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The following transcript is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. Link to Audio and Episode Info Here
Show Transcript Deconstructing Dinner Kootenay Co-op Radio CJLY Nelson, B.C. Canada May 7, 2009 Title: Deconstructing
Dinner at the Dairy Farmers of Canada/ Rallying for Farms, Farmers and Food
Security Producer/Host: Jon
Steinman Transcript: Ruth Taylor Jon Steinman: And welcome to
Deconstructing Dinner - a syndicated weekly one-hour radio show and Podcast produced at Kootenay
Co-op Radio CJLY in Nelson, British Columbia. I'm Jon Steinman. This radio show
is broadcast on stations around the world including CFUV 101.9FM and CKMO
900AM, both in Victoria, BC. All of our episodes are archived on-line at
deconstructingdinner.ca or through our Podcast. Well we've been mentioning it on a few
occasions now over the past few months, back in February of this year
Deconstructing Dinner was invited to the annual policy conference of the Dairy
Farmers of Canada - an organization who likely maintains the most influential
voice of any agricultural sector in the country. We featured a short segment of
my talk on our recent episode featuring Mountain Valley Farm and Kootenay Alpine Cheese, and on today's
broadcast - we'll listen to the talk in its entirety. The presentation was
titled, Emerging Trends, Emerging Opportunities, Emerging
Responsibilities. That recording will take us to about the
40-minute mark of the show, and then we'll listen in on recordings from the
April 18th, Farms, Farmers and Food Security rally hosted on the
grounds of the BC Legislature in Victoria. The rally was hosted as a tool to
raise awareness of food and agricultural issues leading up to the May 12th
provincial election. We'll hear the voices of Jordan Marr a farmer and rally
co-organizer; we'll hear the familiar voice of Brent Warner of White Loaf Ridge
Management, Linda Geggie of Lifecycles Project
Society. And we'll hear from another of the rally's co-organizers Tom Henry - the
editor of Small Farm Canada. I chatted with Tom over the phone following the
successful event. increase music and fade out JS: In late 2008 I was
invited by the Dairy Farmers of Canada to address their annual policy
conference to be held in Ottawa on February 5th 2009. The invite was
the first time that Deconstructing Dinner was invited to share our alternative
perspectives on food and agriculture to one of Canada's commodity sectors. The
Dairy Farmers of Canada is the national policy, lobbying and promotional
organization representing Canada's 14,600 dairy farms. According to the
organization, they strive to create favourable conditions
for the Canadian dairy industry, today and in the future. They work to maintain
policies that foster the viability of Canadian dairy producers and promote
dairy products and their health benefits. The organization is run for
producers, by producers and has existed since 1934.
To help speak to the organization's interest to
prepare for the future, my talk focused on the rapidly changing perspectives of
food and farming by Canada's urban populations. Certainly the interest to learn
of such trends by such an influential organization like the Dairy Farmers of
Canada is a testament to the influence that Canadian eaters are having on
Canada's food system.
Now my talk was certainly not void of the critical
approach that Deconstructing Dinner uses when covering the many issues
addressed on the show. Used as a foundation for the talk was a magazine-style
publication titled The Real Dirt on Farming - a tool designed
to communicate agricultural education to Canada's urban populations. The Real
Dirt on Farming was prepared by the Ontario Farm Animal Council in 2006 and
republished in 2007. Support for the publication came from all commodity
sectors across the country such as the Alberta Beef Producers, the Ontario
Berry Growers Association, the Ontario White Bean Producers, and dozens of
other groups including trade associations like CropLife
Canada and government bodies like Agriculture and Agri-Food
Canada.
Now throughout the talk, images from the
publication were projected onto the screens, and while not necessary to enjoy
the broadcast today, we've made that presentation available on our website for
any of you interested in following along. The slides are linked to from the
page for our May 7th 2009 episode at deconstructingdinner.ca
And in also helping provide a context for
this talk, it is worth mentioning that speaking in the hours leading up to the
talk, was Canada's Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food,
Gerry Ritz, the Secretary General of the European Dairy Association Joop Kleibeuker and Canada's
Chief Agriculture Negotiator Steve Verheul among
others. So certainly Deconstructing Dinner was quite set up to provide an alternative
set of perspectives.
And so here it is, recorded at the Chateau Laurier in
Ottawa, Ontario on February 5th 2009, at the Dairy Farmers of
Canada's annual policy conference.
Jon Steinman at Conference: (clapping) Well thanks Bruce for the introduction. And first I'd like to extend just a warm
thank-you to the Dairy Farmers of Canada for inviting me here today (repeats in
French). I am deeply honoured to be speaking to a
farmer's organization who maintains such a strong voice as you do it is an honour. Looking at the line up of speakers who you've been
listening to over the past few days and in particular today I think I'm
probably the most unknown on the list and certainly catching at least the last
half of the last speaker I'm pretty sure I'm presenting a whole other
perspective on, as he mentioned, challenges facing all food sectors and some of
the opportunities as well that exist. And so who am I? I think is a question that I'd like
to first address. And how did a city slicker who grew up in Toronto end up in
your annual policy conference to talk about agriculture? And for me it starts
at the University of Guelph, as Bruce mentioned, a
school I imagine a lot of you are familiar with. I was there to earn a Bachelor
of Commerce in Hotel and Restaurant Management and by all standards that I knew
at the time it was a great program, it was known as one of the best of the
country. But there was something pretty important missing from that education
because never at any point throughout those four years was I exposed to the
world of agriculture. Certainly perplexing given at the time the Agricultural
School at the University of Guelph was I think the
largest in North America and may still be. And here we were learning to manage
food but there was no interaction with agriculture in fact my only genuine
interaction with agriculture started in first year living in Johnson Hall which
was a residence that was most frequented by "agies"
and I think I see a few heads nodding. So, sure enough my first year roommate
was a farmer and it was a classic tale of country mouse meets city mouse. I can
assure you that just as he was interested in learning about urban culture and
city life I was just as interested to learn about farming and about rural life.
