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The Emperor Has No Clothes
Podcast: 'Deconstructing Dinner' looks at food politics in BC.
Listen to this:
Additional featured audio: Bill C-517: an act to amend Canada's Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods). Listen to the April 3 second reading debate in the House of Commons.
In March 2008, B.C. NDP Opposition Critic of Agriculture and Lands Corky Evans toured throughout the province to hear from farmers. Deconstructing Dinner recorded his stop in Nelson, where he delivered a passionate and highly-informative primer on the failures of the B.C. government in recent decades to allocate financial support to food production within the province. Of greatest interest was his reference to B.C. maintaining the lowest level of support for food production of any province. He presented a number of opportunities that farmers, eaters and political parties must take advantage of now, in order to preserve a viable system of food production into the future.
While the content of his presentation was focused on B.C., his message is important to all provinces and states throughout North America, as the scenario that has played out in B.C. can be seen as an extreme version of what is playing out across the continent.
We round off the show with a recording from the March 2008 conference of the Certified Organic Associations of B.C., hosted in Sidney. Presented at the conference were the winners of the COABC's Fresh Voices contest. The contest solicited submissions from those wishing to share their vision of how "sustainable organic production and marketing systems could improve profitability, stewardship of the land and water, and quality of life for farmers, ranchers and their communities." The winner of that contest was Jordan Marr, who has been embarking on a path towards becoming a farmer. He presented his winning essay to those in attendance at the conference.
Voices
Corky Evans, MLA Nelson-Creston/NDP Opposition critic for agriculture and lands (Winlaw, B.C.) -- Corky Evans was elected as the MLA for Nelson Creston in 1991, and was re-elected in 1996. He was once again elected to represent his constituents on May 17, 2005. Corky has 10 years' experience as an MLA, during which time he served in many cabinet portfolios, including minister of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. He now serves as Opposition critic for agriculture and lands.
Jordan Marr, wannabe farmer (Sooke, B.C.) -- Jordan is a 26-year-old self-titled "wannabe farmer" who has been visiting farms throughout B.C., hoping to learn more about the practical and political aspects of farming. In the span of five years, Jordan has, as he says, gone from being a suburban kid completely clueless about food, to a smug university student convinced he knew everything about food, to a humbled farm apprentice who realized he knew very little about it. In 2006, Jordan graduated from a bachelor's program in the faculty of land and food systems at the University of British Columbia, and then apprenticed for seven months on an organic farm in Nova Scotia. Today, Jordan is considering farming as a career.
Related Tyee stories:
- Water, the Blood of the Earth
Podcast: 'Deconstructing Dinner' presents Maude Barlow. Plus: Monsanto pays up. - So, You Want to Be a Farmer?
Podcast: Who will help raise Canada's food? Why not you? - The Future of Food
Podcast: Insights from conscientious cooks and food security experts.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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3
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G West
4 years ago
Hmmm!
I think I liked the faculty better when it was called the School of Agriculture.
There's something awfully chichi about the
'faculty of land and food systems'....
The kind of thing you'd get from a marketing execuitive who got lost in the barnyard.
G West
4 years ago
that's
"executive"...sorry
Fiat lux
4 years ago
The world's food production
The world's food production peaked in the mid 80s and sinking fast, with millions dying of starvation every year. Yet thousands of farmers are forced into bankruptcy and off their lands every year.
Global food production is now under the control of a handful of mega corporations, who are depressing farm prices to kill the family farm system, so that multinational agribiz, under the same corporate control, can pick up the lands and achieve total control over humanity.
The main object is to depopulate the rural areas and jam everybody into mega cities, where they have to pay through the nose for every bite, while being poisoned with tons of preservatives, colourings and other additives and the pollution caused by the long distance transport of foods and goods, separating the producers from the users so the middlemen can control lives and profits.
Humanity has survived a million years on locally grown foods, with the minimum transportation and no chemicals, many of us have grown up and are still practicing such food growing systems, and there's no reason why it couldn't be reinstituted, by getting rid of the politicians who are in the pay of the corporate mafia.
Plus the economists and professors who are miseducating and misleading people into believing that corporate dictatorship is
" efficient" and "cutting costs", by transferring those "cut costs" on the necks of farmers and the health of billions who are being poisoned every day by this criminal system.
How is it that 50 years ago we had virtually no cancers, no diabetes and no autism, now reaching epidemic proportions?
Look at the labels on the cans and packages in supermarkets and find the reasons.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.