Tag Archives: environmental concerns

Gardening brings the lofty rhetoric of the environmental movement to a concrete, personal level. Working in the garden makes us much more attuned to the weather and changes in climate, and helps put bigger concerns like global warming and the coming food crisis into a more personal context. Home gardening empowers individuals to enact a small positive change.

making the most of living with less

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I have spent much of the last two years reading and writing and talking about living differently; of knowing when enough is enough, learning to say “when”. Of slowing down, of making time for what really matters . . . But despite my reading and writing and time in the kitchen and the garden, I haven’t been living that way.

As you may have gathered from my last entry, in this time of economic hardship and uncertainty, I up and quit my job.

Now, instead of just reading about making do with less, my family and I are living it. Despite the stress and challenges, Jeff and I are determined to build a better life on one income than we had on two. We have a baby on the way and we are intent on being the ones to raise our child, which means I won’t be going back to work outside the home any time soon. So we are learning to make one income enough. And perhaps live a more joyful life in the process . . .

My not working has already removed a lot of unnecessary expenses from our life. Immediately the “latte fund”, so necessary when you need to escape from the hectic office for a shot of rocket fuel to keep you going, became moot. The cost of only one (of my many) daily trips to Starbucks keeps me in tea for weeks at home. Then there’s the lunches with the girls, and after-work drinks. The endless parade of office charity drives, birthday collections, retirement lunches. The 80 dollars a month to ride the train downtown. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars spent to stay in the latest business fashions. All those expenses – gone.

Unfortunately, the last few months at home have been spent mostly with my head in the toilet, thanks to the joys of morning sickness, but now that is passing even more economic benefits of me not working are becoming clear.

My not working means I suddenly have time to do things that lessen our families need for money even further. With one person at home, suddenly there is time for the garden, time to grow and put by food that now doesn’t need to come out of the household budget. There is job security, and then there is the security of having 12 liters of homemade stewed tomatoes in the larder. No drop in the stock market can affect the levels in my pantry!

Being frugal takes time and thoughtful planning. Neither of which are easy to come by when you’re working your brains out. Our weekly grocery bill has gone from about 150 dollars a week, down to about 60, simply because I have the time to plan and cook cheaply. In the process we are eating even better than before because we are eating simple, home cooked meals. Homemade bread, soup from scratch, potatoes a million ways.

I will have more time to tend to our chickens, who are now bringing in a tiny income in egg sales. And with luck, our garden will continue to provide not only food for our table, but dollars for our budget at the same time. I have time to knit durable, inexpensive clothing for our unborn baby, and I hope to learn how to sew. I’d love to start making homemade cheese and yogurt.

It isn’t going to be easy. We live in Vancouver, with one of the highest qualities of life in the world, and one of the highest cost of living. Our mortgage is still due every month, and the property taxes aren’t going to get smaller no matter how I scrimp and save. There is an enormous amount of pressure on Jeff as the sole provider, but I am confident that as we move forward, with practice and creativity, we will be able to build a satisfying life and maybe even learn what it truly means to have enough.

an open letter to an Iowa farmwife

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Fascinating blog…. I like your ideas, and certainly agree that everyone should grow a garden, and be more knowledgeable about where their food comes from. But,I must politely disagree with your analysis of modern farms. When you use the term “factory farm,” you are slurring hard-working individuals who produce food for the world, namely my family, community, and neighbors in rural Iowa. My family uses modern technology to produce meat and grain, and we find it a very honest, and rewarding lifestyle. Have you ever visited a confinement farm personally? If not, please seek out a local farmer’s organization to see if you can’t find a farmer willing to show you a modern operation. It sounds like you have done a lot of homework on alternative production methods…. but not so much on modern methods… please, I invite you to read my blog and learn more about today’s farmers from a real farmer instead of profit-motivated movie producers.

It’s been a while since this comment appeared in my inbox. I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t. So, in the spirt of my favorite art professor, who always told me if I’m pushing someone’s buttons I must be doing something right, here goes . . .

