worked in the woods all his life. Surrounded by woods and encroaching clearcuts, Babin and his neighbours no longer make a living from the forest. Two of Babin's children have worked in Alberta and two of his grandchildren now work in Edmonton.

Babin has seen too many clearcuts in his area. He wants the government to protect the public forest for its watersheds and biodiversity—and he is not alone. A public survey commissioned by the government of New Brunswick in 2008 revealed that respondents in all areas of the province ranked the environment their highest value. The protection of water, air and soil was ranked as the most important forest value by 45 per cent of respondents, and the forest as “a place for a variety of animal and plant life” was ranked second by 38 per cent of respondents. Economic wealth and jobs ranked third by 17 per cent.

Today, Babin is a driving force behind a petition to ban herbicide spraying in public forests in New Brunswick.

****

Ocean Spray, started 75 years ago by three farmers from Massachusetts and New Jersey, is the largest cranberry growers' cooperative, supplying two-thirds of the world's cranberries. The cooperative has been North America's top producer of canned and bottled juice drinks since 1981. Ocean Spray made $1.9 billion in gross sales in 2008.

Ocean Spray growers individually own their bogs while the factories and the brand are collectively owned. To meet global demand for cranberries, the company decided to create a separate investing business from the cooperative. Ocean Spray's search for an ideal growing environment for cranberries led them to the bogs of Rogersville.

Tracy Glynn is an organizer with the New Brunswick Media Co-op (NBMC) and a director on the board of the Dominion Newspaper Cooperative. This article was originally published by the NBMC.

cranberry fields

Norwegian Farms Poison the Wild Run

Moira Peters — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 08:14:47 +0000

BC's salmon stocks plunge; sea lice, salmon farms to blame

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—In the late 1980s, as Norway's Consul General in Vancouver was paving the way for Norwegian salmon farming operations in BC, Norway's former Prime Minister Gro Harlem headed the United Nations commission that produced the 1987 report, "Our Common Future," popularizing the concept of sustainable development.

Two decades have passed, and the salmon-farming industry, dominated by Norwegian multinationals, is charged with imperilling ecosystems worldwide, including in Norway.

In 2002, the spawning run of pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago off northeast Vancouver Island decreased from 3.6 million to 147,000—four per cent of its population the year before. Biologists pointed to sea lice from salmon farms as the culprit. Juvenile salmon, called smolts, leave the rivers where they are born and are forced to run a gauntlet of salmon farms once they reach the archipelago, where they are exposed to high numbers of sea lice.

“Everywhere there are salmon farms and wild salmon, the wild salmon are eaten to death by sea lice,” said Alexandra Morton, following the pink salmon collapse. Morton is a biologist and founder of the Raincoast Research Society which studies ecosystems and aquatic life on the BC coast.

Last summer, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) forecast over 10 million sockeye salmon spawners would return to Sto:lo (Fraser River). Fewer than 10 per cent returned. Morton again implicated sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago as the cause of the 90 per cent collapse in sockeye spawners.

Sockeye runs elsewhere did comparably well, Morton noted, such as in N'ch-iwana (Columbia River), Somass River and Heydon Creek—the latter situated north of the Campbell River fish farm cluster.

Morton sees a bigger threat to wild salmon than sea lice. “I know sea lice are on the Fraser sockeye—I first found this in 2005—but I think the issue is farm disease in this case.”

“The biggest threat is the virus ISA [Infectious Salmon Anaemia],” said Morton, “but sea lice are a problem enough that they [the sea lice] can destroy [wild salmon].”

Salmon in Chile, Norway, Scotland and New Brunswick have all suffered ISA outbreaks.

“What Alexandra means is that ISA is a serious imminent threat because wild Pacific salmon may not be immune to strains of ISA present in farm salmon eggs imported from Atlantic waters," geophysist Dr. Neil Frazer told The Dominion.

"If a wild population suffers a very large decline, recovery is uncertain because the ecological niche of the devastated species may be filled by other species,” he said.

