The Dominion - food security

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

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

Clinton Apology to Haiti Surprises NS Activists

Moira Peters — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:21:18 +0000

Former US president calls dumping cheap rice "a mistake"

HALIFAX—Nova Scotia activists are expressing surprise that former US president Bill Clinton has apologized for flooding Haiti with cheap American rice beginning in the mid 1990s. During testimony before a US Senate committee last month, Clinton admitted that requiring Haiti to lower its tariffs on rice imports made it impossible for Haitian farmers to compete in their domestic economy. The trade policy forced farmers off land and undercut Haiti's ability to feed itself.

“It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake,” Clinton—now a UN special envoy to Haiti—told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee March 10. “I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

“I would like to believe that Clinton has had a change of heart,” wrote Heidi Verheul of the Halifax Peace Coalition in an e-mail. “But he actually needs to do something to challenge the free market shock doctrine economic policies that are being designed to further subjugate and impoverish Haiti,” she added. “The policies of aid and development in Haiti have continuously served to undermine democracy [and] local economies, and have driven tens of thousands of people from their land, enslaved them in sweatshops, makeshift homes, and absolute grinding, miserable poverty.”

Clinton’s apology attracted scant media attention in the US and none in Canada. It was included as part of an Associated Press news agency report that was published March 20 by the Washington Post. The AP report from Haiti’s earthquake-ravaged capital, Port au Prince, suggests world leaders are reconsidering trade and aid policies that make poor countries dependent on rich ones. It quotes UN aid official John Holmes as saying that poor countries, like Haiti, need to become more self-sufficient by rebuilding their own food production.

“A combination of food aid, but also cheap imports have...resulted in a lack of investment in Haitian farming, and that has to be reversed,” Holmes told AP. “That's a global phenomenon, but Haiti’s a prime example. I think this is where we should start."

The Clinton administration forced Jean Bertrand Aristide to agree to cut rice tariffs drastically when the US restored the Haitian president to power in October 1994. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, had been overthrown by a US-backed military coup in 1991. In return for $770 million in international loans and aid, Aristide was required to agree to a business-friendly “structural adjustment” program that, aside from cutting food tariffs, also included freezing the minimum wage, cutting the size of the civil service, and privatizing public utilities. (Aristide annoyed the US by being slow to implement such policies, making Clinton’s apology last month all the more surprising.)

Janet Eaton, trade and environment campaigner for Sierra Club Canada, said members of the global democracy movement have long known about the failures of the globalized food system, and Clinton’s apology to Haitians only reinforced what many activists have talked and written about for years.

“When high-profile leaders admit that economic globalization isn’t working, then it’s time for governments to get on board and look at alternatives.” Eaton added. “It is time to admit that these failures exist and put an end to the aggressive free trade frenzy that is now occurring in Canada, the US and Europe as they vie for foreign markets, raw materials and unfettered free trade.”

Eaton pointed to one alternative in Nova Scotia—a Food Policy Council, which was formally established at a meeting in Truro on April 19. Farmers, consumers, academics, policy analysts and organizations were promoting food security for all Nova Scotians by focusing on ways to grow more of our own food. Eaton contended that growing more local food would help curtail climate change, reduce dependence on increasingly expensive fossil fuels and alleviate global poverty.

She added, “Haiti should be seen as a metaphor for what can happen on a planetary level if we fail to recognize the crisis we face.”

Bruce Wark is a freelance journalist based in Fall River, NS. This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

clinton in haiti

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

Monbiot: "Trade deals are the new gunboats"

dawn — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:42:13 +0000

George Monbiot discusses fishing, free trade and modern day pillage in his article titled Rich countries once used gunboats to seize food. Now they use trade deals.

Monbiot writes: "Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term, at any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world's governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve."

Death in the Field

hillarybain — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:00:36 +0000

An interview with Arturo Rodriguez of the United Farm Workers of America

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died in May after suffering a heat stroke while pruning grape vines at the San Joaquin County vineyard in California. Jimenez was a seventeen-year-old undocumented worker who had migrated from Oaxaca, Mexico to work in the United States. She was working in the fields with her fiancé and was pregnant at the time of her death. As an undocumented worker, Jimenez’s death points to the often severe realities faced by non-status agricultural workers in the US.

Since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), migration from Mexico to the US has increased dramatically. NAFTA has failed to deliver the economic boom for Mexico that was promised and thousands like Jimenez migrate to the US each year seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

Jimenez’s death sparked protest in California, including a caravan from Lodi, CA, to Sacramento, CA, coordinated by the United Farm Workers of America (UFW). Jimenez’s death reinvigorated calls for an amnesty program for undocumented workers in the US who often face appalling working conditions that frequently go undetected due to the precarious status of the workers.

Arturo Rodriguez, president of the UFW, spoke with Dominion contributor Stefan Christoff about the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the political movement for regularization of non-status workers in the US.

Dominion: The death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez has drawn a great deal of attention to the case of undocumented farm workers in the United States. Commentators across the political spectrum are referencing this tragic event. Could you address the specifics surrounding her death?