I had no interaction, this is 18 years old now. And to
a small degree then and to a much larger extent today for me this captures one
of the fundamental problems with our food system today where we have these
increasingly larger urban populations across the country completely
disconnected from the rural areas and the rural disconnected from the urban.
And this can't be a good thing. It can't be a good thing for eaters. It can't
be a good thing for farmers. And at that time of recognizing this it concerned
me. So when I left university I was pushed away from the
status quo and became drawn towards working within restaurants that were
fostering personal relationships with farmers as their suppliers. These were
chefs that were decreasing the distance between the two both physically and
socially. Long story short I began to observe just how important local food
systems can be to a community, to health, to culture, to wellbeing, to the
economic health of farmers. What I also observed at that time was that the
growth and encouragement of more localized food systems was indeed possible, it
was working in these restaurants just on a small scale. Now given how important a role the media can play in
delivering information to the general public I chose to become the media in
2004 writing a weekly column in a newspaper about food, in the Niagara region
of Ontario and then I ended up in Nelson, BC where I launched the weekly one
hour radio show Deconstructing Dinner. So, what's the idea of the show? Simply
put the show is designed to deconstruct our food. Where it comes from? Who grew
it? How it was grown? What impacts our food choices have on ourselves, on our
communities and the planet? These are certainly questions that more and more
urban populations in this country are asking and that's about half the content.
The other half is exploring the alternative models to the dominant food system
that people are engaged in and primarily in the area that I live in because
there's some amazing things happening in the area I live in but also across the
country and abroad. And because of this rising interest in this topic the show
is now broadcast on 35 Canadian radio stations, one here in Ottawa and is
available over the internet. What makes me so excited to be speaking with you
today is that while many farmers do listen to my show mostly small scale
farmers who have access to the show they are inspired by the content. Most of
my listeners are urban and in most cases very disconnected from agriculture and
farming, I of course having once been one of them and to a large extent still
am. But that role I guess has flipped and now here I am to inform you as a
farming organization, and a voice for farmers, what I observe are the
perceptions of agriculture by a growing percentage of urban Canadians. Now to just give you a quick idea of some of the
dairy related topics that I've covered to sort of give a feel of the nature of
my show. Of course Raw Milk, that's the big one in the news today that was one
of the first topics on dairy I covered about two years ago, certainly a hot topic.
I've interviewed Doctor Alan Fredeen of the Nova
Scotia Agricultural College who has researched the environmental footprint of
intensive grazing systems for dairy versus indoor systems, that research I
think was funded by the Dairy Farmers of Canada. I interviewed Ric Llewellyn
of Jerseyland Organics in Grand Forks, BC, that's
western Canada's first organic dairy. We produced a show that explored Canada's
supply management system, something that most Canadians know nothing about, I
can assure you that. For dairy in this case and examine the pros and cons of
that system. Shortly after that a one hour episode exploring Kraft Foods, the
company itself and the food manufacturing industries increase in use of
imported modified milk ingredients that have been replacing real Canadian milk.
We even conducted pretty extensive research into the history of margarine,
which includes exploring the long standing battle over yellow margarine in
Quebec. But the show is also having some impacts beyond just the listeners and
the people who hear the show. The most significant impact that I think the show
has had, with respect to dairy, was when CBC Marketplace contacted me in mid
2007 to pick my brain as to what stories would be ideal for their October 2007
episode on productive Canada labeling and how true that label was. And at the
top of my list when I sat down with the producer was
the imported milk ingredients that were replacing Canadian dairy, and sure
enough they ran with it. And that episode of Marketplace, I think has no doubt
played a major role in changing public perception of dairy along with changes I
think were seeing today in the legal use of that label Product of Canada. And
another quick example in late 2007 we filed a complaint, we with Deconstructing
Dinner, with Advertising Standards Canada and were successful in getting
Unilever to change their website for their Breyers
brand. And the reason, because while doing our research for a series of shows
we noticed that within the section of their website titled, Ice Cream were
products which in Canada were not legally permitted to be called Ice Cream,
because of the absence of the required protein in the product derived from milk
solids. And the company then changed the heading of that section of the website
to read Frozen Desserts about a month after that complaint. And Therese
Beaulieu of the Dairy Farmers also talked a lot about that issue on that show. Now shortly I'll be sharing my thoughts on the
changing urban perceptions of food and agriculture but I'm also going to at the
end of my talk, which I think is the most exciting part, share some inspiring
stories from my neck of the woods because in the West Kootenays
of British Columbia where I call home there are some pretty shining examples of
how communities right across the country are beginning to actively redefine how
they access food. And I think one of the messages I'm hoping to bring to you
today is that I think that's only going to be increasing. And some of what I'll
be sharing with you may come across as radical, may come across as eccentric,
but I'll submit that it's within eccentric ideas that we can find also
tremendous opportunities. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion for every
opinion now accepted was once eccentric." - Gertrude Russell. And there is one idea out there that was once
eccentric and in some cases still is and that's organic food yet organic food is
one of the fastest if not the fastest growing sector in food retail today and
its not so eccentric anymore. And there's hydrogenated oils, I know at home I
have a book sitting on my shelf called Margarine
the Plastic Fat and Your Heart Attack and that was published right here in
Canada but the most interesting thing about this book was when it was published