A myriad of factors impact the viability of wild salmon in BC: clearcut logging, global warming, agricultural runoff and dam construction. According to the BC Salmon Farmers Association, salmon farming began in BC in the early 1970s. In 1984, it was introduced into the seascape of Broughton Archipelago. The Broughton Archipelago now supports 29 salmon-farming operations, BC’s highest concentration of salmon farms.

In their 2006 book, An Upstream Battle, Karl K. English, Glova J. Gordon, and Anita C. Blakely reported a 70-93 per cent decline in salmon stocks in 10 areas in BC since the early 1990s.

Wild salmon advocacy circles have recently begun to pressure Norway—where multi-national salmon-farming headquarters of the likes of Marine Harvest, Cremaq and Grieg Seafood own 92 per cent of BC's salmon farms.

“Norway is the key to solving the salmon-farming problem and [is] still home to healthy wild Atlantic salmon populations,” said Don Staniford of Pure Salmon Campaign, a global salmon advocacy project. “There is still time to save Atlantic wild salmon by moving the farms out of the path of migrating smolts. And in the Pacific, the solution is equally as simple.”

Even Norway's richest man, John Fredriksen, an avid fisherman and majority owner of the world's largest salmon-farming corporation, Marine Harvest, was alarmed: “I am worried for the wild salmon’s future. Fish farming should not be allowed in fjords with salmon rivers,” said Fredricksen in 2007 to Norway's Altaposten.

Staniford, who was in Norway last May, reported sympathy among Norwegians, whose own wild salmon are plagued by infestations of sea lice, and who support an end to open-water net salmon farming.

“Norwegians are now rising up and standing up for wild salmon,” said Staniford. “Over the last year there has been a sea change in public perception of the salmon farming industry in Norway." Staniford sees Norwegian fishermen, river owners, politicians, environmentalists and citizens as increasingly critical of the salmon-farming industry plagued with sea lice and escapes of farmed salmon.

The Vancouver Olympics brought another opportunity to pressure the Norwegian government: Norway's King Harald V was in attendance at the Games. On a sunny Saturday, February 20, the eighth day of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and Wild Salmon Circle held a rally in Vancouver’s Vanier Park. Although Harold V was not among them, about 200 people turned out to hear featured speakers Morton, Staniford, ex-DFO biologist Otto Langer, and Kwicksutaineuk Ah-kwa-mish First Nation Chief Bob Chamberlin.

“Considering the Olympics were on—a big distraction and the reason we held the rally now—there was a great turnout,” said Maria Morlin, biology professor and emcee at the rally. “I hope our message gets through to the Norwegian government loud and clear: don’t mess up our waters; you have enough problems with your own Atlantic salmon escapees and wild salmon collapses.”

“We have a long tradition of salmon in our culture, and to be unable to pass this tradition to our children is unthinkable,” said hereditary Chief Chamberlin, emphasizing the issue was not a short-term one.

Langer argued that moving the salmon to closed-containment was an unsatisfactory solution because of negative protein production. Langer said feeding the salmon would still require 5 to 10 kilograms of other fish to produce one kilogram of food pellets. Farming carnivorous fish in open net-cages or in closed containment facilities, he held, is simply not sustainable.

For those proud of the Brundtland Commission's work on sustainability, the unsustainability of Norwegian-owned salmon farms is a stark contradiction.

"I am not talking about all aquaculture. I am referring specifically to the massive scale Norwegian feedlots," said Morton on March 15.

"There are Canadian fish farmers who know how to use tanks on land who are not impacting our wild salmon and herring. This is about saving wild salmon and all of us who depend on them."

Morton announced Get Out Migration which will promote the cause of wild salmon through a walk, open to all the public, from Sointula to Victoria.

"We hold salmon as sacred because they so generously feed our world," said Morton. "They built the soil of this province with their flesh, they grow our children, they feed the trees that make the oxygen we breath, they are food security in a world losing ability to even pollinate flowers."

Kim Petersen is Original People's editor at The Dominion.

