Category Archives: Farmland and Food Security

Shades of Green: Food, Glorious Food

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The unfolding food crisis on the planet is a convincing argument for protecting local agricultural land, for encouraging small farms and for establishing backyard gardens. Indeed, global food security seems stressed as never before. And a partial solution to this crucial problem is the utilization of all the local resources.

The importance of local food sources is defined by the global situation. The cost of food, as measured by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Food Price Index, is at its highest value ever – the 2008 record index of 224.1 for 55 essential food products has reached 231. Crop failures caused by extreme weather in several primary grain producing areas – Russia, Ukraine, Australia and Canada – have combined with rising oil prices – about 40% of industrial fertilizer comes from oil – to lower supply and raise prices. While costlier food is a burden more easily absorbed by affluent countries, expensive food creates havoc in poor ones.

Although the estimated 700-900 million of the world’s poor suffer in silence, food shortages have recently caused riots in Bolivia, Peru, Mozambique, Haiti, Indonesia and India. The recent political upheaval in Tunisia was sparked by a food riot. And the fact that Arab nations are the world’s largest single importers of grain causes a vulnerability and tension that is connected to the current paroxysms of unrest passing from country to country across North Africa and the Middle East.

Population growth presents its own challenges to food supplies. Within 40 years, global food production will have to increase by at least 40 percent to feed the additional 2.5 billion people who will then inhabit a planet endowed with just 11 percent arable land. This challenge is complicated by rising affluence that increases per-capita food consumption, by threatened water shortages that impair crop growth, and by widespread soil erosion and degradation that is reducing arable land at a rate of about 10 million hectares per year.

The so-called Green Revolution provided a temporary solution to the food shortages of the 1960s and ’70s. But it created other problems. It increased water consumption beyond sustainable levels, caused a false sense of food security, and lower price of food ended research for further innovation and productivity.

In anticipation of food shortages, some cash-rich countries are now buying agricultural land in poorer countries. Future political tension is likely to be caused by the more than $100 billion spent on this “agrarian-colonialism”. South Korea has a 99 year lease on 1 million hectares of Madagascar. Saudi Arabia has acquired 500,000 hectares in Indonesia. Kuwait and Qatar are buying land in Vietnam. Nearly 20 percent of Laos has been signed over to foreign owners. Even Ukraine and Brazil are target properties. As China’s own agricultural land suffers the multiple effects of erosion, depletion, contamination and desertification, its need for food security is inspiring heavy investment in fertile swaths of Africa, Russia and the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the decision of affluent countries to convert food crops into bio-fuel is increasing the stress – about 30 percent of edible corn has been diverted to ethanol production. Speculation in the global financial markets adds further costs to those who can least afford to buy sustaining nutrition.

Nick Cullather argues that agricultural policy since the 1930s has created other problems (Globe & Mail, Jan. 26/11). Both Germany and Russia began to isolate the “agricultural sector” from the larger economy in their quest to give priority to industrial growth. Food production was degraded to a secondary consideration. The new function of rural regions was to provide a “reservoir of cheap labour” for urban centres. This thinking became so widespread by the end of the 1930s that, according to Rebecca West, all communist, fascist and capitalist countries had adopted “the insane dispensation which pays the food-producers worst of all workers” (Ibid.). The consequences of this absurdity persist today in boom-and-bust food production, badly manages soils, abandoned farms, impoverished farmers and social unrest.

As Cullather reminds us, all civilizations are founded on food. His solution is to pay farmers what they deserve. He believes that the agricultural sector is extremely responsive to economic incentives and, if it were elevated from its “subordinate status”, the ingenuity and resourcefulness of farmers could do much to address the challenge of feeding a rising population in an age of climate change.

Meeting this challenge could be aided by elevating the status and income of farmers, by changing tax structures to favour the protection and use of agricultural land, by eliminating the subsidies that deflate the market value of crops, and by encouraging local food production and processing. Farmers’ markets, community gardens, backyard vegetable plots and urban farming can do much to diversify production, provide fresh produce, offer healthy recreation, furnish rewarding employment, reduce transportation costs, create independence from imported crops, and relieve food stress.

If predictions are correct, the challenge of producing enough food for a growing population on a shrinking planet is only going to increase. Surely this prospect should induce us all to think more seriously about food. After all, there’s nothing quite like it.