and it was published in 1962. And the author of that book wrote about the
hydrogenated oils the exact same way as they were being spoken of less than ten
years ago when Canadian policy makers started listening to the decades old concerned
of hydrogenated oils and trans fats. And that book was
no doubt eccentric at that time. Today more likely than ever before innovative
and new ways of thinking are ripe for being adopted and applied. We live in a
period right now of monumental change; no one seems to know what's going to
happen, no one knows how climate change will effect us, no one knows how bad
this recession is going to get or how many more jobs will be lost. There's no
idea what the future holds. To me that sounds like a great opportunity to try
something new. So what's the latest eccentric idea in the world of food? Well
local food is one of them and that's the one I spend a lot of time talking
about on my show. And demand for local food is already outstripping supply. So
what I would propose to every sector in the food system is to just simply pay
attention to this interest in local food and the measures people are willing to
take to access it. Because some of those measures, as we see with the raw milk
debate right now, are pretty amazing. JS: This is
Deconstructing Dinner. If you are just tuning in, you're listening to a
recording from a talk I delivered on February 5th 2009 in Ottawa,
Ontario at the annual policy conference of the Dairy Farmers of Canada. It
was at this point in the talk that the PowerPoint presentation kicked in, and
as mentioned earlier on the show, those slides are available on our site at
deconstrucutngdinner.ca and posted under the May 7th 2009 episode. The
first slide that was put up on the screen as you're about to hear was a press
release headline issued by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on January 23rd
2009, and that headline read, "BLACK DIAMOND BRAND FAT-FREE MOZZARELLA
PROCESSED CHEESE SLICES MAY CONTAIN SMALL PIECES OF PLASTIC MESH." Jon Steinman at Conference: So what's
driving this idea of local food? And I think there's
many reasons. I'll just give you one quickly. Next slide please. So this is an
example of the messages that the Canadian public is receiving today this is
just a random one that I put together when I was putting together this talk it
happened to be on the top of the list to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency
website. And as a commodity sector you could sit back and say this only has to
do with the manufacturer of food it doesn't impact our image. But I would say
it does impact your image, you and every other sector and in a big way because
with the level of consolidation and branding that we've seen within our food
system over the past few decades the public identifies much more with this
incident and incidents like this than ever before. When the listeriosis
outbreak hit Canada, as an example it wasn't just Maple Leaf foods that hurt
from that it was the overall perception of our industrial food system that took
a big hit. I think if the Maple Leaf incident was isolated we'd have a
different story but Maple Leaf was just one of many especially in the past
three years similar food recalls and food safety scares that have gripped
Canadians and North American and people are losing trust in the industrial food
system and not everyone but certainly a notable number of Canadians. I'll speak
as an eater to you as a not just a radio show host and I know some may disagree
with me but one thing that I am pretty certain of is that so long as the food
system continues to consolidate the way it has been so long as it continues to
embrace the very same models that are in many cases proving not to work, food
safety incidents and recalls will only increase in frequency. I'm going to use myself as a quick example and what
I see as a growing segment of the Canadian populous and granted my food choices
are one extreme but it's what's in between the status quo and where I stand I
think that's important. I don't trust industrial food system but I have access
to other foods that I can counter that distrust in or with. And a lot of that
is the result of knowledge, of course I'm sitting every single day, well five
days a week, researching for this show and I'm acquiring knowledge and that
knowledge is changing how I perceive food and that's what's happening I think
with urban populations they're not sitting in front of a computer and reading
books as much as I am but certainly the medias starting to pick up on this
topic more and more. I'll use myself as an example again. My diet is a
diet of illegal meats, illegal eggs. I consume raw milk. And I love unpasteurized apple juice. Now according to the information
found on the website of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the many health
authorities operating across the country I should by all accounts be dead,
eating a diet like that or at least very ill. And I've been consuming that diet
now for quite some time. Now food safety aside our way of life has and is
contributing to rapidly changing climate we know this our economy is
unraveling. On January 26th alone, 60,000 new layoffs were announced
by some of the biggest names in American businesses. And what was and is the
response? Well more consolidation. More money being thrown in the direction of
the companies that in many cases, one would argue, have caused this mess and
the status quo continues to be upheld. When the word food security, in the
circles that I interact with on an ongoing basis comes up often one name that
comes up is Wayne Roberts, he's with the Toronto Food Policy council. He's one
of these people whose been working on food policy issues for a very long time
and he's making great headway in Toronto. And He used the example of a carrot
to the capture the world we live in. He suggested that when a carrot grows into
the ground it may encounter a rock the carrot grows around the rock and
continues to grow. While we humans keep banging our head up against it. And he
suggests we could learn a lot from carrots. Next slide please. So that brings me to the public perceptions of
farming and food it's clear that there's a lot of confusion out there as to
where our food comes from, how it's grown but at the same time there a growing
urban population in this country who are becoming pretty knowledgeable about
farming and food they may not understand soil or weather or what a cow looks
like when its ill but they do see the big picture, the relationship's between
food and everything else. Next slide please. Now here was one of the most aggressive efforts by
the various sectors in Canadian agriculture to respond to this confusion. And
in some cases what was perceived as confusion I would submit as well you're
likely all familiar with this publication it was produced in 2006 with an urban
audience in mind and it was designed to dispel the confusion around farming.