Salmon

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

Connecting the Dots with Jason Kenney

Moira Peters — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 06:46:14 +0000

Why food sovereignty can solve the climate crisis and how Canada's immigration policy serves our free trade interests

VANCOUVER—After the Copenhagen Climate Conference failed to produce a legally-binding agreement, Kim Carstensen, Leader of the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Initiative, stated in a press release that the Copenhagen Accord translates into “three degrees Celsius of warming or more.” Those three degrees could trigger the migration of millions of impoverished agriculturalists around the globe.

The direction of climate change negotiations concerned 150 small-scale farmers of NGO La Via Campesina for a different reason. “Our farms are not for sale on the climate market,” they protested in Copenhagen on December 15.

Negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change favoured agro-fuels on large-scale farms as a means of climate change mitigation. However, an underreported result of industrial farming is the millions of poor, landless migrants who are losing their land to large-scale farms.

The international peasant movement La Via Campesina (literally, "the way of the farmer") represents millions of small farmers, landless peoples, and rural men and women from around the world. The group calls for radical changes to the global food system.

“To really change the food system, it is important that all sectors of society work together,” says Josie Riffaud of La Via Campesina.

Food sovereignty, or “the peoples' right to define agricultural and food policy,” is a proposed solution to climate change’s drastic effects on farmers. Via Campensina, which coined the term “food sovereignty,” claim that these radical changes have the potential to achieve reductions of between 50-75 per cent of current global emissions simply by returning organic matter to the soil, developing local markets and reversing intensive livestock production.

A food sovereignty system requires the re-localization of food production, and, perhaps, the re-localization of migrant workers. These farmers are not begging for carbon credits or other trade-based solutions; rather, they are offering a solution to the current crisis: a diverse food system that supports local markets and promotes local labor.

Moreover, food sovereignty is not a new idea; societies have been food-sovereign for most of human history. Only in the last 100 years has industry taken over food production. This de-localization of food supply and labor has contributed to climate change.

****

In Vancouver, No One is Illegal (NOII), a grassroots anti-colonial immigrant and refugee rights collective, aligns its goals with those of La Via Campesina.

Immigration is not a topic often associated with the food system, but Harjap Grewal of NOII says immigration and the food system are “very much linked.” He sees immigration as “the human impact of free trade policy, [and therefore] the reason why [farmers are] migrating.”

Immigration is a growing issue in Canadian politics in the past decade, stemming from an increase in the number of people seeking refugee or migrant worker status in Canada. “We've actually made the politically difficult decision to maintain historically high levels of immigration,” Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration, said to the Calgary Sun.

On the surface, Kenney seems to be making it easier for migrant workers to stay in Canada. Kenney said migrants are “doing work Canadians are unwilling to perform,” and that his government, despite the recession and rising unemployment, will maintain its practice of encouraging immigration and foreign labour. Tarina White of the Calgary Sun reported, “Calgary newcomers will have access to more language training (to the tune of) almost $9.5 million in funding. ... Kenney said he hopes the investment will boost the percentage of immigrants enrolling in language programs each year, which currently sits at 25 per cent.” According to Bill Kaufman of the Sun, Kenney said his government is stepping up its monitoring of foreign workers' treatment while making it easier for the newcomers to become permanent residents and citizens.

However, a closer look reveals a different agenda. Documented by NOII, Kenney “oversaw the largest immigration raid in recent Canadian history, which went largely unreported. In an illegal move, 41 [migrants] were tricked into signing waivers that removed their right to a hearing and many have now been deported.”

White reported that Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan blames international free trade agreements for “setting up foreign workers to be exploited.” McGowan accuses Kenney's ministry of “washing its hands” of temporary foreign workers once they arrive only for them to be routinely abused by their employers. He noted, “Only three per cent of migrant workers are eligible for permanent residency.”

“We're the ones who set up an advocacy office to help workers who are exploited; we're the ones picking up the pieces. ... I find it galling [that] Kenney's trying to wrap himself in the cloak of virtue.”

****

“How can a self-proclaimed bigot responsibly manage Canada's immigration policy?” This question by a concerned citizen during a Q&A session with Kenney at UBC in November was seen by those overseeing the event as “too impassioned,” and the individual was later detained by UBC campus police.

