view counter
view counter
Home

Island Farmer Columns and Opinions

The real need for a new and better agriculture

Back in 1911, which is just over a hundred years ago, the American professor and author F.H. King traveled to China, Korea, and Japan to see their agriculture in action, and then wrote the book [Farmers of Forty Centuries] which included many photographs.
He died before writing a concluding chapter, but there is more than enough in that book for readers to draw some of their
own conclusions, although in the preface Dr. L.H. Bailey does make some points fitting for a concluding chapter.
Dr. Bailey wrote in part, “We have not yet gathered up the experiences of mankind in the tilling of the earth; yet the tilling

Potatoes could be in short supply in 2012

It may be hard for those outside the industry to envision, but it looks like there will be a shortage this year in fresh market shipments from the country’s largest spud growing province.
United Potatoes Growers of Canada estimates fresh market supplies will be down over 30 per cent based on a reduction in supply of 1,813 hundredweight. The industry is forecasting the shipping season will be nine weeks shorter than was the case in 2011.
The information was unveiled at the recent United Partners Seminar by General Manager Kevin MacIsaac, who is a former chair of the Island Potato Board. The Island decline is part of a reduction in eastern Canada, which saw Mother Nature wreck havoc on yields in New Brunswick.
This is the kind of marketing information that was missing prior to the creation of the United movement on both sides of the border. As Potato Board Chair Gary Linkletter pointed out, this is vital knowledge for producers to have.

Book talks about dehumanization of agriculture

If what I read sometime back is correct – and by sometime back I mean months ago, not years or decades ago – supposedly half of the human population is still fed by animal and human powered agriculture. I have no idea of the accuracy of that assessment, but the reality is that tractors aren’t a universal part of agriculture. To many farmers in North America where many would have a machinery yard as big or bigger than many of the smallest farms in the world, it may be hard to believe that if not half, that at least much of the world’s sustenance comes by way of animal and human powered agriculture. To many farmers in North America it may be hard to fathom how families could possibly make a living off such small plots of land, but the reality is that many farm families do indeed eke out a living off small plots of land, feeding themselves and the local and/or global market.

Trying to discern the best pathway

The guest opinion column in The Guardian of August 6 by Lloyd Kerry titled, "Cut the farmer some slack in debate over pesticides," started with the sentence, "Hardly a day goes by without seeing a cry in the media on how the farming industry on P.E.I. is poisoning Islanders with tons of pesticides." As much as I dislike pesticides, I agree that farmers need be given some slack as they weren't the ones that made agricultural policy or designed the curriculum in ag colleges and universities.
That first paragraph continued, "In her letter ("Pathway of poisons is expensive') Sandra Boswell warns of the poisons governments allow people to put on their lawns and fields. She mentions side effects: ‘anorexia, vomiting, muscle weakness, slowed heart rate, etc.' This is true, and more debate needs to take place on the use and misuse of pesticides." Yes, there needs be honest dialogue.

Feeling relief in a time of sorrow

 Last September in this column, after quoting some of what Sue Monk Kidd had written in her book Firstlight regarding ". . . how important it is to create it (beauty) in the midst of ugliness, barrenness, and sorrow," I mentioned that I might be the middleman for two of her stories as a young nurse and a young mother. Well here’s the young nurse story retold.

That story had reappeared in the March 1995 issue of Guideposts on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of that publication. It was titled, "Don’t Let It End This way" and is retold here using some of her own words.

Civilization draws its nourishment from the valleys, not the heights

The previous column retold a heart-touching and heart-warming story out of Sue Monk Kidd’s book [Firstlight] from when she was a young mother with a baby girl and a three year old son. The poem that immediately follows is in effect a half-told story by an older mother that is far more heart-warning than heart-warming, but Lucy Gertrude Clarkin’s poem message to her children and her readers is as valuable as Sue Monk Kidd’s inspiring story. There is a quote attributed to Wordsworth that states, "Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility." The words of Clarkin’s poem are in effect, no doubt, the recollected and distilled words of an older mother. That poem of Clarkin's  was discovered on the unusual grounds of a country church in Kelly’s Cross, P.E.I. and says succinctly:

Of ag economists and those farmers that supposedly don't count

 What follows is part two of a two part column and it needs more than a bit of introduction for those who haven’t read it or remembered what the previous column addressed.

Helping to look what one is looking for

One nifty feature with a word processor program is that one is able to find the words or phrases easily and quickly, even if it is a very long document. Pressing down at the same time both the Control key and the F key using Wordperfect accomplishes very quickly what could take quite a while "by hand." By hand, meaning of course running one’s eyes across every line searching for a word or phrase and hoping one doesn’t miss it. It’s one thing, for example to look for the word "agriculture" or any other word in a one or two page document, it’s quite another to find every use of that word in a many-page document.

What progress? What development?

E.F. Schumacher is best remembered for his 1973 book Small is Beautiful which is subtitled A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Not as well remembered, or even known are his other books. A Guide for the Perplexed, which is without a subtitle, was published in 1977. Twenty years after that, he wrote This I Believe, which has a title extension, "and other essays." Somewhere in between he wrote and published a book titled Good Work. In 1981 he wrote in the Foreword of his friend and colleague’s book Small is Possible: A factual account about who is doing what, where, to put into practice the ideas expressed in E.F. Shumacher’s Small is Beautiful, "Many years of work on these matters have completely convinced me not only that small is beautiful but also that small is possible and has the future on its side." Time will tell whether that prediction is right or wrong.

Some interesting numbers in report

There are some interesting facts in the statistical review compiled by the province that came across my desk recently.
For one thing, it puts some hard data to the trend of more non-farmers in rural areas. Although some of the data is based on the 2006 census, there is little reason to believe much had changed in the last three years. The majority of the province’s population still lives in rural areas (defined by Statistics Canada as communities of less than 1,000 people) although the gap is narrowing.
In the last census, there were 76, 906 Islanders living in what might be called “the country” while 61,721 lived in areas with a population of 1,000 or greater. Of that rural total, only 5,295 were farmers. The province now has a bigger Francophone population than it does farmers, although farmers who speak French would be included in both groups. The province’s francophone population is 5,665.