And the Dairy Farmers of Canada were among the many groups who contributed to
this publication. I think the idea behind this publication is amazing, it's
great, it's clear that all sectors who were part of
this recognized the need to communicate to the public and that's like I said
earlier what we need, more dialogue between both sides. But there's another
side to this publication that I have to be critical of and frankly there's much
within this publication that gives it an air of being almost an instrument of
war against the consumer. And so I want to deconstruct a few sections of this
kind of similar to how I would do this on my show and share with you how I
believe many Canadians, especially those working on encouraging more localized
food systems like the ones I interact with would react to some of the
statements found within this publication. And my hope is that by taking this
publication apart that some thought at the very least will be provoked around
whether the general publics' perceptions about farming should be challenged or
embraced or maybe just a little bit of both. Next slide please. So that may be a little small to read for everyone
but ill read it there. The section highlighted there read: "For every dollar
earned in gross sales Canadian farmers paid out from 83 cents to 91 cents in
operating expenses, as the price of fuel and other essentials out pace income
earned farmers must become ever more productive to stay in business." Now this
presents a pretty absolute position that the only way out of increasing input
costs is to become more productive. I would submit that the local food movement
would whole heartedly disagree with such a position because there are many
examples and emerging alternatives out there for farmers to stay in business
without having to simply be more productive and I'm going to be sharing a few
examples of that in just a moment. Next slide please. This section here reads: can we return to smaller
more traditional farms. And the answer, no not unless many Canadians are
prepared to leave cities to go back to the farm work long hours and pay much
more for food with only 2% feed and the rest of us its impossible to go back to
many small farms. Now I would say regardless to what extent small farms can
play a role in providing Canadians with food, there's one thing that's certain
and that the answer to that question could be yes. And I would say it should be
yes. And I'm going to share examples again with you as well. As for Canadians
prepared to leave cities, one thing that I have been covering a lot lately and
I've been meeting a lot of people who are in this position is that there's a
growing population of young people who are not being raised on a farm but are
coming from cities and wanting to become farmers most often small scale organic
farmers. Next slide please. What are natural or organic foods? And the answer
posed there on the screen, all unprocessed food is natural the question is how
it's produced. Now I think this is a good statement this is something I would
commend within this publication, it's a great example of the confusion that
exists among the public. Natural and organic, even I'm confused. But I would
say the efforts in this guide are only going to create even more confusion. And
for one, there are many Canadians who do not believe that all unprocessed food
is natural. Next slide. And lo and behold here in this publication is what
I think is a shining example of why the general public doesn't not believe all
unprocessed food is natural and it reads, "Live stock and Poultry still use
traditional breeding methods for improvement research continues into improving
animals with bio-technology but isn't on the market just yet for example work
is underway on an enviro-pig which has transferred a
gene from a mouse into a pigs salivary gland to allow the pig to digest more
phosphorous and eliminate the need for supplements." Now I know that some would view this as natural but
there are a lot of Canadians out there who don't and I don't think any further
comment on why is needed. Next slide please. Are organically produced foods healthier or safer? And the answer, "there is no evidence that organic food is safer or
healthier than non-organic." Now I think this is an important part of
this publication here because Canadians are starting again as I said earlier to
pay a lot of attention to food, food news and food studies. As someone who has
been researching this stuff I happen to know that this is not true. It may have
been true in 1980 but there are many peer-reviewed papers that have plenty of
evidence that support both sides the organic side and the conventional side,
they exist. So, the statement's not true and I imagine most Canadians that were
aware of that would pick up this publication and not feel trust after reading
this. Next slide please. The Irish potato famine a cautionary tale, in 1845
a strange disease struck the potatoes growing in the fields of Ireland almost
one half of the crop was destroyed what later became known as potato blight was
caused by a fungus at that time all farming was organic and there was nothing
to be done to save the essential food crop by modern fungicides which greatly
decreased the crops vulnerability to massive losses. This is a clear case where
modern agricultural practices increase the reliability and security of our food
supply." Now this is the one that stands out for me the most as a journalist
because this to me is a complete misrepresentation of the Irish Potato Famine
in this one paragraph here, I think, I would submit cancels out all of the good
stuff within this publication that I think should be commended. For one, the Irish Potato Famine was about so much
more than just farmers not having access to modern technology. For one,
potatoes aren't native to Ireland so we have an adaptability issue. Number two
at the time of the Irish Potato Famine there was predominantly one variety of
potato planted, the Lumper. So here, a complete lack
of biodiversity and it was planted in such large numbers because yields were
high for that variety. Unfortunately the Lumper was a
little less nutritious than many other varieties, starting to sound like the
modern day food system. Number three, the Irish Potato Famine was also an issue
of inequality not so different from the inequality we see today and there was
an abundance of food at the time of this famine it just wasn't making its way
to the people who were starving it was getting put on boats for export. The
Irish Potato Famine also struck the poor of Ireland, not the rich, and the poor
grew potatoes as a staple because it was nutritious and cheap food and I can
almost guarantee you that the poor of Ireland would not be able to afford
modern day fungicides as this publication here suggests. Next
slide. "Hunger today is generally the result of political,
economic and distribution problems not the lack of productive capacity.
Globally more food per person is available more than ever before." Now this is
I believe the most commendable paragraph in this publication because for so
long in the years I've been doing this I've heard the ongoing rhetoric from big
agriculture that we need modern technology, more effective pesticide, more
production to feed a growing global population. This statement here seems to be
representing the truth. Next slide please. Unfortunately a few pages later this statement:
"One thing is certain if we are to feed growing human populations while
preventing damage to ecosystems in natural processes on which all life depends,
agriculture must continue to advance." And this is in the context of technology,
so we have two sides here. Next slide. This is the last one I'll use here: "Activists of
any kind are not usually interested in finding solutions but prefer to focus on
problems and dramatic examples to generate funds and support." And I would beg
to differ. Next slide. This is an image here taken in July of last year
2008 in the Creston Valley of British Columbia and on the left of the screen
there or on the right are a group of activists and on the left is Roy Lawrence
a third generation farmer. These activists here in this picture are members of
Canada's first Community Supported Agriculture projects or CSA for grain and
CSA's are a popular model and increasingly being adopted by Canadians in many
communities from coast to coast to coast. Most often for vegetables but this
particular model here in this image is for grain. They're standing in a field
of Khorasan wheat, which most often is referred to as
Kamut but in this case it's not the trademark. Now in many cases CSA's are simply informal co-ops,
members of a community get together and essentially become members of a farm.
