Vancouver can't, but the valley can

Vancouver can't feed itself, but it doesn't have to. The farmland of the delta and the valley can produce all it needs, and then some. It's helpful to remember this, in the face of the present urban fad for city agriculture: it's not a real issue, unless one inexplicably decides to consider the city as an island, divorced from the farming regions that surround it. And what would be the point of that?

Rich food faddists

This article could come out of some upper class tripe like in Vancouver magazine - something for the well-off professionals and others of their ilk to spend their time thinking about, while the working class has to find what it can in Wal Mart and Costco. At least they don't denigrate meat-eaters, because we all know that protein substitutes like soy don't grow much locally. Well, maybe that will be a benefit of some climate warming!

toquer

Isn't this simply a mini-version of "Canada can't - but California can"? Or "dam the Peace - but don't dam the Fraser"? Or "oil through Prince Rupert - but not through Vancouver"?

In other words, NIMBY?

RickW

"Isn't this simply a mini-version of "Canada can't - but California can"? "

Nope. You're throwing the away Ricardo's principle of competitive advantage. Some things can be done better in the city than in the valley - educate large numbers of people, share information, do productive business, produce useful goods. Other things can be done better in the valley than in the city - I leave it to your imnagination.

Unfortunately, under the guidance of the Fraser Institution and its like, we've run off the end of the earth with that principle and made it our theme song on the way to greed and wealth.

Don't try growing things on my lot. North-slope, tall street trees which burrow roots into my own foundation and drainage, never mind my useless waste-of-a-garden which never grows anything for more than a couple of years, despite my vigorous roto-tilling every four our five years, or when I get exceptionally frustrated. Even tomatoes won't ripen in a pot on the balcony - I didn't get a single one this year, it was so dark and cold.

But don't talk to some of my neighbours about taking down some of these street trees - that would be sacrilege. And even I like them, on the hottest of days, when all the suites in my house get cooled a few degrees by their presence.

...not that I have air conditioning either...

What does it matter if another city can't?

I have followed carefully the arguments, which are fundamentally, as I see it, aesthetic. It is nice to eat locally. But not all cities can, not all populations of the world. The question is self-centred then, and the Lower Mainland's specific climate distorts the answers we are getting. Who cares if we can feed ourselves? The question is if everyone can. And if they can't, then we have to trade, exchange, assist to develop, and above all, from the perspective of a city relatively untouched by the world economic crisis, downsize our wastefulness and excess.

But why not expand the debate and ask why Vancouver does not produce its own chemical products, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, refine its own petroleum. I find the whole debate short-sighted then: let's be really self-sufficient, become fully industrialized instead of importing our industrial-based lifestyle from S. Ontario or Korea, and then talk about what 100-mile really means.

Thanks for the comments everyone...

The real question we'll be exploring Thursday evening at the Museum of Vancouver, as I say in the article, is how to create a recipe for local sustainable food success? Why is it better to have a strong local susttainable food economy? Here are a few reasons:

Locally produced food creates less GHG emmissions, creates jobs in our region, and if farmed sustainably offers decent working conditions. It lessens the alienation urbanites tend to feel from the source of their sustenance, and, again if done sustainably, uses fewer pesticides and is less cruel to animals.

So...how do we get there? That's what Thursday's conversation is about. Please come and offer your commments and critiques.

Sustainable

: An annoying buzzword of the 21st century meaning just about anything you want it to.