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Southlands Video Debacle Raises Questions of Public Process and Free Speech

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I grant that people have bigger things on their minds today – amid Japanese tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns – than a video about farmland in BC. Nevertheless, I feel it important to comment on a recent incident that raises real concerns for me as an environmental filmmaker about public processes and free speech in BC.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the opening evening of Delta Council’s hearings on updating the Tsawwassen Area Plan (Tsawwassen being one of three communities that make up the municipality of Delta) and a proposal to return the Southlands property to the Agricultural Land Reserve. The Southlands is a 500 acre parcel of farmland in Tsawwassen that has been the subject of intense debate for years. Over the past three decades, successive owners have pushed to build thousands of homes there against the will of the majority of the community, which would prefer to see it preserved for agricultural use and as habitat for the millions of migratory birds who pass through Delta every year on the Pacific Flyway.

I had just produced a short documentary (scroll down to see) with the support of a number of Tsawwassen citizens examining the Southlands issue in the context of our region’s mounting food security crisis (we produce less than half our own food in BC today and many readers will have seen recent headlines about dramatically rising food prices). We wanted to screen the film at the hearing and formally submit it to council along with other written submissions.

I arrived with several of these citizens hours before the event to speak to municipal staff about playing the film. We connected with the technical team and provided the film in a format that suited them – we tested it and it was all queued up to play during the hearing. Two of us also signed up to speak in succession early on in the hearing – our intention was to allocate our respective five minute slots to playing 10 minutes of the film. What ensued that evening and in the following days would have been comical if it didn’t raise some serious questions about our ability to plan a sustainable future for the region and province.

When my five minutes came about, I began to introduce the film – amidst considerable heckling from audience members supporting Southlands owner Century Group’s plans to build 1,900 homes on the property. Council then spent close to 10 minutes debating whether a 10 minute film could be played, eventually deciding to allow just the first five minutes.

The question of whether a video can be submitted in lieu of standard oral comments was a subject of heated debate amongst council. The municipality’s chief administrative officer George Harvie suggested it was unfair to those who supported the development as they didn’t have time to prepare their own video (we spent 6 months preparing ours – apparently the developer lacked our foresight). The idea that a developer who has clearly spent large sums of money promoting and lobbying for a billion dollar housing development could be outmatched by a citizen video is of course laughable. And council eventually backed down when a member of our group pointed out that the developer had been allowed at past hearings to make audio-visual presentations. So we played five minutes of the film – after which the world, remarkably, appeared to be turning as usual.

It was the following night, during round two of the hearing, that things got downright bizarre. In my absence, one of our group attempted to submit the second half of the film to the proceedings. Not only were they denied that request, but Delta Mayor Lois Jackson informed the audience the film would not be allowed even as a submission to be viewed by council outside of the public meetings. Having said the night before they would watch the full film on their own time, they had now changed their minds.

According to the Delta Optimist, “Jackson read a statement noting council had received legal advice from municipal solicitor Greg Vanstone, who said the remainder of the video should not be viewed by council ‘due to potentially defamatory or inaccurate statements.'” What were these statements? Council couldn’t know because, after all, they hadn’t seen them. We were directed to ask Mr. Vanstone just what these allegedly inaccurate and defamatory statements were – but he told us he couldn’t divulge specifics on account of attorney-client privilege.

So council impugned my name and work through spurious innuendo. But they went even further than that. Mayor Jackson added, “I would request that anyone who wishes to display another video immediately provide a copy to Mr. (George) Harvie so that it may be reviewed by our solicitor to ensure that it is appropriate for display.” So from now on, anyone who wants to present a video to council must gain prior approval from bureaucrats.

As a filmmaker concerned with environmental and public policy issues in BC, this incident raises a couple of important questions:

  1. Why should a video be treated any differently than a verbal or written submission? In this day and age, people increasingly turn to video to express themselves, mainly because it’s such an effective communication medium. I suggested this to Delta Council – that a lot of time, energy, and resources went into creating a film that clearly and concisely expressed the way a group of citizens and experts feel about this issue. We’re proud of what we created and hoped it could help inform council’s deliberations on this important matter.
  2.  Does pre-screening a video not open the door to doing the same for other types of submissions? And why should any submissions or comments be vetted prior to a public hearing? The implication from council’s position is that they could somehow be liable for comments made in a public forum – which is pure hogwash. If someone stands up to the microphone and slanders a company or an individual, is council liable? Of course not. How is a video any different?  

Public processes should be engineered with one main purpose in mind: maximizing citizens’ opportunity to express their concerns to governments and regulatory bodies. Everything should be oriented toward that goal – and creative expression and modern technology should be encouraged if they help further it. Instead, what we often find – whether it’s a rubber stamp environmental assessment meeting to do with a private power project or municipal hearings like this one in Delta – is an adversarial environment geared towards controlling, obstructing and restraining public expression at every turn.