A similar event had panned out differently at McGill. There, 50 people confronted the minister outside the Arts building, briefly denying him access. The event was canceled. When questioned about his immigration policy, he responded, “I plead guilty, I’m a racist,” with a “hint of sarcasm,” according to NOII Montréal.

Kenney's subsequent visit to UBC was greeted with less animosity, and a police presence.

Campus Conservatives President Robert Sroka, organizer of the UBC event, said, “[It was] an opportunity for anyone who wanted to respectfully participate in interaction between students and government.” But, he admitted, “It's a contentious issue and there is always going to be someone unhappy.”

Fathima Cader, a participant at the UBC event, confirmed the negative reception of the controversial MP. “A majority of the questions were highly critical of the MP's immigration policy, to which he mainly responded by talking around the question,” which, she believes, is because Kenney is aware of the real reason immigration in Canada is increasing.

“The increasing number of migrants and refugees around the world is due to the effects of capitalist exploitation that Canada is complicit in,” says Grewal. A report by the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report of 2005 states, “Unfair trade policies continue to deny millions of people in the world’s poorest countries an escape route from poverty, and perpetuates obscene inequalities.” In other words, international trade policies result in poverty abroad, thus creating the incentive for foreigners to partake in the jobs that Canadians are “unwilling to perform.”

The rise of capitalist culture has changed the ecology-based farming tactics of farmers in both North and South America. The majority of North America’s arable farmland grows non-diverse industrial crops. In much of South and Latin America, 20 per cent of the population owns 80 per cent of the land. The result of this imbalance—both ecological and economic—is migrant workers: seasonal agricultural employees who are overworked and underpaid. Our culture of respect for farmers as public servants is gone. The industrial food model has degraded our ideas about food.

***

“When culture breaks down, you'll find addictions,” SFU Professor Bruce Alexander recently said at the Four Pillars Drug Strategy Conference in Vancouver.

Culture in Latin and South America has changed drastically since the rise of industrial farming. Subsistence growers are bought off their land by powerful and wealthy people who create industrial farms. The tradition of local, organic and subsistence growing has been nearly wiped out. To cope with this loss, people turn to drugs. Drug addiction is connected to gang activity, causing people to fear for their lives and apply for refugee asylum overseas.

One of the major points of contention during Kenney's visit to Vancouver was that of a particular immigration case. A Mexican woman applied twice for refugee asylum in Canada due to death threats by gangs in the state of Jalisco. Canada denied her asylum twice, and flew her home. She is now dead.

****

In our quest for cheap food, Canadians buy into the industrial farming model every day at the grocery store by purchasing subsidized food from monoculture farms far away. BC residents now pay a lower percentage of their income on food than ever before.

On 31 October 2008, Harold Steves, Chair of Agriculture for Metro Vancouver, said, “California is running out of food. California and Mexico is where we get much of our food supply. It's not a matter of if the trucks stop running but when.” If left alone, the food supply in BC would last three days.

Decreasing subsidies on large-scale farms now and providing incentives for local production is in our best interest. Any catastrophe, such as climate change-related disasters, could leave millions hungry in Metro Vancouver. In addition, a shift toward local food production—food sovereignty—would likely decrease the influx of migrant field laborers to Canada, encouraging sustainability locally and abroad.

Ben Amundson is an undergraduate in Human Ecology at UBC.

Food sovereignty in Cape Breton

Not on the Backs of Farmers

hillarybain — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 06:41:43 +0000

Who pays for food security in Nova Scotia?

HALIFAX—Lori Stahlbrand is the founder of Local Food Plus, an NGO that runs a local and sustainable food certification process in order to support regional food economies. “[The price of food is] below the cost of production and it means that farmers cannot make a living.”

At the same time farmers are struggling to make a living, some people in Nova Scotia are unable to afford the local, organic food that they grow.

Cathy Johnson, a wife and mother who supports her family on income assistance, recognizes this tension clearly. “We [live] under the poverty line. And I know that the farmers do too.”

It’s a conundrum many concerned with food security in Nova Scotia grapple with: How do we create a sustainable, healthy regional food system for everyone?

