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| Last updated at 12:01 AM on 11/07/08 |
‘Back to the future’ farming 
The Journal Pioneer
Is what’s old becoming new again? Or perhaps it’s more a matter of huge cost increases making it necessary to revert to more traditional ways.
Do soaring food prices mean we’ll be seeing more country homes surrounded by chickens, out pecking in the yard, a cow or two grazing in the field, a couple of pigs hanging around the barn and a large garden growing in the backyard – a familiar scene in rural P.E.I. just a few decades ago?
Canada’s current system of agriculture is far from healthy. Something’s going to have to change soon. It’s too expensive to have these big factory farms growing our food and shipping it around the country.
Might as well face it, the days of cheap energy are over.
It takes fuel to power the plants that produce the fertilizers and chemicals, to run the tractors and other equipment used to plant and harvest the crops, and to truck and refrigerate that produce.
The provincial government’s current BuyPEI initiative is encouraging consumers to purchase their food “fresh from our farms,” and offers a directory of suppliers and farmers’ markets that are making the buy-local option more accessible.
But what happens when the farmers’ markets close and the fresh produce is not so fresh any more? Are we back to the grocery stores and paying an arm and a leg for healthy food?
Industrialized, global farming is no longer working. So what does?
Yes buying local is one option, but is going back to family farms another? How many of us would know anything about raising chickens, milking a cow by hand or growing an awesome string bean? Likely not many. At least our parents had the benefit of perhaps growing up on a small family farm and learning about these things while they did their daily chores.
If we’re going to return to the family farm, we’re going to need to help the small, independent farmers, encourage rural residents to return to the land, and definitely support them by buying their products.
Perhaps it is time for a national policy to help the family farm. Canada hasn’t had one since the days of Eugene Whelan. When the cowboy hat-wearing minister of Agriculture left politics, we moved into an era of agribusiness – putting all our eggs in one basket.
Well, someone had better get some more baskets or we may starve.
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11/07/08
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