In the case of the grain CSA's seen here residents of Nelson and Creston BC
reached out to farmers and they said we want to access locally grown grain and
we want to ensure you as a farmer get paid fairly. Three farmers in the Creston
Valley immediately said yes and all of these three farmers came from very
different backgrounds, very diverse backgrounds. Roy here, for example is a
third generation farmer who had long been growing conventionally until the
transportation costs in 2007 had gotten so high he wasn't really seeing a
future in farming much anymore. In came the CSA and absolutely wiped out that
cost. I'll show you an image in a second on how we did that. And for him the
CSA provided a way for him to also transition out of conventional growing into
more natural growing which is something he wanted to do as a farmer. The CSA model for this project looks like this at
the beginning of the season so this is last spring 180 members invested in a
share worth $100 dollars along with one business, a bakery who invested in 20
shares, and members were told that each share would be worth 100 pounds of
locally grown grains grown using organic principles. And so here's the mark
difference of the CSA model to the one our food system is built upon today
because the members are now assuming the risks of farming because if yields are
lower than expected the farmers still going to receive the same amount of money
invested by the members, the member just may receive lower yields which is
exactly what happened this year. Because so many of those middle men in the
process are being taken out there's this direct connection between the farmer
and the consumer. Because the CSA covered seed costs, bagging costs and
marketing and transport were being taken care of all by the CSA these farmers
walked away in the first year of this project with $1000 per acre to be put
towards their time, taxes and other miscellaneous expenses. And remember no off
arm inputs were used. Now, Roy here for example only grew 5 acres this
year for the CSA but he has a 160 acre farm and has every intention to turn his
whole farm into production for the CSA once the CSA grows. And the CSA for next
year is going to triple in size. Next slide please. So this is where we started to eliminate
transportation costs this generated so much interest within the community that
a group of sailors came forward and said we want to sail the grain from Creston
to Nelson. Creston and Nelson happen to be on Kootenay
Lake and I believe it's the second largest lake in British Columbia. And this
was just huge outpouring of support from the community to come and do this. That's Drew Gailius
that's another one of the farmers loading some of his grain. Next slide please. This is now back in Nelson
where CSA members came out and unloaded the grain from the boats. Next slide. An image of the excitement with
children coming out and seeing the whole process of getting their grain from
one place in the Creston Valley, to their home.
Next slide. And a lot of media coverage media is really
starting to pay attention to this stuff, not just me. Next
slide. This is the front of a flyer for the celebratory
event we had in the community well funded by some of our local foundations and
businesses. Next slide. This is on the left the Western Producer November 13th
talking about the CSA, starting to get into some of the big agricultural
publications. And on the right, Globe and Mail article in May about the CSA. Next
slide please. That's an article I authored there on the left in
Small Farm Canada and on the right this is a smaller publication out of Regina
that did a whole issue on all of these food movements and a lot of it talked
about the up and coming farmers the young farmers. So what about dairy? I'm going to quickly just talk
about dairy. I want to give one quick dairy example of what's happening in my
neck of the woods in Nelson BC just as an example. The closest fluid milk
producer in Nelson is over 320 kilometers away. The closest organic fluid milk
producer, certainly a growing market, is twice that distance away in the lower
mainland of BC. And in terms of cheese, as an example, within a four hour radius
around my community there is only one cheese maker or there was one cheese
maker up until just recently. Next slide. So this was just constructed last year this is Kootenay Alpine Cheese in Lister, which is also in the
Creston Valley, owned by the Harris family. And the herd here on this farm
numbers around 160. And the food for the herd is almost entirely grown on the
farm in fact Wayne Harris has been coming out to the CSA meetings because of
how inspiring he finds the CSA meetings to be as almost a small scale supply
management system as he calls it. If you sit down with Wayne he's incredibly optimistic
he's seen his cheese sales over the past few months and he doesn't hesitate to
say that the reason his cheese is becoming so successful is thanks to this
growing interest in supporting farmers, supporting local food, supporting in
his case organic. People are craving local food. I sat down with Wayne before I
left for Edmonton where I just came from, arrived this morning. I sat down with
him and talked about why and how he got into this and he had said that he's
interested in producing fluid milk but for him the cost to construct a
processing facility in the community is just far to
high but the demand is clearly there. So he instead opted to construct a cheese
making facility that your seeing in this picture here in order to keep his milk
in the community and that was his intention was to keep the milk in the
community instead of transporting it to whatever processing facility was taking
it at that time and for him the that's either 600 kilometres
west or 1,100 kilometres to the east. One thing that I've observed that is certain, and I
think this is an important point here, is that with this growing interest from
urban population especially with the environmental impact of their food, when
they hear statistics like this they will become much more interested not only
to support local producers and keeping their product in the local community but
maybe even looking for alternatives instead of supporting those products if
they don't exist. When they do find out that the miles are attached to this and
most consumers again don't understand the supply management system, they don't
understand how milk can be pooled and go from one place to another but
consumers are starting to understand these things. And quickly that logo on the
right there's an interesting story but I wont get into it is a new logo, or a
new branding, that's started in the community which is a local label and it's a
group of certified organic farmers that are now moving beyond organic
recognizing that for a whole host of reasons I wont get into that they need to
move beyond organic and so this is an interesting example of another movement
of farmers. I can stand up here and talk about all the examples
of these interesting models happening, about this movement of food security,
you see the media coverage here it is starting to come here to Ottawa. Just a
few weeks ago I sat in on an online summit with Liberal MP's Caroline Bennett
and Wayne Easter on the topic of food security this was the first talk of its
kind that I had ever heard of, the Liberal Party addressing this subject. And
the idea of this e-summit was to start a dialogue towards working towards a
food policy something we don't have in this country and I think the summit
started off on a pretty fitting note because one of the speakers that was
supposed to be part of this e-summit was the Public Health Officer of British
Columbia Perry Kendal and he wasn't able to attend because of that Avian Flu
outbreak that happened that day in Abbotsford BC. Last summer the NDP hosted a similar tour going
across the country hearing about food security that was Member of Parliament
Alex Atamanenko with the idea that the
NDP would develop a food policy that they could bring to Ottawa. And as a quick
aside, the Grain CSA that I was just showing you images of was mentioned in the