Arturo Rodriguez: Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez was a 17-year-old farm worker who was pregnant while working in the fields in the San Joaquin County Vineyard, working with grape vines. Maria was working in the fields for long, long hours. The employer didn’t bring water until 10:30 that morning--work had begun at 6am. Maria had worked for over four hours without any water to drink and on that particular day, the temperatures soared above 95 degrees [Fahrenheit], and in the fields even hotter.

That afternoon, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez collapsed after not having enough water, or having any shade provided and without any sufficient rest. Consequently, Maria fell into a coma. Supervisors took no action, not calling the ambulances, not calling an emergency vehicle, instead putting her in the back of a sweltering van. About two hours later, [they] finally brought her to a hospital where, upon arrival, the doctors pronounced that the body temperature had soared to around 108 degrees.

At this point Maria was admitted to the hospital and over the course of the next days her heart stopped beating a number of times and finally her heart simply stopped beating. Doctors said that there was no real chance to revive her or for her to survive. At this point the family made a decision to shut off the machines that were keeping her alive.

Could you provide a picture of the trek that undocumented migrants are making from throughout the Americas, due to economic factors, to work in agricultural fields in the United States and Canada?

Migration occurs throughout the United States and into Canada. Towns that the workers come from, in Oaxaca or Chiapas in Mexico, have economic conditions that are so bad, so poor, that people are forced to look externally for ways to provide their children with enough to survive in these states.

Often families will pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, known as coyotes, to take people across the borders to a place where another family member is, or a place where they can work as an undocumented labourer where they slowly start working in the field. These people are then indebted to that particular coyote, so they are working first to pay off their debt.

Literally thousands and thousands of people are crossing each day. Estimates indicate that at least five hundred people are dying trying to cross the border each year. People are dying while crossing the deserts, dying from thirst, heat exposure or starvation.

Can you talk about these demands for safety reform within the context of the larger demands for regularization or status for all non-status people or workers in the United States?

Our organization has been working extremely hard for the past decade because we know that Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez isn’t an isolated case. In the US, at least 70 per cent of the farm labour force is undocumented. Oftentimes, workers like Maria are abused, or exploited, or mistreated, simply due to their lack of status in the US.

Consequently, we feel that it’s extremely important that we change this situation, to ensure that undocumented workers are afforded the same rights as anyone else in the United States when they come to work in this country. A very important part of our work as an organization is to bring about real immigration reform in the US.

Recently we have worked very closely with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Kennedy and Congressman Howard Berman on a special piece of legislation that would in particular deal with undocumented farm workers in the United States. Through this legislation, farm workers would bring proof that they have worked 150 days over a four-year period. This legislation would then provide a pathway to grant legal status for the workers and their spouses and children in the US.

We continue to work very hard on this legislation, as we think it’s the real solution to the current problem. [If the legislation were adopted], farm workers could enjoy the same protection as anyone else and they will no longer be discriminated against.

Do you see a parallel between the recent death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez and the current position of the US government to not grant farm workers status in the US today?

Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez is one of nine individuals that we know of who have died of heat stress just in California. Multiple other deaths have occurred due to equipment failures, due to heavy use of pesticides, and you can go on from there. The overwhelming majority of these deaths are undocumented people, so we know that these deaths are very closely linked to the legal status of these individuals.

Unfortunately, the legal status of undocumented farm workers needs to change for them to be treated as human beings. This is the reality that we face in the US and we are trying to do everything within our own power to ensure that these changes do come about. So it’s of utmost importance for us to ensure that farm workers receive the same type of legal status and protections that any other workers in the US [receive].

Throughout Mexico there has been unrest concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Can you talk about the case of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez within the larger context of NAFTA, which some argue is forcing increased migration of undocumented workers into the US?

Unfortunately, NAFTA hasn’t been the solution for Mexico’s economic concerns that it was presented as. Many companies went to Mexico looking for a cheap labour supply, [but] once they found a cheaper labour supply in China or other parts of the world, they often abandoned the communities or cities in Mexico where they had set up.

Along the US-Mexico border, near Tijuana [and] other areas, you can often find factories that have been completely abandoned as a result of these corporations finding other locations internationally where they could find a cheaper labour supply, a labour supply they could better use and exploit for their corporate economic benefit.

Many large regions or states in Mexico, for example Oaxaca, were not impacted by any of the proposed economic gains from NAFTA. Oftentimes the areas that NAFTA impacted, in terms of US companies setting up factories along the border regions, are no less destitute [today] as these factories or companies are now leaving.

Today, large, large numbers of people in these states are in situations of unemployment, even homelessness, as they had left their homes in other parts of Mexico and are now stranded without work or opportunity. Oftentimes, the only solution that they had was migration to the US, in order to seek some kind of relief, in order to deal with the economic stress that they were feeling in Mexico.

Profound economic changes that benefit people will never take place unless there is real economic revival within Mexico and across other parts of Latin America. Huge numbers of people are migrating from across the Americas to the US in order to find jobs, basically to find economic relief; this is a real challenge.

