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Agriculture rally, the FLR, hoop houses and food-borne pathogens
This Saturday afternoon, April 18th, at 1.30pm, there’ll be a Farms, Farmers & Food Security rally at the BC legislature, a proper foodie kick-off to the May 12 provincial election. There are many related issues we’d like our politicians to be better informed about, including the
- decline of agriculture in BC
- lack of support for local food production
- unaffordable farm land
- vanishing meat processing capacity
- erosion of ALR
- food crisis affecting all of us
- many other food security issues
The Forest Land Reserve, the taller cousin of the Agricultural Land Reserve, is open to similar abuses by money-grabbing developers, and has been in the news lately. The Capital Regional District attempted to undo the damage done by the provincial government, which released the lands from the FLR in 2007, and protect the area from development, but the BC supreme court said no, and the appeal won’t be heard until June.
Yesterday’s fun was helping to build a hoop house at Haliburton farm
and then attending a talk by Ed Ishiguro
about food-borne illnesses (and common pathogens salmonella, listeria, campylobacter and e.coli). Ishiguro has spent many years exploring e. coli 0157:H7 and had interesting things to say about the dramatic – unprecedented – rise in food-borne pathogens over the past forty years or so, coinciding rather dramatically with the rise of industrial food production, whose profit-driven livestock overcrowding methods have not just allowed but actually facilitated the spread of pathogens. He is also adamant that the low-dose feeding of antibiotics to all our industrial food animals (too low to prevent disease, as he says farmers are led to believe, but rather used to make them grow faster) has caused the antibiotic-resistant diseases that are infecting our hospitals. A no-brainer you might think, and yet governments in North America have been lead-footed in their response; he cited encouraging (though he felt not yet convincing) research results from Denmark where a ban on antibiotic growth promoters have actually caused antibiotic-resistant diseases to decline, and more treatable ones to emerge.
Some good background as I prepare for tomorrow’s Foodsafe class…
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Worm bins, writers and online learning
A weekend ago I attended a composting course at the Compost Education Centre where we looked at several different ways of composting: 3 bin methods; backyard composters – both horizontal tumblers and vertical Earth Machines -; and digesters that can hold kitchen scraps and dog waste…
and even the worm bin benches they use for seating
in the straw bale classroom.
Then there was a regional meeting of the Writers Union of Canada in Nanaimo, where the potluck table was groaning
and the talk was largely about the pros and cons of the Google Book Settlement. There seems to be a move among many of Canada’s writers to opt out of the settlement, and to pull their books from Google to protest intellectual property abuses – and associated injury to the cultural and financial interests of writers – by vastly profitable corporate monoliths like Google. We have until May 5 to opt out, or until April 2011 to pull our books from the digitization machine.
Last week’s Planet Earth Poetry will likely be the last I get to this busy season, and I was happy to hear some excellent poems from Yvonne Blomer
reading with the touring Brian Bartlett
Some food-related courses start up later this month, at the Virtual University, perhaps the solution for people too busy to get to sit-down classes. For $20US you can spend 4 or 5 weeks studying nutrition, herbalism and natural remedies, or organic gardening.
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Good Friday to you all
Started mine by listening to Vandana Shiva spell it out, again, in words of splendid simplicity, on CBC’s The Current. The poverty and suffering inflicted by globalised trade – poor countries unable to compete with subsidised imports from wealthy countries; massive Indian farmer suicides caused by industrial debt; the destructive nature of fuel-based agriculture; and the madness of growing crops to feed livestock or fuel cars (and subsidised commodities) while people are starving..
And she referred to the IAASTD report on the future of world farming, a year after the release of its 2500 page report, compiled by 400 scientists from 64 countries (including Canada). Its findings were never ratified by our noble country, not surprisingly since they state pretty plainly that if the world is to be fed, we must radically change farming policies and practices: large-scale industrial (fossil-fuel-based) farming, agricultural subsidies and GM do not work as a sustainable way to feed the world. In a nutshell, small-scale organic farming is the way forward.
Can’t wait till she rocks the G8 in July this year; as we were told by Carlo Petrini, an invitation has been extended by this year’s Italian presidency of the group, to have a presentation to G8 leaders by Terra Madre.. and surely Vandana must be the first voice in food sanity. They will have a chance to hear, and we must hope they listen.
Here’s an amazing poem by Alaskan poet Olena Kalytiak Davis.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