Despite the surge of interest in local food, farms and farmers are disappearing across the country. Young farm operators are dwindling. Only seven per cent of farmers are below the age of 35, according to Statistics Canada, while 45 per cent of farmers are above the age of 55. Furthermore, every year since 1991, the average age of farmers has increased by one.

An over reliance on food imports in Nova Scotia is cited as one major problem. Markets are flooded with cheaper alternatives that force local prices below a level that would allow the farmer a living wage. As a result, says Stahlbrand, “We have more farmers leaving or selling their land to developers.”

This trend is having a profound effect on the local food system, which relies on the diversity and plurality of local farms to be strong and resilient, notes David Greenberg, a farmer and educator, who warns, “We have an unstable, insecure industrial food model right now that just cannot handle the challenges coming up...The only way to have food security long term in the province is to have lots of viable farms.”

Strahlbrand argues the future of food security in Nova Scotia will rely on a shift in how we value food and how much we are willing to pay for it.

“In Canada we pay the lowest for our food of any country in the world,” she says. “In Canada and the United States people on average spend about 10 per cent of their income on food. And if you look at Western Europe, Japan, or the UK, you'll find that people are spending anywhere from 25-30 per cent of their income on food, depending on the country you look at.”

Greenberg believes if higher importance is placed on food and farming, people would pay above market value for the food that they eat today as a way of investing in a healthy food system for tomorrow. “You're investing in your own food future and the future of that farm,” he says.

But what about those who can barely afford to eat at all?

Johnson lives on income assistance in Halifax. She and her husband receive $597 per month, which gives them $1194 to cover their basic needs. After paying for rent, utilities, transportation and other costs, she is left with approximately $160 per month to spend on food. She relies on the Parker Street Food Bank to fill the gaps.

“When you can't buy the things that you want to be able to eat it affects you tremendously,” she says. “We know that because we can't afford the food, we're not getting the best that we can eat. So we worry about our health and our finances... It's very hard to make ends meet... It’s all stress.” Johnson relies on processed and frozen foods to fill out their meals. She has learned to be savvy to find meat or dairy on special so she can fit them into her budget.

Johnson's health suffers from the holes in her diet. “The hardest thing is with fruits and vegetables. We can't afford to buy enough of them. Because we have liver problems [Johnson and her husband are on disability] it would help our immunity if we were able to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. We wouldn't get colds and everything so much—like I have today—if we got more vitamins.”

Although she can’t afford local and organic foods, Johnson understands their benefits. “I'm educated enough to know that’s the best you can eat... A lot of people would like to be eating organic but it’s more expensive than the regular fruits and vegetables. If I had my way I would rather eat organic fruits and vegetables...and keep our money in a local area, than eat things that come from California.”

To deal with these shortcomings, Johnson would like to see the income assistance program reformed to be more accessible and supportive. She argues the program “could better assess people, have better communication between client and worker to really get to know the client's [needs]. Work together towards keeping a person healthy.” She would also like to see the community services system support programs aimed at those on income assistance that allow them to supplement their incomes.

While reforming income assistance is important, growing attention is being paid to alternative food economies and community supported agriculture. Jill Ratcliffe, an urban farmer and food politics activist argues, “We need to consider people on income assistance... but not as much by working towards reform as by building equality in our systems.”

Ratcliffe gives the example of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. CSAs usually consist of a network of individuals or families who sign up and buy shares in a farm's harvest before the season begins. CSAs are good for farms because they give farmers an added level of support and allow them to set realistic prices for food (prices they can't reach through market farming or wholesale). Within the CSA model, the consumers and producers share in the risks and benefits of the natural farming season. Farmers are covered in cases of crop failures and are left in a more secure position to support themselves and their families. Further, insecurity in agriculture can often lead to a reliance on potentially harmful farming practices as a form of risk management. The security of CSAs offers a balance to this risk.

