view counter
view counter
view counter
view counter
Home

Island Farmer Columns and Opinions

How many more studies are needed?

As Horace Carver begins the task of writing his report on possible changes to the Lands Protection Act, yet another group begins studying land issues.
The idea of establishing a task force on land use was first recommended a couple of years ago  by retired judge Ralph Thompson, who compiled a report on land use and local governance.  As the National Farmers Union is fond of pointing out, the retired judge offered an opinion on the headline grabbing question being considered by Carver as he reviews the 30 year old act he first guided through the legislature. Thompson felt the ownership limits of 1000 acres for individuals and 3000 acres for corporations were still appropriate.

Is food safety being compromised?

The fact 100 food inspectors are being laid off as part of budget cutbacks at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is troubling.
Most of the inspectors were hired in the wake of a listeria outbreak at a Maple Leaf plant in Toronto in 2008 that claimed the lives of 22 people. If Ottawa is thinking the extra inspectors are not needed due to the fact the Maple Leaf crisis has been dealt with, that is a major mistake that could cost the lives of some Canadians.
The emphasis has to be on prevention. Canadians are demanding safe, high quality food and producers are going the extra mile to try and make sure that happens. Virtually all commodities now have on farm food safety programs that result in added money and paperwork for producers. In most cases, it results in no extra money when the product goes to market—instead it is becoming a cost of doing business as such procedures are often demanded by buyers.

Book talks about dehumanization of agriculture

If what I read sometime back is correct – and by sometime back I mean months ago, not years or decades ago – supposedly half of the human population is still fed by animal and human powered agriculture. I have no idea of the accuracy of that assessment, but the reality is that tractors aren’t a universal part of agriculture. To many farmers in North America where many would have a machinery yard as big or bigger than many of the smallest farms in the world, it may be hard to believe that if not half, that at least much of the world’s sustenance comes by way of animal and human powered agriculture. To many farmers in North America it may be hard to fathom how families could possibly make a living off such small plots of land, but the reality is that many farm families do indeed eke out a living off small plots of land, feeding themselves and the local and/or global market.

Trying to discern the best pathway

The guest opinion column in The Guardian of August 6 by Lloyd Kerry titled, "Cut the farmer some slack in debate over pesticides," started with the sentence, "Hardly a day goes by without seeing a cry in the media on how the farming industry on P.E.I. is poisoning Islanders with tons of pesticides." As much as I dislike pesticides, I agree that farmers need be given some slack as they weren't the ones that made agricultural policy or designed the curriculum in ag colleges and universities.
That first paragraph continued, "In her letter ("Pathway of poisons is expensive') Sandra Boswell warns of the poisons governments allow people to put on their lawns and fields. She mentions side effects: ‘anorexia, vomiting, muscle weakness, slowed heart rate, etc.' This is true, and more debate needs to take place on the use and misuse of pesticides." Yes, there needs be honest dialogue.

Feeling relief in a time of sorrow

 Last September in this column, after quoting some of what Sue Monk Kidd had written in her book Firstlight regarding ". . . how important it is to create it (beauty) in the midst of ugliness, barrenness, and sorrow," I mentioned that I might be the middleman for two of her stories as a young nurse and a young mother. Well here’s the young nurse story retold.

That story had reappeared in the March 1995 issue of Guideposts on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of that publication. It was titled, "Don’t Let It End This way" and is retold here using some of her own words.

Civilization draws its nourishment from the valleys, not the heights

The previous column retold a heart-touching and heart-warming story out of Sue Monk Kidd’s book [Firstlight] from when she was a young mother with a baby girl and a three year old son. The poem that immediately follows is in effect a half-told story by an older mother that is far more heart-warning than heart-warming, but Lucy Gertrude Clarkin’s poem message to her children and her readers is as valuable as Sue Monk Kidd’s inspiring story. There is a quote attributed to Wordsworth that states, "Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility." The words of Clarkin’s poem are in effect, no doubt, the recollected and distilled words of an older mother. That poem of Clarkin's  was discovered on the unusual grounds of a country church in Kelly’s Cross, P.E.I. and says succinctly:

Of ag economists and those farmers that supposedly don't count

 What follows is part two of a two part column and it needs more than a bit of introduction for those who haven’t read it or remembered what the previous column addressed.

Helping to look what one is looking for

One nifty feature with a word processor program is that one is able to find the words or phrases easily and quickly, even if it is a very long document. Pressing down at the same time both the Control key and the F key using Wordperfect accomplishes very quickly what could take quite a while "by hand." By hand, meaning of course running one’s eyes across every line searching for a word or phrase and hoping one doesn’t miss it. It’s one thing, for example to look for the word "agriculture" or any other word in a one or two page document, it’s quite another to find every use of that word in a many-page document.

What progress? What development?

E.F. Schumacher is best remembered for his 1973 book Small is Beautiful which is subtitled A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Not as well remembered, or even known are his other books. A Guide for the Perplexed, which is without a subtitle, was published in 1977. Twenty years after that, he wrote This I Believe, which has a title extension, "and other essays." Somewhere in between he wrote and published a book titled Good Work. In 1981 he wrote in the Foreword of his friend and colleague’s book Small is Possible: A factual account about who is doing what, where, to put into practice the ideas expressed in E.F. Shumacher’s Small is Beautiful, "Many years of work on these matters have completely convinced me not only that small is beautiful but also that small is possible and has the future on its side." Time will tell whether that prediction is right or wrong.

Some interesting numbers in report

There are some interesting facts in the statistical review compiled by the province that came across my desk recently.
For one thing, it puts some hard data to the trend of more non-farmers in rural areas. Although some of the data is based on the 2006 census, there is little reason to believe much had changed in the last three years. The majority of the province’s population still lives in rural areas (defined by Statistics Canada as communities of less than 1,000 people) although the gap is narrowing.
In the last census, there were 76, 906 Islanders living in what might be called “the country” while 61,721 lived in areas with a population of 1,000 or greater. Of that rural total, only 5,295 were farmers. The province now has a bigger Francophone population than it does farmers, although farmers who speak French would be included in both groups. The province’s francophone population is 5,665.