First things first, let me be clear. I’m a card-carrying supporting-member of the Canadian National Farmer’s Union. I support farmers. All farmers. Even farmers who are making bad choices, or who have no choice left. I support families and small towns and the idea that everyone should be able to make a decent living wage doing honest work. The man I am about to marry comes from a small community, where he grew up farming. For many of his family that is still the only life they know. Our dream for our children is to know that life as well, as best we can in a part of the world where a spot of land big enough to even call a hobby farm will set you back a million bucks for starters.

Yes, I said it: I want to be a farmer when I grow up.

Now that that’s out of the way . . .

What you are doing is not farming. I refer to so-called modern farms as factory farms because that is what they are. They are factories producing living beings instead of widgets on the factory floor. Modern farmers in the industrial system have become serfs to the kings of agriculture; Cargill, Monsanto, ADM, Tyson. That’s not to say that your family and others like yours aren’t hard-working, honest people, doing the best you can. What it means, is that like the rest of the industry you are a part of, is that you have gotten really good at hitting the bulls-eye of the wrong target.

I thought it was ironic that you challenged my understanding of industrial agriculture when in your blog you describe holding the shit from your pigs for a year before you spread it on your fields as “organic” fertilizer. Manure from medicated animals that has sat for a year and become anarobic is NOT organic. Composting manure from organically raised, non-medicated pigs, or allowing it to fall as it may in the fields – THAT is organic fertilizer.

From my father, to families of my childhood friends, to my future in-laws, I have been surrounded my entire life by the industrial food production industry. A commercial dairy put food on our table and a roof over our head, and I put myself through my first two years of university by flipping burgers at McDonald’s (hence my subsequent 6 year abstinence from meat). So no, profit-motivated movie producers don’t have a monopoly on my knowledge and understanding of industrial food production. I get that most hog farmers aren’t killing their sows by hanging them from a chain around their neck strung up on a forklift. I watch and write about films like Death on a Factory Farm because sometimes it takes extreme measures for people to be motivated to make changes, myself included.

The fact that factory farming even exists makes me mad. It makes me mad that others have the right to pour poisons into the shared treasure that is our freshwater. I get furious that I have known not one, but three beautiful women, who lived healthful, organic lives and were still ravaged by breast cancer, two struck dead, partly, the doctors say, because no one can avoid the pesticides and herbicides in our air and water.

So ya, I get riled up. I take it a bit personally. I’m sorry if that offends you and your neighbours – but if you want a future for your family, if your son wants to grow up and be a farmer, you have to take responsibility for your role in this and make change before it is too late. One day IT WILL BE TOO LATE. How long will it be before the petrol for the tractors become too expensive? Before you can no longer afford the petrochemicals? The medication? What will happen when your “organic fertilizer” has polluted the ground water to such an extent that YOU can’t even drink it, never mind your hogs? What then?

As a farmer, as a community of farmers, you have the knowledge and the power to be the driving force of change that just might save our world. I don’t know what your situation is; how much you owe for your buildings, what your contract is to the meat companies, how big your mortgage is. I know enough to know that many farmers, most, are caught between a rock and a hard place and might have to chose between putting dinner on the table and making positive changes, and the decision would be an easy one for most. I know that the big companies like Monsanto are making it high-near impossible for farmers to actually FARM, chasing after seed-savers as though they were baby-killers. It’s disgusting and non-farmers need to join that fight if you have a hope in hell of beating them. I know that getting certified organic costs the earth, and takes years and mountains of paperwork.

Despite of all those obstacles, others are doing it. They are blazing new trails and saying enough is enough. And there is a groundswell of people like myself who are ready to stand up and support them. We will support you. I have told anyone who will listen about Big Bear Ranch where I get my pastured organic meat. I am becoming one of those crazy, evangelical word-of-mouth-advertising consumers that the marketing people die for; people just won’t do that for Tyson or ADM.

At the end of the day it comes down to this:

You have to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.

We desperately need more farmers. I saw the pictures of your beautiful children and I hope to heaven that they will grow up and farm. We all depend on them.

closure of prison farms leads to million dollar milk bill

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Media Release                                                                 April 29, 2010

Replacing Prison Farm Milk to Cost Almost $1 Million

Kingston, ON – Government tenders reveal Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) will pay almost $1 million to replace the milk currently produced at one of Kingston’s prison farms.