Economic stability in Mexico means that people will have self-reliance where they live, an economic situation locally where they can provide for themselves, their families and their local communities.

Migrant Farm Workers

Goose Break

hillarybain — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:01:49 +0000

The changing climate and hunting in the North

It can be hard to concentrate when you're stuck inside a stuffy classroom in springtime. For the kids of Eeyou Istchee, the territory of the James Bay Cree, it can be nearly unbearable: after a long winter, the sunlight is getting warmer every day and the sound of the first Canada geese flying overhead can drive the entire classroom -- as well as the janitor, principal and everyone else in town -- to the window to gaze up at this graceful embodiment of the changing seasons.

Kids as young as four years old can do a perfect two-tone goose call. A few well-executed throaty honks, and the whole flock will change course, circle gently and alight on the lake.

In these communities, Goose Break is a big deal. It's a two-week holiday during which schools and offices close, and just about every family heads into the bush to hunt geese and hang out at the camp. Sort of like France in August, and bigger than Christmas, the communities become ghost towns as everything is put on hold to allow people to go after the geese.

But Goose Break's character -- and timing -- has changed over the past few years. Parents pull their kids out of school as much as two weeks in advance of the scheduled start of the break, because the geese don’t follow the calendar and they’re coming sooner than the school board has calculated. Experienced hunters put their snowmobiles away earlier and earlier, not willing to risk their lives on ice that is thinner with each passing spring. Even the elders, whose advice has been followed closely for decades, are not always able to predict the weather patterns. No one can be sure whether crossing the river at the regular spot is still a safe bet, and every year there are stories of seasoned hunters going through the ice. Some families opt to hire a helicopter -- not a cheap ride -- to get to and from their favourite hunting grounds, rather than travel over the lakes and rivers as they have done for generations.

Scanning the skies, hunters watch in wonder as flocks continue heading northward. Usually, Canada geese can be coaxed out of the sky if they see ice below on which to land. But this year, lakes that would normally be frozen are open water, and the geese are passing right overhead.

A Cree boy usually shoots his first goose at age nine or ten, and the whole camp celebrates with a feast in his honour. The goose's head is preserved as a keepsake -- a symbol of this transition from childhood to maturity. But some mothers are beginning to wonder how long the tradition will continue. There are plenty of geese this year -- fluttery heaps of feathers outside the camps attest to that -- but with so much changing so quickly, it's hard not to speculate about re-scheduling Goose Break for early March next year. Some worry that it will be cancelled altogether by the time this year’s first-time hunters have kids of their own.

Recipe for Shigabon (Canada goose roasted over an open fire)

-Pluck the goose

-Chop off the wings, feet and head. These can be boiled to make soup

-Run two slender pieces of wood crosswise through the goose, at the points where the wings and legs attach to the body

-Tie a string to these wooden sticks

-In the tipi, place fresh pine boughs on the floor to create a heavenly aroma

-Before building a fire at the centre of the tipi, install wooden poles horizontally at about shoulder height over the fire

-Suspend the goose by its string from the wooden poles over the fire

-Place a stainless steel bowl or tray below the goose to catch the drippings

-Roast, turning occasionally, until the goose is thoroughly cooked –- about three hours. Try hanging it with the breast side down for the first two hours, then turn to cook the other side for the final hour

-Serve along with drippings

Jaime Little works with CBC North Quebec

Geese Feet

¡Si, Se Puede!

hillarybain — Thu, 24 May 2007 11:43:43 +0000

Field workers in Florida say “Yes we can!” - and are

Outside it's a chilly, grey morning in Chicago, but inside the House of Blues, there's a carnival in progress. An organization of migrant farmworkers has just won an agreement for higher wages and better working conditions from McDonald's, a fast food multinational headquartered in the city.

On stage, against a backdrop of giant puppets, an MC leads the crowd in call and response. “Coalition!” he yells. “Presente!” the people chant in return. Many in the audience raise their clenched fists in the air. Now, they are saying, it is Burger King’s turn.

“Coalition” is shorthand for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers [CIW], a group made up of mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indians who work in the fields of Immokalee, an area of southwestern Florida. They pick, among other crops, most of the winter tomatoes grown in the U.S. The tomatoes are sold through a series of suppliers to restaurant chains like McDonald's or Burger King; eventually ending up as part of a meal sold at fast food drive-ins and counters across the United States.

“The major buyers of Florida produce...corporations like McDonald's [and] Burger King, leverage their unprecedented market power to secure the lowest possible prices for the produce they buy,” explains an analysis paper written by the Coalition. “This downward pressure on their suppliers’ prices in turn drives down workers’ wages.”

Workers in Immokalee earn as little as 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes harvested. To make minimum wage in a ten-hour day, they have to pick nearly 2 1/2 tons of tomatoes. In addition to not receiving health insurance, sick leave, paid vacation or pension, they also “have no right to overtime pay even when they work 60--70 hour weeks, and have no right to organize,” adds Lucas Benitez of the CIW. The Coalition uses the word 'sweatshops’ to describe their working conditions in the United States.