At the end of the day, it’s simply foolish for council to attempt to hold back a film like this. Within days of the debacle at the hearing, we had it on youtube. And of course, the implied allegations made by council have proven to be a bunch of baloney. All we did is present an accurate assessment of BC’s food security challenges and a positive vision for the Southlands property within that context.

What worries me is that this is far from the first time this situation has arisen at a public hearing in BC. Filmmaker Susan Smitten’s film “Blue Gold” was met with fierce opposition from Taseko Mines at the federal review panel hearings on the proposed Prosperity Mine. After much wrangling, the film was finally played. And the controversy only heightened the focus on the film – just as happened recently with the Southlands hearing. Inasmuch as free speech is integral to good public policy, we can’t allow processes that limit this essential Charter right.

When they do, there’s always youtube.

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Land Trust Offers to purchase the Southlands for $205 million

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This morning on CBC Radio during the “Early Edtion” hosted by Rick
Cluff, an offer to purchase the Southlands for 205 million dollars was
announced by Peter Cummings, Director of the BC Ecological Agricultural
Trust Society or BCEATS.

The announcement came in the wake of a contentious public hearing to
put the 538 acre parcel of farmland back in the Agricultural Land
Reserve. Opponents of the plan would see that the old Spetifore farm be
rezoned to allow a residential development plan put forth by the current
owner Century Industries. A plan that would see 1900 homes built on 1/3
of the property.

In a surprise move by Delta’s Mayor Lois Jackson the hearing was
temporarily adjourned to convene what she called, “a Mayor’s Summit”
that would put the stakeholders together with community group
representatives to see if there is any way to resolve the issue. The
Mayor may have lost her opportunity to be ‘peacemaker’ as this offer has
the ability to change the entire playing field.

According to a letter to Sean Hodgins of the Century Group if he were
to accept the offer he would receive 5 million dollars in cash and an
additional 200 million dollars in the form of a tax credit through
Environment Canada’s Ecological Gifts Program.

The plan put forth by the society would see the best farmland used
for organic farming, 10 acres for a non-polluting processing plant, and
the remainder protected for wildlife habitat in the form of a natural
reserve for locals and tourists.

Hodgins has 30 days to respond to the offer. An offer that perhaps
has the ability to finally bring peace to Tsawwassen once and for all.

Click here to read BC EATS offer letter to the Southlands’ owner

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Delta Optimist: Council won’t watch video after getting legal advice

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From the Delta Optimist – March 9, 2011

by Sandor Gyarmati

A 13-minute video has become the controversy within the controversy
over the proposal to have the contentious Southlands placed back in the
Agricultural Land Reserve.

During the first evening of the
Tsawwassen Area Plan public hearing last Tuesday, supporters of the
civic recommendation asked to play a video by Vancouver filmmaker
Damien Gillis.

To the chagrin of several in the audience who
voiced their displeasure, Delta council, after some discussion, agreed
to play five minutes of the video, not exceeding the time limit
normally allotted to speakers. Councillors were then to view the
remainder on their own time at a later date.

The narrated video,
called Saving the Southlands, has scenic shots and interview clips of
several people against allowing development on the land, including
Richmond Coun. Harold Steves and Southlands the Facts spokesperson Dana
Maslovat.

On the next night of the hearing, Mayor Lois Jackson
read a statement noting council had received legal advice from
municipal solicitor Greg Vanstone, who said the remainder of the video
should not be viewed by council “due to potentially defamatory or
inaccurate statements.”

The mayor read, “I would request that
anyone who wishes to display another video immediately provide a copy
to Mr. (George) Harvie so that it may be reviewed by our solicitor to
ensure that it is appropriate for display.”

When contacted by
the Optimist Monday, Vanstone refused to comment, citing
solicitor-client privilege. He said it would be up to council to direct
him to comment any further from what the mayor had already read.

Southlands
the Facts immediately posted the video on the Internet, calling it a
“banned video” by council. The group claims the Southlands was removed
30 years ago under questionable evidence.

On a website created by
Gillis and broadcaster Rafe Mair called Common Sense Canadian, the
question was raised whether the banning of the video will lead to a
“vetting” of public hearing submissions by civic bureaucrats.

The
site states: “Imagine the next time you go to speak at a hearing on an
industrial project that threatens the environment in your community,
you have to gain government approval for your remarks before delivering
them! Is this not a slippery slope?”