The tender notice, placed on the government’s website, MERX, states that a milk supplier is required to deliver milk Monday to Friday to locations in Campbellford, Gravenhurst, and Kingston.  The contract is valued at $990 000.

“This ad shows the value of the milk now being produced at the Frontenac Institution in Kingston,” said Dianne Dowling, a local dairy farmer and a member of the Save Our Prison Farms campaign.  “We were right to doubt the financial argument the Harper govenment used to justify closing the prison farm program across Canada.”  There are six prison farms in Canada, located in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario (two in Kingston), and New Brunswick.

Dowling pointed out that Frontenac Institution also provides milk to prisons in Quebec, a supply requirement not addressed in the advertisement.  “Another tender will be needed to fill that gap when the prison farm is closed.  As well, there are the eggs supplied by Frontenac that will also have to be contracted out.”  In addition, senior Corrections staff have already told campaign members that CSC will not replace the thousands of dozens of eggs they currently supply to the local food bank.

The CSC notice indicates that the tender comes under NAFTA regulations, meaning the milk could come from as far away as the United States or Mexico.

“The prison farm at Frontenac spends about $900 000 per year in the Kingston region.  Closing the farm will have a negative economic impact on this part of eastern Ontario, especially farm suppliers,” Dowling said.  “It shows the disdain the government has for local farmers and local business operators.”

“Meanwhile it will cost CSC almost a million dollars to replace the milk they are now producing for themselves,” Dowling said.  “That money will go to milk processors and distributors that could be anywhere in North America, and will add thousands of kilometres on the delivery, contrary to the local food movement. The milk produced at the prison farm is now processed at the prison dairy within hours of collection and inmates earn third party dairy handling certificates.”

“Right now, the prison farms are supplying several prisons with local and sustainable products at low cost to Canadian taxpayers,” said Bridget Doherty of the Sisters of Providence peace and justice office.  “This ad shows that the government is willing to stop inmates from contributing to the prison system, in dismantling a rehabilitation program that is a model for the world.”

Both the Save Our Prison Farms campaign and the House of Commons Public Safety Committee have asked the Harper government to make public the CSC Strategic Review, which proposed closing the prison farms.  So far, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews has not supplied the information.

“It’s time the government stopped hiding the facts and came clean on its actions,” said Doherty.  “Why should the public have to accept destructive policies without having access to information?”

The Save Our Prison Farms campaign will be hold information meetings in ridings held by Conservative members of Parliament.  Meetings are scheduled for May 4 at the Athens Township Hall, and on May 10 at the Napanee Town Hall.  Both meetings begin at 7:30 p.m.

“With Liberal, NDP, and Green Party speakers, these events in Tory-held ridings are a multi-party effort to stop the Harper Conservatives from closing the prison farms,” said Dowling.  “The government needs to wake up to the message that the closures do not make financial or public safety sense to Canadians.”

For more information, please contact:

Dianne Dowling, dowling@kos.net  613-546-0869

Bridget Doherty, bridget.doherty@providence.ca  613-544-4525, ext 145

TEXT OF MERX NOTICE:

Milk – Correctional Service of Canda

Trade Agreement: NAFTA/AIT

Tendering Procedures:

Attachment: None

Competitive Procurement Strategy: Lowest/Lower Bid

Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement: No

Nature of Requirements:

Milk – Correctional Service of Canada

21401-106026/A

Weaver, Tammy

Telephone No. – (613) 545-8059 ( )

Fax No. – (613) 545-8067

To establish a Regional Individual Standing Offer (RISO) for the

provision of Milk to Correctional Service Canada, Kingston ,

Campbellford and Gravenhurst , Ontario .

Period of Standing Offer: Date of award to 31 May 2011.

Supplier must be able to make deliveries Monday to Friday before

12 Noon on Delivery days.

Estimated Value: $990,000.00 (GST Excluded)

Delivery Date: 23/04/2010


Bill C-474 moves forward!

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Chock one up for the little guy!

