Happy Earth Day everyone!
It was certainly a lovely, warm day
here at the farm, one of the few we've had so far this spring. Seemed like
winter wanted to hang on forever, and then of course, spring flooding from lots
of rain, still frozen ground, and rapid snow/ice melt...sigh...this is why I'll
be building raised beds in the vegetable garden. I always optimistically
schedule my first direct seeding of sugar snap peas in the field for end of
April, but that hasn't been possible for years! My fingers are crossed that
with raised beds, I can actually hit that end of April seeding date next
year...
I read a CBC opinion piece today
saying that Earth Day is no longer relevant:
"
The planet now finds itself in grave danger. We're way beyond holding a day
once a year to raise awareness on the issue. If your house is on fire, you're
not going to ask the family, "Any ideas on how we should celebrate Fire
Safety Day this year?""
(https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/earth-day-no-longer-relevant-opinion-1.5099354)
I remember when I was a young
teenager in Edmonton (where I was born), celebrating Earth Day with sincere
hope for the future. I still even have an Earth Day t-shirt from then. But now
I read about all that is happening in our environment, and see little to no
political or social will to change things. Bumblebee species are in decline (in
fact, pretty much the whole insect world). Flooding, raging fires, severe
storms. Climate change used to be something that I thought we needed to be
acting to prevent now, but I didn't think we'd actually be experiencing its
effects within my lifetime, and I'm not expecting to die for hopefully a few
more decades.
Currently, my only regular contact
with the outside world (yes, farming is that isolating) is working part-time
during tax season in a local tax office which has many people come in and out
all day. I overhear lots of complaints about the price of gas going up from the
federal carbon tax...but everyone makes sure that we've applied for their
climate action incentive credit (yes, the federal government is flogging that
horse, a lot). And with the shift in governments both locally and around the
world to politicians who don’t want to make the drastic changes necessary to
actually slow (not even halt or turn around) the climate change train wreck
happening right in front of us…I’m not feeling like anyone wants to change
anything at all.
Meanwhile, here at the farm, and in
my growing circle of agroecological farmer friends, all we do is talk about
climate change, and farming practices that will actually sequester carbon. We
prioritize increasing biodiversity on our farms, and definitely don't use
chemical products for killing insects or plants we don't like. We're totally
into compost and all its magical effects and dream about having more livestock,
so we can get more manure, so we can make more compost. This must sound so strange
to most of you. Lately, I feel like an alien when socializing outside organic
farming circles.
This year, I’m again the president
of the National Farmers’ Union – Ontario, Local 344 for Grey County (yeah, that’s
a mouthful). As a board, we decided on three priority issues for the year: climate
change, indigenous solidarity, and new farmer support. With a federal election
this year, we’ll be doing our best to challenge local candidates to state their
positions on these topics. And we’ll be researching what parts of the Green New
Deal and Leap Manifesto, the two most radical political movements in North
America for divesting from oil and prioritizing climate change action, relate
to farming, and what we can do now on our farms.
With my farmer friends, we dream of
a world where all farming is done agroecologically, without the use of chemical
fertilizers or pesticides. Where RoundUp (glyphosate) and genetically modified
crops (most of them modified to resist RoundUp, so you can spray that crop with
RoundUp to kill all the weeds, but your crop stays alive) are banned. Glyphosate
causes cancer, as two U.S. courts have already ruled…but Health Canada and
other government agencies won’t/can’t admit this. Why can’t this be admitted?
Because if glyphosate were banned world-wide, global agriculture as we know it
would collapse, pulling down hedge funds, chemical companies, seed companies
(which are mostly the chemical companies anyway), farm equipment manufacturers
and retailers, banks with agricultural lending (which is all of them)…the list
goes on. And of course, people would starve in the short term, because not
enough people know how to farm without the chemical inputs and genetically
modified seeds. So the non-organic farms all around me continue to spend as
much on fertilizer, pesticides and seed, as they make from their crops, if not
more. Because that’s the way agriculture is done. Farmers are producing
commodities. Not food, not ecological stewardship, not vibrant rural
communities. The fewer farmers it takes to farm more and more land, the better,
right? Efficiency is king in this capitalist world. Resiliency is at the opposite
end of that spectrum.
