Can The Past Inform the Future?
The next time you drive along Route 134, anywhere from Campbellton down to Belledune, or back through Eel River to Balmoral, take a few minutes to notice how much of the land was obviously farm land at one time, and how little of it continues to be so. Fifty or one hundred years ago, a great many local people either made or supplemented their living from the land.The old people grew all of their vegetables and meat, much of their fruit, and most of the fodder and grain for their livestock. They tapped maple trees for sugar, they fished, and they harvested wild berries. In short, they were largely self-sufficient. most of them had only to buy flour, sugar, tea, coffee, and exotic fruits, such as oranges, lemons, and bananas.
Times have obviously changed. In the modern market economy, it is often cheaper, and certainly easier, to drop into the local supermarket to pick up those commodities rather than growing them ourselves. Or so it seems. However, two issues have come together in recent weeks that are beginning to prompt serious questions on the part of many consumers. One of them has had to do with the scares over the quality of foodstuff as diverse as pet food and salad greens. These products, shipped into local markets from thousands of kilometres distant, sometimes originate in countries that do not practice the same stringent controls over quality or safety, or are simply the victims of too much time on the road, or lax inspection at their source.
At the same time, environmentalists and economists have both begun to question the cost of transportation of these products, not only the direct fuel costs, but also those that can be discussed in terms of green house emissions. Trucks carrying spinach from California burn gas, and they also emit large quantities of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
If one factors in a local concern over decreasing population and the continued emigration of our young people, I do have to wonder when our decision makers are going to begin taking seriously the very real, and practical potential in returning to a locally driven, supported, and even subsidized farming industry. Do we really need to transport potatoes from Idaho, or lamb from New Zealand? Are B.C. apples inherently better than those that could be grown locally? How much of the food we eat regularly could be grown here once again? I submit that most of it was grown in the past and, if meteorologists are correct in suggesting that this is one area of the world that may very well benefit from global warming, what was possible once upon a time may become very attractive in the future.
I would also submit that a shift back to an agricultural economy is going to take a serious reconsideration of what we consider to be an attractive or meaningful lifestyle, but it can be done. It will also mean that governments are going to have to consider start-up grants to get land back into condition, buildings built and, in the case of livestock, providing adequate fencing and pasturing. I have argued for a long time that we need not be simple victims of global economic factors; we have the potential to take our future into the same sort of control that our grandparents controlled their own lives in the past. The old fields, the abandoned apple orchards and dilapidated fence lines bear mute testimony to what was possible once upon a time. they may also be asking if it is not so, once again.