John Bowe, writing in The New Yorker, notes that most farmworkers in southern Florida are recently arrived immigrants to the U.S., who often do not to speak English. They are hired as crews by labour contractors who “...can exert near absolute control over their workers’ lives; besides handling the payroll and deducting taxes, they are frequently the sole source of the workers' food and housing, which in addition to the ride to and from the field, they provide for a fee.”

In the worst-case scenario, farmworkers are being held in involuntary servitude. In the past six years the CIW, through worker-led investigation and human-rights education, has helped the U.S. federal justice department with the prosecution and conviction of five modern-day slavery rings located in Florida, involving over 1000 workers.

The Coalition began about 13 years ago as a small group holding weekly meetings in a borrowed space. The CIW quickly grew in strength with community-wide work stoppages, three general strikes -- including a month-long hunger strike by six members in 1998 -- and a 230-mile march through Florida in 2000.

In 2001, after two decades of declining wages in the tomato industry, the CIW launched the first ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company, Taco Bell.

Between 2000 and 2005, 22 universities and high schools in the U.S. prevented or removed Taco Bell restaurants or sponsorships with the “Boot the Bell” campaign, spearheaded by one of the Coalition’s major allies, the Student Farmworkers Alliance (SFA).

In 2005, Taco Bell, owned by Yum! Brands, bowed to the pressure, making a historic agreement with the CIW. Taco Bell agreed to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked, almost doubling the workers daily wages; and to implement an enforceable code of conduct for its suppliers, to ensure the working conditions and human rights of the farmworkers are protected.

The Coalition has since attempted to secure similar agreements with a number of other restaurants chains, including Subway, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Burger King and McDonald's. The successful campaign against McDonald's culminated in the 2007 Truth Tour: a caravan of buses full of farmworkers travelling from Florida to Chicago.

So far, Burger King has publicly rejected CIW offers to negotiate. Instead, in a statement to the press, the company offered to send “recruiters” to Florida to retrain farmworkers, offering “ongoing professional training and advancement opportunities around the country for both entry level and skilled employee jobs at Burger King restaurants.”

The CIW is unenthusiastic about the proposal. “The farmworkers who pick tomatoes for Burger King are among this country's worst paid, least protected workers,” says Lucas Benitez, spokesperson for the Coalition. “Offer[ing] to address farmworker poverty by retraining tomato pickers to work in Burger King's restaurants -eliminating farmworker poverty by eliminating farmworkers - adds insult to injury with such an obviously unworkable, and frankly pretty ridiculous idea.”

Coalition of Imolakee Workers

Opposition Grows

hillarybain — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:38:35 +0000

Will a B.C. Federal Minister Break the Wheat Board…or the Law?

Who controls the Canadian Wheat Board? That is the question, according to key players involved in a hotly contested plebiscite that is pitting Western farmers against a B.C. federal minister.

The plebiscite concerning the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and its monopoly on barley is the latest event in a year that has seen government firings, inter-provincial fighting, opposition motions and what some are calling a gag order against the CWB.

Though the details and complexities of the CWB may seem boring and inconsequential to some, literally hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars are at stake. Farmers are already struggling; between 1996 and 2001 almost 30,000 farms were lost in Canada.

Started in 1935, the CWB was a means for farmers in the West to sell various types of grain collectively, attracting a single price and avoiding unstable shifts in the market. In 1998, the then-governing Liberals amended the Wheat Board Act to strip the CWB of its Crown Corporation status and allowed farmers to elect the majority of directors. It was the fourth- largest Crown Corporation in Canada at the time.

In the 2006 election, the Conservatives promised to dismantle the Wheat Board's monopoly both on wheat and barley. Since then, the CEO of 25 years for the Wheat Board was fired (incurring outrage from Wheat Board directors) while an order in council was issued preventing the CWB from spending money in favour of the monopoly.

"[ Agricultural Minister Chuck Strahl] doesn't seem to understand that this is a shared governance corporation with a board of directors, 10 of whom are elected by farmers," says CWB Director Bill Toews. "He seems to want to take full authority over the operations of the Board."

Last June, the government tried to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act. The motion failed and opposition parties reminded the government that a “clear and direct” plebiscite was required before it could be amended.

Opposition Grows

According to Stewart Wells, president of the National Farmers’ Union, the Conservative government ignored the call for the required plebiscite until the NDP government of Manitoba announced their own plebiscite for Manitoba farmers this January. The results showed that between 60 and 70 per cent of farmers want to maintain the monopoly on barley and wheat.

Strahl, a Conservative MP from B.C., dismissed the results as being 'propaganda' and announced a plebiscite for barley farmers would be held in March. Instead of asking whether the monopoly should be maintained or not, however, a third option was put on the ballot; a dual system, where an open market would co-exist with the CWB.

“It's not possible,” says Maureen Fitzhenry, a media relations contact for the CWB, in reference to the existence of the CWB in an open market. “The Wheat Board has almost no facilities…we’d be asking our competitors to move grain. Okay, in all fairness, we could become a grain company, but that would involve the government investing [over a billion dollars] in infrastructure and they’ve made no commitment to do so yet.”