Ratcliffe, an advocate of the CSA model, argues it can work to create crucial connections between communities and farmers. “In terms of food we need to move away from dependent relationships—like with large corporate grocers—or any kind of mediating body that has control over our supply of food. [We need to be] breaking down those dependent relationships—constructing something that is connected and interconnected.” She states that marginalized communities can be included in the CSA model in a manner that the current system doesn't allow. “The CSA [could] work whereby people would pay different amounts, in an equitable distribution process. There [could] be a subsidized CSA process where people would get food based on their income.”

SunRoot Farm, located in East Hants, Nova Scotia, has run a subsidized CSA program for the past 10 years. Initially the farm partnered with the Department of Community Services, which provided the funds needed, but these funds became increasingly difficult to obtain. In response, SunRoot established a non-profit organization. Steve Law, a farmer at SunRoot, says this was always the model they wanted to use. “When it came time to start we weren't interested in just providing to whomever could pay. We all had a strong sense of social justice and environmental stewardship. We weren't just acting as a commercial farm but looking at creating a community development project.”

While Law advocates for the subsidized CSA model based on its benefits for farmers and marginalized communities, he acknowledges its limitations. “With the current economic model it's not exactly a lucrative endeavour [to run a CSA]. You don't see a lot of CSAs last. We need people to cover the true costs, but this is a system that we don't have in place yet. Until we use a true cost model it will always be difficult to run programs like CSAs.”

In order to support farmers, Law calls for a system that appropriately values their unique public contribution. “A more radical solution is to make farmers public servants like teachers and nurses. As public servants they would receive benefits through the province.”

Law feels that, ultimately, the de-comodification of food is necessary to achieve food security in Nova Scotia. “Making food free is really what we need to do—take the food system out of the commodity market. Until then everything that we do is just band-aid solutions. There will always be hunger in the province until we take that drastic step and decide that everyone should have access to nutritious, local, organic food...We need to take responsibility for our food and the health of our communities.”

While CSAs can help bridge the disconnect between communities and farmers, they alone will not and cannot address all the food security issues in NS. There are a lot of people to feed. But there are people working on solutions.

According to Stahlbrand one thing is clear: “We have to find ways to solve the problem that are not on the backs of farmers.”

Kayleigh MacSwain is a freelance writer and a member of the Food Action Committee at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax.

This article was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

CSA

A Costly Commute

Moira Peters — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:32:59 +0000

Foreign migrant workers provide long hours of cheap labour on Canadian farms

MONTREAL, QUEBEC–Don Jorge* stands outside the St Joseph Oratory, looking at the Montreal landscape in awe.

Don Jorge is a peasant farmer from a small town in Central Mexico.

Every summer he comes to Canada to work for six months on a farm close to Montreal. He has been working that farm for the last 14 years.

Even though he comes every year, he doesn't know Montreal or its surroundings. His knowledge of Canada and Quebec is confined to the fields that he harvests, the IGA where he shops for his weekly groceries and Montreal's St Joseph Oratory – where agricultural workers go to mass once a year.

He cannot leave the farm except for Sunday afternoons, and his only human contact is with other farm workers like himself and with his foreman.

Don Jorge lives and works in Les Fermes du Soleil, a farm owned by the ex-Quebec MNA André Chenail. Don Jorge says Chenail does not really take care of the farm business anymore, leaving day-to-day operations to his family instead. Chenail’s retirement was good news for the workers.

"He used to ‘tabernacle’ us all the time.” Tabernacle – the receptacle for the sacrament in Catholic churches – is used in Quebec an insult. “We were not treated as people. It is as though he thought we were animals," Jorge says, looking at his hands, calloused and roughened by farm work.

Don Jorge is part of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP), a Canadian federal program that brings migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean to work in the agricultural sector every summer.

The CSAWP began as a pilot project with Jamaica in 1966, when 264 Jamaican workers came to Ontario to harvest tobacco. The first Mexican workers arrived in Canada in 1974 after Mexico and Canada signed a memorandum of understanding.

The Mexican government plays a double role in this arrangement: it makes sure the program works smoothly, and it also functions as the representative of migrant agricultural Mexican workers in Canada.

For Caribbean workers, the program is run jointly with the governments of the participating Caribbean states, which recruit workers and appoint representatives in Canada to assist in the program’s operations. Workers come from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Monserrat).