House of Commons back in April of 2008 when there was the debate over Bill C-33
on bio-fuels. There's a group right here in Ottawa, Food Secure Canada they
just hosted their conference a few months ago 300 plus people from all across
the country coming to talk about this same topic of creating a national food
policy and so something's happening. Jon Steinman: This is
Deconstructing Dinner, produced at Kootenay Co-op
Radio CJLY in Nelson, British Columbia. I'm Jon Steinman. Today's broadcast is
archived on our website at deconstructingdinner.ca and posted under the May 7th
2009 episode. On that page you'll also find the series of slides that were used
as part of the talk you've been listening to. The talk was recorded on February
5th 2009 at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa at the annual policy
conference of the Dairy Farmers of Canada. The Dairy Farmers are likely the
most influential of all agricultural commodity groups in the country and
Deconstructing Dinner and yours truly was invited to share how the urban
perspectives of food and agriculture are changing. Used as a foundation for the
talk was a publication released in 2006 and republished in 2007 by the Ontario
Farm Animal Council in partnership with all commodity groups from across the
country including receiving support from trade associations and government. The
purpose of using that publication, as was heard, was to critically analyze (or
deconstruct) the messages that Canada's commodity sectors are communicating to
Canadians in light of the rapidly growing interest by urban populations to know
where their food is coming from and how it was produced. The glossy magazine
style publication titled, The Real Dirt
on Farming was widely distributed including as an insert in the Globe and
Mail back in November 2008. A link to the full publication will also be made
available on the Deconstructing Dinner website. And
to conclude my talk, I ended with a slide of a website for, Home on the Range
Raw Milk Dairy - a cow sharing program in Chilliwack,
BC that has been using the shareholder model as a means to circumvent the
strict laws against the sale of raw milk. Jon Steinman at Conference: And I'm going
to rush through the next slide. This is another thing that is also happening,
of course we hear all the news about Michael Schmidt, this is the farm in Chilliwack that is a similar story they're also in a legal
dispute right now. They have a different model I'm not going to get into the
details just for sake of time. They have 300 members, it's a cow sharing
program similar to CSA's and they believe that they'll win in May they'll be in
court and they believe they're able to find, again I don't have the details for
this, some of the wording in the BC Milk Act that will help support the
existence of what they're doing. I just wanted to throw that up because again
this something else that there's a lot of movement around, raw milk, you look
south of the border many states allow it. There are viable industries of raw milk,
small scale. Although in California there are some larger dairies there. So
in closing, I think my message to the Dairy Farmers of Canada is this: I'm
suggesting to embrace these innovative ideas and explore
just how a group with a powerful a voice as you have can encourage the spread
of food sovereignty, of local food security and more diverse food systems.
Because I don't think any sector, and I think this was touched on a bit in the
last talk, should be putting all of there eggs in one basket. In the case of
eggs, to go on that analogy, 98% are produced using the same model and most of
those hens in those barns are of the same breed. And I would say this is a
recipe for disaster and when you start to look at more localized or regional
food systems those don't lead to nationwide food recalls as much as were seeing
today. And
on the topic of that food policy one thing I do no is certain from watching how
this food movement has evolved as much a it has and I think I kind of came on
board with this stuff right when the 100 mile diet was really starting to enter
into the radar. One thing I know is certain is that there will be a food policy
in this country, it could be in a few years it could down the road but it is
going to happen and there no doubt that within that food policy will be
supports for the encouragement of local food systems regional food systems
throughout the country, I believe that to be true. And is it all possible? Well
anything's possible, according to the bailouts both here in Canada and abroad
there is a lot of money to be thrown towards keeping our economy in check to
keeping it healthy. A diversified economy of resilient local economy seems to
spell out a much greater security than any models that we see today. I
was just in Edmonton at International Week on the topic of Global Food they
also had their first Local Food Security Conference the week before. Frances
Moore Lappé the author of Diet for a Small Planet was there she's the keynote speaker. And
she opened up with an interesting quote and I'm going to end on that quote,
"it's not what we seek in evidence but what we achieve through action." And I
think some of those models that I was putting up and many more really prove that
to be true and thanks for your attention I imagine
there are some eager questions and comments. Thanks. (clapping) JS: And that
concluded my talk delivered at the annual policy conference of the Dairy
Farmers of Canada recorded on February 5th 2009 in Ottawa. soundbite JS: And to take
us to the end of today's episode of Deconstructing Dinner, we'll check in with
some recordings from an event that nicely ties in to the subject of the talk
you just heard. Just as that talk sought to capture the growing interest among
Canadians to support alternative models for producing and distributing food, on
April 18th a rally was held in front of the British Columbia
Legislature in Victoria titled, The Farms, Farmers and Food Security Rally. The
intention of the rally was to raise awareness of the many underreported
concerns around food and agriculture leading up to British Columbia's May 12th
provincial election. One
of the co-organizers of the event was Tom Henry - the editor of the national
bi-monthly magazine, Small Farm Canada. I caught up with Tom after the event
and he painted a picture of the scene on April 18th in front of the
BC Legislature. Tom Henry: You know we
had something driving around the perimeter of the Legislature on a tractor on a
trailer making all sorts of classic hooting and tooting kind of sounds, that
was great fun. We had some 60's era people, professional protestors showing up
with good signage and weird hats and stuff and then we had some young people
that brought that real useful sensibility that's really refreshing to see in
discussions related to agriculture and somebody even brought along a few seed
potatoes and tried to plant them in the legislative tulip beds, the security
guys dealt with that pretty quick but that was really neat to see sort of your
classic polite Canadian anarchists. JS: Just as Tom
describes the contingent of young farmers and local food advocates at the
rally, the other co-organizer of the April 18th rally was
Jordan Marr - a young farmer from East Sooke who lent
his voice to the show as part of our April 3rd 2008 episode. Tom Henry: Jordan is really the catalyst behind it,
I was his second in command and happy to be. Jordan as a smart young guy who's
really interested in farming and food security who really feels that the
negative situation were in, and I mean outrageous land prices, a commodity
driven agriculture situation, a collapsing agricultural infrastructure. He saw
that we're talking about 4-6 lane freeway through Delta, car shootings in
downtown Vancouver. He saw that we're talking about unemployment in the woods
you know all worthy things for an election discussion but no mention of food,
no mention of food at all. No mention of food security and local production and
I would just add to that a couple of startling notes from my own perspective.