According to Fitzhenry, because the CWB is in competition with major US companies, the Australian Wheat Boardand others., the CWB requires high volume of product from a monopoly. “If [farmers] think there is no risk...they are wrong.”

Conrad Bellehumeur, director of Communication for Minister Strahl, disagrees. “A number of studies in Alberta…show this is possible.” He maintains the Conservatives envision a “strong CWB” within an open-market system and that his party is simply trying to give farmers the “opportunity to choose.”

But Alex Atamanecko, the agricultural critic for the NDP says that, according to the statistics he's seen -- including price comparisons and a report by Murray Fulton from the University of Saskatchewan -- “the Wheat Board as it stands would cease to exist in an open market.”

Fitzhenry doesn’t think Strahl’s Alberta studies are credible. “I think farmers want to keep the Wheat Board. Consistently 60 to 70 per cent of farmers support the single desk system.” Four out of five office directors elected during the last CWB elections are also monopoly supporters, says Fitzhenry. For her, the conflict is a question of “who controls the CWB: farmers or government?”

Wh(e)at’s Next?

Bellehumeur says that barley is the only part of the CWB under review at the moment, but that a ‘wheat plebiscite’ will be instituted later. Wells believes Conservatives are waiting to tackle the wheat monopoly when they get a majority in parliament. Both Wells and Fitzhenry said before the plebiscite that regardless of the result, the Conservatives would interpret the results how they wanted.

Indeed, before the plebiscite, neither Strahl nor his communications director outlined what percentage of the vote was required to move ahead with reforms, saying, “The data will be available to anyone but it's up to me to say what this advice means.”

Wells states that the ‘attack’ on the Wheat Board is caused by a combination of “ignorance, malicious companies, commodity brokers and long standing anti-wheat board people… all within the government.” He wonders if Strahl, with a background in forestry, understands how the Wheat Board operates and whether he is getting biased information from sources in the US.

Atamanecko suggests the 14 US trade challenges under NAFTA and other trade organizations to the CWB may be influencing the Conservative stance.

In response, Strahl’s communication director says that Strahl has been called everything from “undemocratic” to “a communist,” but notes that Conservatives have the largest caucus of farmers in parliament. He thinks that the people making the most noise challenging Strahl’s credibility “are the same people against plebiscite.”

Meanwhile, CWB directors and staff have complained of a government “gag-order” after the CWB was told not to spend money promoting the monopolies. Because Fitzhenry is paid staff, she worries that the government can interpret any comment she makes as an expenditure of funds. “I’m not prepared to do a legal interpretation” she says, “Staff don’t know what they can and can’t say…it makes [our] job difficult.”

Atamanecko goes even further: “Their tactics are sinister and deceitful...they want to dismantle the Wheat Board and are doing everything possible to do so. They've singled out directors, the Wheat Board and contradicted the current CEO…and made the [plebiscite] question fuzzy.”

Results in, Conclusion Not

The plebiscite results released on March 28 show 38 per cent of farmers wanting to keep the monopoly, while 14 per cent want to scrap the CWB all together. Fourty-eight per cent say they want the dual system. Strahl has said he will remove the barley monopoly by August 1, 2007.
For Fitzhenry, the results are meaningless because the plebiscite offered “an unrealistic scenario.” She points out that the minister added up options two and three to declare that farmers wanted to scrap the CWB, “But why not add up one and two…and assume they want to keep [it]?”
Strahl has insisted on amending the Canadian Wheat Board Act by changing the regulations. “We're quite sure we can take it out through regulation,” Strahl says.
Strahl might come up against more opposition, only this time it might be in the courts. Though Strahl and Bellehumeur claim they can legally make the CWB a dual-system, others claim otherwise. Liberal Leader Stephan Dion told a group in March that legislation through parliament was legally required before abolishing the monopoly.

Fitzhenry is not willing to call the government’s actions illegal, but she doesn't think the government’s plebiscite constitutes a plebiscite under the Wheat Board Act. She says that directors for the CWB are of the opinion that in order to change the Wheat Board’s monopoly, an act of parliament is required.

“This isn’t over,” she says

Wheat Field

Tim Horton's in Kandahar

dru — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 14:33:40 +0000

A Tim Horton's is unloaded from an American C-17 at Kandahar Airfield. It is, writes Justin Podur, "an affront and an insult to starving people."

Locked Dumpsters Full of Mangoes

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:49:02 +0000

Hungry people, wasted food, and the politics of dumpster diving

Food waste needs to be rethought, reduced and rerouted. photo: Fatty Tuna

Unappeasable customers, bitter bosses and deserted lunch shifts; it is no secret that restaurant work can be soul-crushing. However, the most painful moments in the food industry -- ask anyone who has worked in a café, restaurant, bar or food store -- are moments spent throwing away good food. Those who work in supermarkets, bakeries and delis know that tossing bags of fresh bread and pastries, cases of coffee, trays of uneaten lasagne, chicken and sautéed vegetables into the dumpster out back is part of the daily reality.