Thanks for everyone who wrote to their MP’s regarding this important issue. There is a long fight ahead but the vote last week is an important step in the right direction. It is heartening to see that once in a while our voices can be heard over the hollering (and big money) of the agri-industry.

Keep writing and sharing information about this important issue. The best offense we have against this kind of insanity is to arm ourselves with knowledge and to speak out.

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.                                        - Ghandhi

Here are a couple of press releases from the NFU and CBAN:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 15, 2010

PASSAGE OF C-474 IMPORTANT VICTORY FOR FARMERS

SASKATOON, Sask.—“Yesterday’s vote to send Bill C-474 forward to the Agriculture Committee for detailed analysis and debate is an important victory and major step in trying to protect farmers and the Canadian economy from the economic disaster that GM crops can create,” said NFU President Terry Boehm.

As the text of the Bill states, C-474 would “require that an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.”

Boehm said: “Triffid flax has demonstrated the serious consequences GM contamination can have.  It is time now for the Agriculture Committee to make the Bill a functional reality in our regulatory system—it is not time to kill the idea of market harm assessment.”

“This bill will not impede innovation,” said Boehm.  “Instead, it will make innovators conscious that their work needs to benefit a broad cross-section of society—not just the company selling the product.  This is only logical for a healthy society and economy.”

Boehm urged MPs not to be swayed by pressure or threats from biotech companies.  “The biotech industry has threatened Canadians before; companies said that they would pull out and shut down research when citizens overwhelmingly wanted their food labelled for GM content.  MPs bought that bogus argument at the time.  Let’s hope that MPs do not accept it with regard to C-474.  Unfortunately, most Conservatives MPs have already bought that argument—with the exception of two brave Members from that party.  Let’s hope the rest of our minority-Parliament MPs act for farmers and citizens and do not accept the threats of the biotech industry. We will all be stronger and better off if they stand up to these threats,” said Boehm.

Boehm dismissed arguments that our system must be guided solely by so-called “science-based” calculations.  He said: “There is an almost superstitious belief that ‘science-based’ means infallible or beyond question—that someone has ‘proven’ food A or B is 100% safe.  In reality, so-called science-based assessments are largely based on data submitted by companies seeking to sell products.  The data is the result of limited testing.  And there is little independent verification done in government labs.  Most important, so-called science-based assessment of human-health safety or ‘substantial equivalence’ is largely a simple risk assessment—primarily a mathematical calculation of probability.  Once we realize this, it is only rational to ask: In what way is this mathematical probability assessment of human health harm superior to a mathematical assessment of market harm?  Why should an economic analysis which is also mathematically based be so scary to the biotech industry?”

“All farmers and Canadians should act promptly to ensure Bill C-474 becomes law,” concluded Boehm.

—30—

For more information:

Terry Boehm, NFU President:                     (306) 255-2880

Darrin Qualman, Director of Research:         (306) 652-9465

MPs listen to Canadians ahead of industry on GM Crops

Groups applaud MPs for moving Bill C-474 to Committee for study

For Immediate Release

Ottawa. Thursday, April 15, 2010 – Last night, Parliament passed Private Members Bill C-474 through second reading, in spite of intense pressure from the biotech industry. The Bill, which would require analysis of potential harm to export markets before the sale of new genetically modified (GM) seeds, will now be studied by the House of Commons Agriculture Committee.

“Finally MPs are taking steps to protect farmers from the economic chaos that GM crops can cause,” said Terry Boehm, President of the National Farmers Union, “GM contamination has already seriously damaged major export markets for Canadian flax farmers and would threaten the markets for our alfalfa and wheat growers.”

The NDP and Bloc Quebecois supports the Bill and last night Liberal Party MPs voted to allow the Bill to go to this next stage. The Conservative Party strongly opposes the Bill, though two B.C. Conservative MPs voted in favour. The Bill was introduced by Alex Atamanenko, NDP Agriculture Critic and MP for B.C. Southern Interior.

“Last night, the majority of MPs listened to Canadians instead of the biotech industry,” said Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, “MPs will now have the opportunity to study and debate this Bill. We are witnessing the first substantive debate in Parliament over the negative impacts of GM crops.”