One is seeing the collapse of Vancouver Island from an absolute agricultural
powerhouse in the 1930's and 40's, which I was aware of because of my family
connections and some historical work I've done. And perhaps most shockingly a
comment that former MLA Corky Evans from your neck of the woods said to me at a
lunch one day, "you know in all my years in government and in opposition and at
meetings we never ever used the word food in it's
context of a political issue." Jordan Marr: This rally was
organized because we know there are many British Columbians concerned about
agriculture and food security in this province. Unfortunately this concern has
not been reflected in the actions of our Provincial government. Instead for
decades support for agriculture has declined under successive Liberal and NDP
governments. This event is called, The Farms, Farmers and Food Security Rally
and before I introduce our first speaker I think I should define food security.
A basic definition is that food security is a measure of a community's access
to affordable healthy food. So what does that look like in practice? It means
making sure BC will have enough young people interested in farming to replace
BC's aging farmers as they retire. It means managing an agricultural land
reserve so that it actually protects farmland and keeps land affordable for
those who want to farm it. (clapping) It means creating localized food systems that
flourish and not just for vegetables. Our current meat slaughter regulations
are severely hampering the trade in local meat and are to be frank disgraceful.
(clapping) Food
security means farmers markets within a reasonable drive of every BC citizen
and food banks that stock an ample supply of fresh produce for those most in
need. Most importantly it means a stand-alone ministry of agriculture that
recognizes the value of BC's farmers and supports them to the same degree that
Canada's other provinces do. BC currently ranks dead last in Canada for
agriculture in terms of financial support from the BC government. It is time
for this to change. (applause) For the next 45 minutes or so you will hear speeches
by members of the food and agriculture communities on the island and abroad. As
well we have invited representatives from the Greens, NDP and Liberals to share
their vision for food and agriculture in BC. And now to officially start the rally I would like
to invite Brent Warner to the microphone. Brent is the Executive Director of
Farmer Markets Canada he also runs his own agriculture production and marketing
company that works with the individual farmers and governments to assist the
farming industry across North America. He was the industry Agri-tour
and Marketing Specialist with the BC Ministry of Agriculture and Lands for 27
years. His career spans over 30 years of working with farm families across
North America. Please join me in welcoming Brent Warner. (applause) Brent Warner: Thank you. Thanks for
coming. Today we now have the cheapest food in the world in North America we
spend less than 10% of our disposable income on our food system and with that
we have serious issues. We've created an agriculture industry that is basically
split into two. We have a large scale agriculture industry and direct marketing/direct
sales industry I'll talk briefly about the large scale industry or the
commodity industry. Created in the 50's we had several large commodity
agriculture industries in this province and across this country. Currently
Canadian live stock industry is basically a commodity industry of almost 44% of
the revenue coming from commodity producers. In this province we have a successful
nursery industry greenhouse vegetable and flower industry. All of which are
very very tenuous based on our huge cost structure in
this province with labour and water issues. Some of
our other industries in agriculture have not faired very well since free trade.