For Guatemalan workers, the project was established in 2003 through an agreement with FERME (Foundation of Recruiting Enterprises of Foreign Agricultural Labor), which also lobbies the Canadian government for Canadian farm owners, under the supervision of the Department of Human Resources Development of Canada.

According to the Canadian United Farm and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), 20,274 migrant workers came to Canada in 2005: 11,798 came from Mexico and 5,916 from Jamaica; the rest came from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). In 2004, fewer than three per cent of participants in this program were women. In 2009, the number of migrant workers in Canada is expected to be over 156,000.

Seasonal workers like Don Jorge come to work in the horticulture and fruit and vegetable sectors. Most workers (nearly 16,500) are employed in Ontario; Quebec follows suit with 2,670 seasonal workers.

The temporary workers visa allows them to work only on a specified farm and for a limited period of time. Mexicans and Jamaicans can stay for a maximum of eight months.

Workers live in housing provided by the employer and are not allowed to spend the night outside the quarters. Employers are required to cover certain costs (which vary depending on the nationality of the worker), to ensure that the employee is covered by workers’ compensation and under health insurance, and to sign a contract with the worker.

"The Guatemalan workers pay $35 per week for their lodging but the farm owners pay for their plane ticket. Mexican workers pay for half their plane ticket (up to $550) but they don't pay lodging," says Edgardo Flores Rivas, General Consul of Mexico in Montreal.

Most workers are married with children, which ensures they have an "anchor" back home, preventing them from staying in Canada after their work term. They have health and labor insurance while in Canada, and when they fall ill their employers must take them to a doctor. Under the rules of the program, a worker cannot be repatriated due to illness.

Don Jorge says, however, that this is not always the case. He recounts an incident that happened during his first years in Canada.

"We were working in the fields even though they had announced a severe storm. When the storm hit, it hit hard. We had a bunch of boxes full of produce stacked up. They were knocked down by the wind and they were going to fall over a Quebecker. A young Mexican jumped in, risking his life. He was hit here and there, and afterward he was suffering from intense shock and trauma. He couldn't work and asked to see a doctor, and the patron” – the boss – “refused. Two days later, while we were all in the fields, they tried to repatriate him. But the young man left a message for his roommate and that's how we found out. They never thought we would find out," he says.

Don Jorge says the farm workers decided to take action. After lunch, they all refused to go to work. When Chenail found out about the strike he went to the workers’ quarters and threatened to send them all back to Mexico if they refused to go to the fields. The workers called the Mexican Consulate for support, but were baffled when Fanny Carranza, a Consulate staff member, told them to get back to work instead of looking for trouble.

But the workers refused, saying they would rather return to Mexico than allow such injustice to occur. The young man finally received medical attention and worked the Canadian fields that summer. He wasn't offered a job the next year.

Andrea Galvez works at a Temporary Workers Support Center (Centro de Apoyo) in St. Remi, Qc. She cites numerous problems that allow for worker abuse in the program.

"The workers sometimes work 14 hours per day. They don't get a break. They are afraid to complain because they fear they will be sent home," she says.

The majority of workers want to work as many hours as possible to maximize their earnings, since they have to cover for the costs of coming to Canada in the first place. No matter how many hours per day they work, migrant workers do not get paid overtime.

"What they earn is what the Canadian government establishes as the minimum wage for agricultural workers. People and media ask why they earn so little. We can't modify Canadian law. Those who come know this is how it is," says Flores Rivas.

"[The government omitted overtime pay] because they wanted to protect small family farms. The problem is that now agriculture is industrial, not family owned," says Galvez.

For René Mantha, General Director of FERME, low wages are essential to stay competitive in the global economy.

"They can’t be paid time and a half. Let’s use the lettuce harvest as an example. If workers are being paid too much the lettuce will be more expensive to compensate for the higher wages. If the lettuce doesn’t sell because it is too expensive we will not be able to hire any workers later. You see, we are in a global economy," he says.

Furthermore, a survey in the Niagara region showed that Canadian farm workers' hourly rates increased nine to 14 per cent over the past five years.