Less visible is the more shocking layer of food waste that occurs even before food gets to restaurants and grocery stores. On the outskirts of towns, distributors and wholesalers operate construction dumpsters, which are regularly filled with produce which is riper, fresher, and generally of better quality than what reaches the consumer. This is the fate of the truckload of Ecuadorian mangoes that ripened before making it to the supermarket and the flat of tomatoes from Ontario with a couple of bad fruit; thrown "away" for fear the decay would spread over the whole shipment.

Spencer Mann is sensitive to food waste and food security. He is a founding member of Co-op sur Genereux in Montreal: a housing co-op of 15 members. "These giant dumpsters full of beautiful food are not located near residential areas and are therefore more difficult to access for people who use dumpsters as a source of food," he explains. Part of the solution to the injustices of food waste, says Mann, is to become part of a society that is "okay with waste," but makes that "waste" accessible to those who will make use of it.

Mann's interest in the content of dumpsters is more than cerebral. Dumpsters are the main food source for Mann and the other members of Co-op sur Genereux. "The first time we started consciously dumpster diving," he explains, "was during harvest time, at the Jean Talon market. At first we were buying our produce; then we noticed the vendors throwing away perfectly good tomatoes and eggplants." There is one hour between the market's closing time and the time the truck comes to take away dumpster contents. Mann describes the sense of conviviality among the regular divers at the market -- elderly Italian women, young locals and new immigrant families -- getting "incredible hauls," and the swapping that follows.

Keeping the food industry's "waste" accessible means supporting food redistribution efforts, and also sorting out a clear sense of the politics of dumpster-diving. "It is an art to get to know the rhythm of a dumpster," explains Mann, "to learn when it is filled and when the food is taken to the dump. Part of the etiquette of dumpster-diving is to leave food for people who are regular visitors to that dumpster. There are many families who rely on that food. One strategy is to collect food only just before the truck comes, so you know you are not taking food from someone else's mouth."

Before embarking on an urban scavenging adventure, one must know the rules. Don't rip bags; open them to look through them and then close them again. Be quiet; leave the dumpster cleaner than you found it. Be respectful in conversations with employees, managers and owners. "Eighty-five per cent of these interactions will be positive. Employees of a store tend to know only too well about the food that is being wasted in their store and tend to be supportive of that food being used instead of sent to the dump." Owners and managers, who would prefer that customers pay for food, are less tolerant. That is why it is crucial to respect the rules: you don't want to be responsible for a local dumpster -- upon which 10-15 people might depend for their daily bread -- becoming locked up.

"Sometimes it is unfathomable that things get thrown out." Mann gives the examples of a 30-lb bag of organic Fair Trade sugar, unopened bags of organic figs and sun-dried tomatoes and huge bags of dried chickpeas. Co-op sur Genereux challenged its members to one month of surviving exclusively from dumpsters, and succeeded. However, Mann acknowledges the difference between benefiting from a wasteful system and the need for waste to be rethought, reduced and rerouted.

Distributors can participate in this change by ordering on demand instead of on speculation and by getting involved with local food redistribution organizations that take their 'waste' to food banks and soup kitchens. Local businesses can order responsibly to cut down on overstock. Consumers can demand local food that will not have to survive a trip across a continent and be less picky about blemishes and discoloration that does not impact the taste or nutritional value of the food.

Awareness events, such as Montreal's "Etat d'Urgence," organized by the "urban intervention" group ATSA, seek to encourage people to confront the reality of the waste-stream. Since 1995, ATSA has co-ordinated an annual five-day "urban refugee camp" in downtown Montreal, feeding, clothing and entertaining people of all social stripes. Each year, for the last meal of the event, Co-op sur Genereux has fed more than 200 people on spoils saved from Montreal dumpsters.

Why is good food thrown away?

1. Capitalism allows for a certain margin of waste. Food waste is written into many business plans and makes up a significant portion of food cost and inventory.

2. 'Best before' standards require merchants to toss food that has 'expired.' Restrictive health by-laws, which often prevent restaurants from giving food, turn such food into a liability for the restaurant.

3. Shelf-space has value, in its being a place for product. This means a merchant needs his or her product to be of the highest value possible, or it is not 'worth' the space it takes.

4. If a merchant were to sell blemished food for, let's say, half-price, his clientele would change. He would lose rich clientele who do not want to shop alongside poorer clientele.

5. Branding. A business demands everything that leaves through its doors to be of high quality for the sake of its reputation.

Moira Peters investigates the politics of dumpster diving within a food system that results in hungry people and wasted food.

Genetically Modified Diplomacy

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:12:52 +0000

Canada's International Biotech Agenda

Critics argue that government is being influenced by large biotech corporations and regulatory norms in the US. photo: Jessica Bray

According to several observers, Canada's diplomatic maneuvers at the UN and WTO could weaken international environmental law and accelerate the spread of unpopular genetically-modified organisms around the world.