The biotech industry lobbied vigorously to stop the upcoming debate at Committee. Yet the strength of public and farmer concern over GM crops was apparent to MPs. Over 9000 thousand letters were sent from constituents in the past month asking MPs to support the Bill. At least 6 MPs were also presented with petitions.

Bill C-474 was supported by the National Farmers Union, which urged Parliamentarians and all Canadians, to support the Bill. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture took a cautious stance in favour of moving the Bill forward, to encourage debate at Committee.

“The current GM flax contamination crisis shows the value of this Bill. And the threat of GM alfalfa has made the Bill an urgent necessity,” said Sharratt. Canadian flax export markets closed in October 2009 when GM contamination was detected.

“We will not stand by and watch farmers struggle alone against the corporate juggernaut of biotechnology,” said Sharratt, “The time when Canadians are expected to accept GM crops without question, is over.”

-30-

For more information: Terry Boehm, National Farmers Union, 306 255 2880;  Lucy Sharratt, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, 613 241 2267 ext.6.

NFU article: CFIA fails to inspect imported meat

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Here’s the latest from Beyond Factory Farming:

Haven’t we heard this story about penny pinching on public safety costing much more in the end before?

A commentary on behalf of the National Farmers Union Ontario

By Grant Robertson

There is something desperately ironic about the situation where one government agency goes overboard with a regulatory regime that seemingly has nothing to do with actual food safety but that imposes enormous costs on local small abattoirs and butcher shops while at the border Canada has lost track of an estimated 70 trucks full of actual meat products selected for inspection in the last few months.

The government of Canada put in place a new border inspection policy on January 4th.  While the American Food Safety and Inspection Service inspects nearly 100% of meat products imported into the United States, Canada only has inspectors available Monday to Friday from 8 am to 6 pm.  Meat entering Canada outside those hours is, if tagged for inspection, supposed to wait until an inspector is next on duty.  From the available evidence it appears many of the trucks flagged for random inspection are simply not waiting around and the products they are carrying are headed for Canadian dinner tables.

This situation came to light thanks to the diligent work of Brian Masse NDP MP for Windsor West.  He was joined at a recent press conference by Phil Marchuk from Windsor Freezer and Kam Rampersaud from Border City Storage Ltd. (Canada), the two Windsor area inspection facilities.  In a Windsor Star article, Marchuk is quoted as saying that by-passing inspection is easy to do, since there’s no real consequence for breaking the law. “If that truck doesn’t report for inspection, it’s just basically let go, a slap on the hand, there’s basically no penalty.”

As reported in the Windsor Star, Border Cities Rampersaud provided pictures of some of the meat coming into Canada that they did catch –showing “seized meat products that were either infected with maggots or covered in rat droppings.”  I saw an online version of these pictures and “yuck” does not even begin to describe them.  The question remains what has been in those trucks that by-passed inspection and how many Canadians have unknowingly eaten unfit meat products.

In Canada the penalties are very minor for avoiding inspection.  Masse makes the claim in referring to those trucks by-passing inspection that: “When the inspection facilities reported this to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), they were informed that the order to report would simply be changed to ‘skiplot’—the designation used to indicate that a load would not be randomly inspected. Rather than taking serious enforcement action against trucks not showing up for inspection, the CFIA response is simply to change their records to condone this outrageous behaviour. We don’t know what’s happened to these phantom trucks, or what was in them or why they chose to avoid inspection.”

In contrast in the United States truckers and companies can be fined three times the value of the load they are carrying if they by-pass inspection.  Windsor Freezer’s Marchuk says: “Nobody skips inspections in the States because it’s too risky and too much of a bother.”  While Rampersaud added that, “US producers are becoming increasingly aware of the lax inspection standards at the Canadian border.”

This situation is intolerable.  Canadian eaters are having their health put potentially at risk, while Canadian farmers are having their livelihoods put at risk by the importation of products we can produce ourselves and then not bothering to inspect them properly.  Masse, Marchuk and Rampersaud are calling for much stiffer consequences for those who flout Canadian standards and a much more beefed up inspection system at the border.  That seems like the least we should be demanding from government.

http://www.windsorstar.com/life/Meat+safety/2583841/story.html