Bilateral government agreements call for a rest day after six days of work but employers can ask workers to volunteer to work their rest day during harvest periods.

"I wish they would work no more than 12 hours per day. It is what is stated in the contract," says Mantha. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that the workers sometimes face longer working hours.

"They are not here for one week. They are here for six or seven months, so if they are exhausted I can tell you they will not be as productive," he says.

Flores Rivas agrees, saying they are not supposed to work more than 12 hours per day ever. "This has been decided to protect their health," he says.

In Canada, agriculture accounts for several times more work-related injuries and deaths than other industries. Risks stem from operating heavy machinery, applying pesticides, and working long hours during extreme heat. These dangers are compounded with the fact that most workers have inadequate training and sometimes do not understand safety instructions.

According to the North-South Institute, one in three workers from St. Lucia, Grenada and Mexico and one in five workers from Trinidad, Jamaica and Dominica report injuries or sickness due to the combination of long hours and exposure to chemicals and other hazards. Between one half and one third of sick and injured workers go to work rather than risk being considered unfit for work or losing wages.

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Paulino* has worked Canadian fields for seven summers.

He has been a peasant all his life. “My father showed me how to clean the corn, the yucca, the camote since I was a little boy,” he says.

He appreciates his job, since he says it is hard to find a job back home, but he bitterly complains about the expenses involved in working here, and the lack of wage increases in spite of a rising cost of living in Mexico.

“In Mexico everything is very expensive. We want our salaries to increase but it’s not like anybody asks us what we want. We are illiterate; we have no say in the negotiations,” he says.

To begin with, while still at home, Mexican CSAWP hopefuls bear the cost of traveling to Mexico City five times or more to fulfill the bureaucratic requirements of the program.

To be eligible for the program, workers must pay for and pass the medical screenings required by the Canadian government. Canadian Immigration Health Services has approved very few clinics that carry out required medical screenings, and all of them are in Mexico City.

Workers must also travel to Mexico City to apply and pay for their work visa with the Canadian government.

"We cannot force the Canadian government to open offices elsewhere to give the visa. In the Third World they use their own standards. Not all clinics can pass the standard. The worker who comes knows he will have these expenses," says Flores Rivas, adding that the Mexican government has opened several offices in Mexico to make the Mexican paperwork easier for the workers.

Mexican workers pay half the cost – $550 – of their plane ticket. An economy class round trip from Mexico can be bought by the general public for as little as $600. However, Galvez says the tickets are bought through a travel agency owned by FERME, and she believes this is clearly a conflict of interest. Flores Rivas disagrees.

“The only way they can reserve the seats with the airlines is to reach an agreement with them,” he says. For Paulino, the $550 amount is staggering.

Seasonal migrant workers have to pay income tax like all other workers in Canada. They also pay Canadian Employment Insurance (EI) and make contributions to the Canadian Pension Plan. In 2001, Ontario CSWAP workers contributed $3.4 million to EI even though they cannot claim such EI benefits as welfare.

Paulino says the money he is able to bring back home is spent fast, and he believes the Mexican government is unwilling to negotiate better salaries.

Given the great personal cost, why do so many agricultural migrant workers like Paulino keep coming to the Canadian fields year after year?

Paulino says he, like many others, comes from a poor rural Mexican family. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to high school. He says he leaves his sweat and health in the Canadian fields when he comes and that it is very difficult to be away from his family for so long. “I have two young children. They miss me and I miss them,” he says.

Even so, traveling to work every year is an act of love towards his family. “I want to give my children a better life. I want them to study. That’s the only reason I come so far to work: for them,” he says.

Flores Rivas believes the conditions of the program are the best the negotiations have allowed.

“It [the program] is not that bad since people keep on coming,” he says.

When asked if he will continue to come back to Canada, Paulino says he will. He says it is not because the program is good for the workers, but because there are not enough jobs back home.

“We come because we have to come,” he says.

*Workers' names have been changed to avoid problems with their employers.

Verónica Islas is currently completing a Masters degree in Public Policy and Public Administration at Concordia University.

TFW Fence