In 2003, Canada, along with the US and Argentina, initiated proceedings at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to challenge the European Community's (EC) ban on Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs). On September 29 of this year, the WTO declared the EC's GMO regulations illegal and instructed it to modify its laws accordingly.

"Although politicians claim that environmental law and trade law support each other, this ruling demonstrates that in the hands of the WTO, environmental law is in fact made subservient to trade laws," said Duncan Currie, international law expert and author of a Greenpeace assessment of the WTO case. Canada was the first industrialized country to ratify the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, which was first agreed to at the UN Earth Summit in 1992 and reaffirmed in 2002. The Convention includes the Biosafety Protocol, which regulates the movement of GMOs across borders.

"The ruling contradicts what heads of state agreed at the UN World Summit," said Currie.

The WTO ruled that the precautionary principle, a mainstay of international environmental law, was too controversial and unsettled a concept to be a general principle of law. The precautionary principle states that if the potential consequences of an action are severe or irreversible, in the absence of full scientific certainty, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.

"If taken as precedent," writes Canadian law firm McCarthy Tétrault, "this position could affect the regulation of many other industries." McCarthy Tétrault gives the example of the EC's draft rules for testing the effects of certain industrial chemicals for public health consequences. "If those rules incorporate the precautionary principle, any resulting restrictions could be challenged for not being based on hard scientific evidence."

"This ruling is important," says Howard Minigh, former vice-president of DuPont and [current?] president of Brussels-based CropLife International, which represents biotech companies. "Regulations based on political expediency and excessive precaution encouraged by propaganda from anti-biotech groups" put producers of farm goods at a disadvantage, he says.

The Canadian government claims that its domestic GMO testing system is foolproof and that Canadian-approved GMO products are safe. A review of decisions by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency shows that all 61 applications for GMO animal-feed products were approved. Agriculture Canada has also approved 89 GMO food products for human consumption.

Are Canada's regulations for GMOs safe? GMOs are not labeled, and thus difficult to test, but according to Dr. Joe Cummins, "there has been a large increase in food allergy and food-related illness after the GM foods were spread around North American markets."

"In Canada," said Cummins, who is a member of the UK-based Independent Science Panel and an emeritus professor of genetics at the University of Western Ontario, "most processed foods contain GM corn, soy or canola products."

"Even though it is not possible to do good science of the unlabelled foods, laboratory animal studies showed a range of adverse effects from allergy, inflammation or pre-cancerous lesion of the digestive system. Such studies are ignored by the Canadian government but they are well documented."

A 2004 report by the Polaris Institute looked at the 58 recommendations to protect public health by the Royal Society's 2001 Expert Panel on the Future of Food Biotechnology. The report found that while some progress has been made, there is still a great deal that needs to be done before Canadians have a precautionary regulatory system to protect their families and the environment from the risks of GMOs.

"It appears to me that the government has been unduly influenced by large biotech corporations and the regulatory norms in place south of the border," said Dr. Peter Andree, author of the Polaris report. "As a result, in general I think it is fair to say that Canadian regulators do not recognize the potential severity of the risks of products of biotechnology, or the value of a more precautionary response to those risks."

In the meantime, the Canadian government is campaigning to open the world market to GMOs, including the 'Terminator' gene. Terminator seeds are genetically engineered to result in crops that don't grow viable seeds. Farmers who use the Terminator seeds cannot save seeds from their crops and are forced to buy new seeds. There is a currently an international moratorium on the use and marketing of Terminator seeds.

"Terminator seeds are a weapon of mass destruction and an assault on our food sovereignty," said Viviana Figueroa of the Ocumazo indigenous community in Argentina on behalf of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

"Terminator [technology] directly threatens our life, our culture and our identity as indigenous peoples."

In 2005, a leaked report obtained by the ETC Group indicated that Canadian diplomats were heading to a Convention on Biodiversity meeting with instruction to "block consensus" in order to help lift the moratorium.

The Canadian government was swamped with letters of protest from around the world and references to the Terminator were deleted in the official text after strong objections from other countries.

"This is a momentous day for the 1.4 billion poor people worldwide, who depend on farmer-saved seeds," Francisca Rodriguez of La Via Campesina, a global network of peasant farmers, said of the decision.

In spite of the international outcry, Pat Mooney of ETC Group noted that Canada continued to support Terminator technology at the last Biodiversity Convention meeting in Curitiba, Brazil, in 2006, but in a "low-key way."

"In the end," continues Mooney, "efforts by Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the USA were blocked by the EU and developing countries and the Convention on Biodiversity ultimately strengthened its moratorium against Terminator."

"We nevertheless have the impression that Canada will continue to push for Terminator both in trees and crops."

Canada is also using its international aid program to spread biotech.

Through the Canadian International Development Agency, Canada is developing a biosciences centre for East and Central Africa, as one of four "agricultural centres of excellence" being developed around Africa, with an estimated cost of over $30 million. The United States is expected to build a centre in North Africa; the UK will build one in South Africa, and France; one in West Africa.

"It is clear from the information we have gathered," said Mooney, "that BECA is being built to promote agricultural biotechnology."