Our processing vegetable industry which used to be very large in the Fraser
Valley as of right now the last processing vegetable packer in British Columbia,
Snow Crest Packers has closed we will lose thousands of acres of processing
vegetables this year because there's no where to send them. So, the processing
vegetables we will be eating will be coming from outside of this province. The
other industry we have is the direct sales industry that all of you participate
in. This year as Director of a national organization called Farmers Markets
Canada we did a survey of all consumers across the country. Over 5,000 surveys
were done 81% of consumers believed that the food they buy from direct sales
producers like yourself is as safe or safer than anything they can buy at a
grocery store, 81%. And in another survey just released farmers rated number 3
behind doctors and nurses as to who consumers trust, at over 93%. Consumers
trust food that they buy from a farmer, they want to know their food producer. The
BC Association of Farmers Markets last year contributed 118 million dollars to
local economies in BC without a single dollar of support from any government
agency. Consumers when they go to farmers market spend on
average $30 per visit that's based on our national survey at the market they
also spend $18 on average at surrounding business. Farmers markets are economic
redevelopment engines for rural Canada or urban Canada and we should be
supporting the development of farmers markets as Jordan said in every
community. What has happened to the Canadian Agriculture
Industry in this time period where we split into two groups is that we've lost
the family farm in the middle. The family farm that used to be able to sell
their products wholesale and survive is gone. And that's particularly obvious
in this province if we look at the Okanagan apple
industry which is a mere shadow of its former self that used to be there in the
70's which by the way the BC Ministry of Agriculture had 10 extension agents in
the Okanagan Valley and now have none. During that
time that BC government continued to reduce the support for agriculture, as
Jordan has said, to the point we are now dead last in this country even behind
Newfoundland. Our average is 4% against the national average of 14%. Yeah it's
so funny it's almost sad that Newfoundland supports agriculture better than
British Columbia where we have the best climate in the country and the best
soil in the country. We can produce more commodity crops than anywhere on the
continent. JS: This is
Deconstructing Dinner. That was just some of the talk delivered by Brent Warner
at the April 18th Farms, Farmers and Food Security rally held on the
grounds of the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria. Brent's entire talk
will be available on the Deconstructing Dinner website at
deconstructingdinner.ca Also
at the event was Linda Geggie of the Lifecylces Project Society - a nonprofit organization
dedicated to cultivating awareness and initiating action around food, health,
and urban sustainability in the Greater Victoria community. Jordan Marr: And now
folks were going to have just a few more minutes of speeches. We have a few
speakers that are going to be speaking to specific policy needs or reforms that
we'd like to see with our next government. So please join me in welcoming Linda
Geggie to the stage. Linda is the founder of
Lifecycles and coordinator of Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initiatives
Round Table. Also on the board of the BC Food Systems Network, she lives in Saanich and raises bees, chickens and grows shiitake
mushrooms. Linda Geggie: Hey everybody. What a glorious day and I'm so
happy to see friends and fellow workers and farmers out here today. So who's a
farmer? Put up your hand. Okay everyone who's an eater turn and hug your
farmers. Let's have a huggin out here. So food for
thousands of years we've known that food is sustenance, food is medicine.
What's happened? Where are we now? I had a meeting with Doctor Stanwick, Chief Medical Health Officer. We have an epidemic
going on right now with Type 2 Diabetes were going to open new hospital wings
in Nanaimo and in this area and there going to be filled the minute the doors
open. This is about lifestyle and this is about the food we eat. I'm a mom and
I shutter to see what is in the lunches of other kids in my school. And I know
that were busy and were trying our best but our options are limited to get
local food, our options are limited to get healthy food, were faced with the
cheap food culture that believes that you can get things all year round and
that everything on the shelves is safe for you. Were eating more fat, more
sugar, more salt in our diets and it's killing us, it's literally killing us.
My Uncle Ian, dad's brother, died last week of diabetes these things are
hitting home to me in a way that its personal and we really need to do
something about it. We've had our representatives here speaking to you today
about the things that they're going to do. Food is a non-partisan issue and
what I want to say today is I want everybody getting out we have one month
before the election. I want you going and talking to your friends about why
food is important. The grocery store shelves are full, yes, but there's a
really bad invisible problem going on were losing our farmers were losing our
infrastructure and we can't afford it now we cant afford to look a hundred
years down the road and think about what its going to look like when we lose
our land and we lose our farmers. I loved what Brent said about all the
positive things happening, people are reclaiming a taste for food; they
understand that it's an important part of our culture. Agriculture, it's in
everyone, we all eat. JS: Lifecycles
Project Society's Linda Geggie. And
the last clip to explore from the event touches on the election focus of
the rally. Of course British Columbian's will be going to the polls on May 12th
and rally organizers Jordan Marr and Tom Henry invited members of all three
major political parties running in this election. The Green Party's Adam Saab
addressed the few hundreds in attendance and so did candidate Linda Popham of the NDP. Both of their talks will be available on
the Deconstructing Dinner website, but here's a quick clip of Jordan Marr
speaking of the response they received from the current party controlling the Legislature,
BC's Liberals. Jordan Marr: Now is the
time that I should be introducing to you a representative of the BC Liberal
Party. For a month now we have been sending invitations to our most recent
Minster of Agriculture Ron Cantelon, the Liberal
Party Head Office and to individual Liberal candidates. Unfortunately the
Liberals have declined to send a representative. I think their absence speaks
much about the party's commitment to food and agriculture in BC. JS: Jordan Marr,
a farmer from East Sooke, British Columbia speaking
on April 18th 2009 in Victoria at the Farms, Farmers and Food
Security rally. A collection of unedited recordings from the event will be made
available on the Deconstructing Dinner website at deconstructingdinner.ca and
posted under the May 7th 2009 episode. And a
thanks to Jordan for organizing the recording of the event in order for
Deconstructing Dinner to bring these important recordings to the Canadian
public. Of
course with the topic of food security becoming of increasing interest
nationwide, there will likely be many more similar rallies hosted as part of other
provincial elections, and if you're one of those people interested in being
part of hosting such a rally, there is a web-only recording from my interview
from Tom Henry who shares his suggestions to any other groups across Canada who
might hold a food security rally in their own community. And again, you can
check out that recording posted under the May 7th 2009 episode. ending theme JS: That was
this week's edition of Deconstructing Dinner, produced and recorded at Nelson,
British Columbia's Kootenay Co-op Radio. I've been
your host Jon Steinman. I thank my technical assistant John Ryan. The
theme music for Deconstructing Dinner is courtesy of Nelson-area resident Adham Shaikh. This radio program is provided free of charge to
campus/community radio stations across the country, and relies on the financial
support from you the listener. Support for the program can be donated through
our website at deconstructingdinner.ca or by dialing 250-352-9600.
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