Local food has less greenhouse gas? Not always

Quote: "Locally produced food creates less GHG emissions"

Not necessarily: a lot of interesting work has been done that convincingly demolishes the 'food miles' concept as a meaningful indicator of emissions. The acres of tomatoes grown under glass in the valley generate far greater emissions than a container ship full of tomatoes grown in a more tomato-friendly climate: the actual emissions generated by shipping need to be divided amongst the thousands/millions of items onboard. Calculated in this fashion, the 'emissions per item' can be far less for an item produced elsewhere. I think your statement about GHG emissions needs to be rethought. Supporting your local farmer is grand as well: consider, though, that the emissions produced by driving from farm to farm are greater than those generated by a single trip to the grocery store. Alienation from sustenance? Again, a quasi-sacred incantation these days which is rarely considered in a critical fashion. The blunt reply would be: so what? One doesn't dig one's own potatoes; one doesn't know the provenance of one's salad greens. Is this truly a recipe for anomie? I live on an island smallholding: I produce about half my own food, hunt a couple of deer each year, and buy the rest. I'm intimately familiar with the source of what I eat. Am I enriched by this? A romantic would say so. Yet I find very few romantics with dirt under their nails. I'd suggest you overestimate the 'alienation' created by allowing one's food to be produced in a centralized way: the amount of work required to feed oneself is what's alienating. The time you used to spend reading, attending cultural events, symposiums and generally partaking of the diversity of urban life becomes invested in weeding, digging, mulching, watering, harvesting and preserving. Little time left to write romantic treatises on the profundity of self-sufficiency: little time to organize museum symposia.

sustainable definition

sus·tain·able (sə stān′ə bəl)

adjective

capable of being sustained
designating, of, or characterized by a practice that sustains a given condition, as economic growth or a human population, without destroying or depleting natural resources, polluting the environment, etc.: sustainable agriculture

governed or maintained by, or produced as a result of, such practices: sustainable growth

Fresh

Snert didn't like sustanable so how about fresh because there is nothing like and all its takes is a little soil, and sun, and of course this is BC where things grow bigger and better and don't forget a little music and tender loving hands now how fresh can you get as its a win, win situation. I am thrilled with the idea and will give it much thought as just maybe come up with some fresh ideas.

Organics

Are what we should be eating from down on the farm but the cost of eating organics is to much for many while land sits and people sit idle says the time is ripe.

But ...

I was under the impression that Gordo "Killer" Campbell and his foul bag of chthonic corporate cronies had sold all our farmland to real estate developers and other non-agri big business interests. Is that not true? Do we still have a meaningful amount of good farm acreage in the lower mainland and surrounding environs? Really?

snert

Language is fluid. Adaptation means the term is, at the least, popular and drawn into the public's lexicon.
Beers -- rock on! Good food facilitates positive change.

Yes we could but it will

Yes we could but it will never happen. By Laws are part of it but Vancouver has the largest population of NIMBY's this side of Pluto...

But David, that is my point.

You say eating locally "creates less GHG emmissions, creates jobs in our region, and if farmed sustainably offers decent working conditions." The same could be said about producing the industrial products we consume massively on a local level. They travel long distances, do not create jobs here, and if produced responsibly can contribute to better working conditions. But no one wants to talk about that, because the discourse is locked into the aesthetics of a bucolic, pre-industrialized world. That is pure hypocrisy.
In Vancouver we are essentially foisting the environmental cost of our lifestyle on others by importing only the final industrially produced product.
But back to eating locally: it is a complement to the entire diet of average BCers, including those keen about 100 Mile diets, because 95% are not going to give up citrus and coffee and other wonderful imports. Which is why I find it short-sighted as conceived, naively anti-global, and navel-gazing. In spite of actively attempting to eat local products in season as much as possible.

NUTS I SAY!!!

30 years ago I had the idea of lining the streets with nut producing trees.
We would then have 100's of tons of free protein each year for everyone in the city. The poor could become pickers and the city could sell millions of dollars worth of fresh nuts.
I see the Hotel Vancouver has Bee Hives on the roof and produces 600lbs of honey per year.
Every new tree in every town and city in BC should only plant fruit or nut trees...

So just to be clear Jeffrey S

Am I to understand you're not interested in the questions this panel is going to be asked to address

How do we cook up a recipe for local sustainable food success?

and

what outdated methods, rules, policies or other forces stand between the farmer and your plate. What would it take for our region's food economy to really get humming?

zalm

Perhaps, in a sustainable city, there are actually places where building should NOT be placed (gasp!!).