So now, I’m really depressed. Why do
I start writing blog posts late in the evening instead of going to sleep?
Because I’m sick and tired of holding my tongue, or not wanting to get political with people, or having to explain myself while the other person's eyes glaze over. I don’t want to preach to
people, or point the finger and accuse people of using too many plastic straws,
because that’s not the point. Frankly, individual actions are nothing in the
face of the massive societal changes that need to happen. We literally have to
decide, as a society, that no more fossil fuels are to be removed from the
ground. No oil washed off sand. No more refining. No more pipelines, or train
cars moving bitumen around. We need to get off fossils fuels, full stop. We
need to stop producing food covered in chemicals, which destroy the
environments in which they’re grown. We need to stop shipping food all around
the world to be processed and eaten. We need economies to be localized, where
we all adapt to producing what we need closer to home, and doing without that
which we cannot produce locally. In a globalized world where shipping and
logistics companies like Amazon are king, a localized economy sounds like some
sort of hippy dream, right? Well it’s not. Much as I love eating mangos and oranges,
I can survive without them. I can survive eating food that could be grown right
here in Ontario, or even in the rest of Canada. I don’t have to eat food that
is shipped from South America, or Asia (though I would miss rice, I am Chinese
after all). I could survive wearing wool and linen (flax) clothing. Though
frankly, if we all just started swapping our clothes instead of throwing it
out, we already have a massive supply of clothing right here. We could have
solar panels on every building surface, and size/community appropriate wind
turbines for electricity. I so desperately want an electric vehicle instead of
my Dodge Caravan, but unfortunately, do not have the funds to get one.
Which brings me to my latest source
of depression. CSA membership sign ups are down this year, and not just for me.
Many other organic CSA farmers are experiencing the same thing, and if I
believe the various CSA marketing gurus who’ve found my email address, this
decline is widespread. Their solutions essentially ask CSAs to be more accommodating
to their members, allowing full customization of weekly packages, via their
super duper on-line ordering platforms. Because that’s what non-CSA grocery box
delivery services can do…because they don’t grow the food!!! I’ve realized over
the years that the only people who enjoy being CSA members, are those who enjoy
the challenge of cooking in season, with whatever vegetables, meat, eggs,
legumes, etc. are presented to them. Those who need specific ingredients for
every meal, find CSA packages hugely challenging and often end up discarding
unused items. I certainly understand the challenge of coming up with a healthy
meal that your whole family (of picky children) will eat, and so I definitely
sympathize, but that doesn’t mean I can, or should, make vegetable packages
customizable. The logistics of vegetable growth means you harvest what’s ready,
when it’s ready…which is actually great, because you get the freshest and most
tasty and nutritious veggies! And customizing harvesting and packaging would
require more labour, which my farm just can’t afford. In fact, few organic farms
can afford more labour, which is why there are so many seasonal organic farm
internships (board and lodgings, maybe a stipend) and places for WWOOFing
volunteers. But wait, we could afford more labour, if we could actually charge
the real cost of production of food, but that’s impossible in Canada where
people expect the cheapest food prices. And none of us actually want to be the
private farmers for only super rich people anyway. I am not a serf.
So, ranting aside, please consider
joining an agroecological farm CSA, any farm CSA, not just mine. Yes, it will
be more challenging to produce meals with what you’re provided, but the
ingredients will be so fresh and tasty, you’ll have to do less to make them
taste good to your family. In the summer time, I eat more than half my
vegetables raw anyway! And you’ll be supporting a farm which isn’t causing
climate change, but doing all they can to mitigate climate change. Take your
climate action incentive credit and put it towards signing up for a CSA
membership. It’s a step towards a more localized economy, which is better than
no step at all.
Happy Earth Day everyone. I know the
Earth will still be here long after I’m gone. I would prefer if human beings
were still part of its ecosystem.
2 comments:
I'm reading what you're putting down <3
Well said! Farmers are on the front lines of the battle with climate change and understand it better than anyone. We really need to listen to what you are saying.
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