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.

For starters, that column started with one of David Weale’s "Overheard on the Island" quotes that appears in "The Guardian" and stated in its entirety, "The people in Charlottetown don’t have a clue about what’s going on in the countryside, and, quite frankly, most of them don’t give a damn," and I then went on to state that, "That unidentified person’s ‘overheard’ assessment may well be correct, but it doesn’t reveal whether the number of them that are unmindful and uncaring as to what is happening in rural P.E.I. is static, or going up or down," and "I believe it is a safe bet that slowly more and more urban people are learning about what is going on in the countryside, and more and more are coming to care about the fate of farmers."

Also quoted into the previous column were the remarks by someone writing an article for "Small Farmer’s Journal," ". . . The trail I’m reading says that people from all walks of life are asking deep questions about life and liberty, how we live, love and care for all that surrounds us. We are asking questions and reaching out in new ways, being guided by the deeply intrinsic values we attach to our families, communities and God. Farming has not escaped this discussion and as often as not has been the centerpiece. // There is a boldly persistent, reawakened interest in small scale, sustainable farming and a general willingness to look innovatively at the practice of agriculture. We are caring more about our food, where it comes from and how it was raised and who raised it. In the U.S. we have more farms and farmers now than in the (recent) past. Since 1992 we have added almost 300,000 new farms, most of them small farms, many of them organic or looking closely at it. . ."

It has been mentioned in this column a number of years ago that I was once invited to a P.E.I. NFU annual meeting and that the guest speaker was Kevin Arsenault and that he was asked after his presentation as to whether non farmers even cared about farmers. His answer was that he had spoken to another meeting a few weeks earlier and could have brought a busload of people who cared. I was at that meeting and I don’t know if all present would have fitted on one bus. That’s not to imply that every one attending cared deeply about the farmers, but it was clear that the majority were there to become informed or better informed as to what was happening in the countryside.

Kevin Arsenault is an ex-farmer and a concerned citizen like myself. He had earlier done a lot of digging in regard to the PVYN injustice, but that wasn’t really what he addressed at that meeting.

Also mentioned in the previous column were the words, "Lynn Miller has made it his business to be an observer of ag policy and politics," and one of his remarks, which stated, ". . . But we have our strong suspicions that the war is being staged to pit amateur farmers against professional farmers," and the next sentence read in part, "That last sentence will be commented on later. . ."

Well this is later. It has been said that error is often perpetuated by carelessness with the truth. Yes, many of the 300,000 in the U.S. who have taken up farming between 1992 and 2007 may well qualify as amateurs, at least at first, but some of those in time learn more about the soil, and how to harness its biology ,than many a long established and supposedly professional farmers who on account of propaganda and the chemical bias of the dominant form of agriculture.

As the late Angus MacLean, former P.E.I. Premier stated at a conference of small-scale and part-time farmers in Brudenell in September 1981, "In Canada, we boast that while in 1900, one farmer produced only enough food for seven people, today he feeds 52. We farmers are supposed to glow with pride at this statement. I don’t. Rather, I consider it a measure of the extent to which we have been taken in by the propaganda of the modern age. The other side of the coin is that 52 people are needed to sustain one farmer, while back in 1900, it took only seven people to sustain one farmer."

Farm productivity has grown greatly since 1981, but sadly we’ve lost and are continuing to lose farmers to such an extent that recent and present P.E.I. governments have all but given up on the hog and beef sectors. And taken as a whole, even excluding the hog and beef sectors, there aren’t nearly enough young farmers getting into farming to take over from the older generation. Unless there is great improvement in farm policy and politics in this province and country, even tourism will be seriously affected downwardly as seeing rundown farms and overgrown fields are a real downer for people who want to see things that will help pick up their spirits, often after spending 50 or 51 weeks without hardly ever being out in the countryside.

One of the ideas that the late Angus MacLean espoused was Rural Renaissance. I strongly suspect that idea came about as an antidote to what was hailed as the P.E.I. Comprehensive Development Plan, which was a fifteen year federal and provincial project that was supposed to help improve P.E.I. Looking at the surface of things that social engineering project worked, but he and some others saw that in spite of the word "comprehensive" in its title, the planners lacked comprehension and real vision.

Then as now, we all need be aware of the propaganda and advertising and its effects. My Dad had a Flemish proverb that translates as, "When the fox preaches salvation, farmers watch your chickens." Not a small part of the problems we see in rural P.E.I. and elsewhere – and in the cities for that matter – is in part the result of propaganda and self-serving advertising.

In the Guardian of October 12, 2010 Dr. George McRobie, the author of [Small is Possible] was quoted as saying at a meeting at the historic Macphail Farm recently, "I think the role pf MacPhail Farm could be to develop ideas for small-scale farming on Prince Edward Island." That article, by Steve Sharratt, went on to state that, "McRobie, who found himself reiterating ideas he presented 20 years ago when he recommended the summer home of Island scholar, entrepreneur and writer Sir Andrew Macphail become a ‘resource centre’"

It may be very, very late in the game to address the issue of Rural Renaissance here or elsewhere, but the effort to possibly get to use that historic site as a resource center and experiment station is one that has a lot merit. But, I believe that it should be used not only to help small-scale farmers but all farmers. If I’m reading things right, the P.E.I. development plan was motivated by motives that didn’t see the bigger picture or the long term consequences of that social engineering project. It has been said that the business of America is business. Those words seem to be as applicable to Canada as the U.S. It has also been said that "Find a need and fill it," is the rule to success, but North America and so much of the so-called developed world is filled to overflowing with needless businesses and mindless consumption and incredible waste.

What is needed now more than ever is that "amateur" and "professional" farmers better understand the need for excellence of stewardship in agriculture. Dr. Ralph Martin, who is the Director of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada said the same in different words at that Macphail homestead meeting. My guess is that if there is to be a true rural renaissance "amateur" and "professional" farmers of all kinds and sizes are going to have to learn to better harness the power of soil, sun and water. Contrary to much propaganda – farming isn’t a business like any other, but rather a business unlike any other.

Far more has been spent in space exploration than in trying to unravel the mysteries of the inner workings of the soil, and as Spencer Cheshire wrote about forty years ago, we’d have been further ahead if even a small fraction of those resources had been spent on trying to better understand what is the root source of most of our food. He was right then, and his assessment is more applicable today then back then on account of the seriousness of what is happening in the countryside and the ever rising health care costs.

In light of the reality that the so heralded P.E.I. Comprehensive Development Plan wasn’t comprehensive, and the devastating and farmer decimating effect that the model of agriculture it embraced, it only seems right that both levels of government should help fund a research and resource centre that would focus on helping farmers of all kinds and sizes to, among other things, find "hidden lessons in unopened books," as the late, great soil scientist William Albrecht put it.

If the federal and/or provincial governments would plead that they can’t afford to fund the type of research that farmers really need, I see no reason why they couldn’t let the so-called bio-science sector fund itself rather than milk millions upon millions of taxpayers dollars in all kinds direct and indirect ways. If such a research and resource centre could be properly funded and directed at the historic Macphail Farm, to the degree that farmers and consumers would wish to see their tax dollars go towards true excellence in agronomic research rather that the continuation of the status quo, to that degree we might see some rural renaissance.