The WTO decision will open up new markets for Canadian biotech, an industry with annual revenues of $5 billion and an annual research expenditure of $3 billion.

Yuill Herbert examines Canada's international biotech agenda and the government's most recent GM 'victory.'

The Seed in the Stone

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:19:27 +0000

Growing food in the concrete jungle

City backyards are good for more than swimming pools and lawn chairs. photo: Kristen Howe

I hate to say it, but the warm months of summer are coming to a close. The Ontario tomatoes, corn and peaches, which are currently replacing tasteless international imports, are helping me get over my end-of-season nostalgia. And despite the fact that I'm living in downtown Toronto, I'm finding that the fall harvest is happening closer to my kitchen than I expected.

This year, my housemates and I planted a small garden plot in our backyard with some of our favourite foods. Judging by the view from our back balcony, which looks down on the tidy and productive gardens tended by our neighbours, we are definitely not alone.

The view from my balcony is supported by polls conducted in 2002 by Ipsos-Reid that found that 40 per cent of people in Greater Toronto live in households that produce some of their own food; urban gardeners growing vegetables, fruit, berries, nuts or herbs in backyards, balconies, or community gardens.

Although the Ipsos-Reid poll sounds promising, only a fraction of the food Canadians eat is grown locally, let alone in a personal garden. The average tomato, for example, travels a gas-guzzling 1,500 miles from field to plate.

I first realized that it is possible to grow a substantial portion of an urban diet close to where it is consumed when I visited Cuba a few years ago. Over half of the fruit and vegetables consumed in Havana are grown organically in Havana. In the house where I stayed, my host Pastorita explained that after the fall of the Soviet Union, imports of food, pesticides, fertilizers and gasoline for farm machinery and transport were halted, resulting in a 30 per cent reduction in food consumption. She showed me the buckets, bathtub and trellis on the rooftop of her house that her family tended through the toughest years when every open space in Havana sprouted culinary plants. Larger intensive production gardens on vacant lots were also opened with the support of the government and they continue to grow produce to sell to the public, schools and hospitals through collaborations between the Ministries of Agriculture, Education and Health.

Canada still lags far behind the Cuban model of urban agriculture. Cubans were forced to grow food collectively to avoid starvation. Lacking that motivation, and structural support, Canadians that do garden tend to cultivate smaller plots, and for different reasons.

According to Foodshare, a Toronto-based organization that addresses urban hunger and food issues, there are 1,000 community gardens and over 2,500 allotment gardens in the city, in addition to yard and patio gardens. The motivations of gardeners, and the environmental, health, and social benefits of their gardens are numerous, and often overlap.

Foodshare supports a market garden at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where residents participate in growing and selling produce. Another organization, the Stop Community Food Centre, grows food to supplement its food bank services and facilitate engagement and education in its multicultural community. A small garden at the Voces Latinos community centre is motivated by the idea of fostering closer connections between people and their environment. Seeds of Diversity Canada, a grassroots seed-saving organization, cultivates a heritage vegetable garden to preserve the genetic diversity of plants that are adapted to local growing conditions, and combat the corporatization of the food supply.

This spring, as I was digging up my backyard plot, my neighbour Frank poked his head over the fence and asked in his thick Italian accent if I had planted any tomatoes. When I told him I hadn't, he returned with a bucket full of cooking and slicing tomato seedlings.

Each spring, Frank nurtures hundreds of seedlings in a homemade greenhouse, which he delivers to extended family across the Greater Toronto Area once the weather is warm enough for planting. He grows tomatoes for the incredible taste, as a hobby, and to share an essential cultural food with his family. Each year, he also saves the seeds from his best tomatoes to plant the following spring; I have literally been eating the fruits of Frank's labour from the last decade.

How to eat a tomato like a meal
–Cut a fresh, ripe tomato into thick slices lengthwise on a plate.
–Cover generously with pepper and a dash of salt to taste.
–Garnish with cheese, basil, or balsamic vinegar for extra flavour.
–Get your napkin ready, and eat with a knife and fork.

Kristen Howe is growing her favourite foods in Toronto's concrete jungle.

Wheat Board to market organic wheat grown by a Canadian coop

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:35:45 +0000

In a bid to gain access to high-value markets in Europe and Japan, the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) is planning a pilot project to market organic wheat grown by a Canadian farmers' cooperative, reports the CBC. The initiative is slated for the 2006-2007 crop year, and if successful, the Wheat Board will start marketing all organic wheat.

Canadian Organic Certification Cooperative secretary Bill Rosher says that growers have long sought a program that would improve the way that organic grain is marketed, and are devoting resources to ensure that the initiative will be a success.

Currently, farmers who produce organic wheat market it themselves, or sell to accredited exporters. Under the voluntary program, reports Discover Moosejaw, the CWB would market the wheat overseas, and participating farmers would receive a pooled return and organic premiums.

The Canadian Wheat Board is currently one of Canada's biggest exporters of wheat and barley, according to Seedquest. It markets and sells grain to more than 70 countries and returns all profits, minus the cost of marketing, to Prairie farmers.