Noting a local resident
involved with the production has contacted the B.C. Civil Liberties
Association, Gillis told the Optimist he’ll demand an apology from
council for impugning his credibility.

Those in favour of the ALR
recommendations also argued developers regularly come forward with
expensive and polished videos and Powerpoint presentations to sell
their points of view.

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Southlands: ALR public hearing on hold until April

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Fromt he Vancouver Sun – March 8, 2011

by Sandor Gyarmati

METRO VANCOUVER — There’s yet another twist in the seemingly never-ending debate over the future of the Southlands in Delta.

Mayor Lois Jackson announced Monday that a public hearing that began last week has been put on hold until next month.

Close
to 300 people packed council chambers and the foyer at municipal hall
for what was expected to be the fourth evening of the hearing on the
proposed Tsawwassen Area Plan.

The most controversial element of
the plan recommends Delta apply to the Agricultural Land Commission to
have the 538-acre Southlands placed back in the ALR.

The speakers’
list had only reached 90 after the first three nights of the hearing.
As of Monday, almost 170 had signed up to have their say.

It was clear after the first three days how divisive the Southlands remains for the community.

A
number of speakers talked about the positive attributes of the Century
Group’s housing/farming proposal for the property, while some urged
Delta council to talk with Century president Sean Hodgins about his
plan. Opponents, though, were steadfast in their determination not to
have development on what they say is prime agricultural land.

Jackson
said this week it’s clear there was no community consensus and
described the Southlands issue as the “elephant in the room” for Delta.

Saying even farmers didn’t have one voice on the issue, Jackson
said although there is a long history of controversy, she heard from
many who said they want the community to move forward rather than
revisit the past.

“There are, however, mixed feelings about the
urgency to proceed. Some feel it is high time to put this decision to
rest once and for all and without delay by applying to put the lands in
the ALR,” she said.

“On the other hand, many of you requested time
to allow the community to fully understand the implications of this
proposal and even perhaps to consider alternates. And there we are
again, the elephant in the room.”

Jackson said the message she heard more than any other was the need for further discussion before an ALR application.

“How
do we get there? It was suggested that perhaps we can get there
together. I heard there is willingness by parties to talk to each other.
However, the public hearing forum does not provide for the type of
dialogue that is really needed.”

The mayor said the hearing would be adjourned until April 14.

By then, a report by a newly-formed “mayor’s summit” would be available for input.

The
forum for discussion and debate will include Jackson and one other
councillor, CAO George Harvie, two representatives from Century Group,
two representatives from the community that support the ALR inclusion
application and one representative each from the farming and
environmental communities. The other landowners affected will have an
opportunity to appear before the summit to present their views.

Following
the adjournment of the public hearing Monday, Hodgins told the Optimist
he wasn’t aware of the forum plan but is hopeful something will come of
it.

He said he was also encouraged by the large show of support during the hearing.

“I was very pleasantly surprised and gratified. All I’ve wanted is a chance to find some compromise; maybe this is it,” he said.

As
far as working out a compromise from his 1,900-unit housing plan,
Hodgins noted his proposal could be viewed as a starting point.

Southlands the Facts spokesperson Dana Maslovat also said he was surprised by the move.

“I
guess the hope is the people involved representing certain areas of the
community can come to an agreement and maybe the public will agree to
it. If that happens, I think that would be great,” Maslovat said.

“Given
the polarity of this debate and given the divisiveness of this issue,
I’m a little reluctant to think that may come out of it …I think
finding a compromise may be challenging for sure.”

Michael
Anderson, who spoke against the recommendation last week, was incensed
at the move by council, saying the mayor changed gears when it was clear
the majority of speakers were against the ALR inclusion.

“Once
again it’s council changing the rules in the hearing process. They’re
not liking the score, so they change the rules. That’s OK if you’re the
queen of Delta, but if you’re the mayor of Delta, it’s outrageous,” said
Anderson.

Carole Vignale, who spoke at the hearing urging
dialogue, said she’s disappointed the forum will involve just a group of
individuals rather than a public discussion on ideas.

Former
councillor Doug Massey, who was planning to speak Monday, said he has
doubts the forum will resolve the differences. He also said the
Southlands needs input from a wider range of individuals because it’s
not just a Tsawwassen issue but a regional one as well.

Chris
Herbst, who owns a five-acre property neighbouring the Southlands that
was also included in the ALC proposal, said he’s disappointed he’s not a
member of the new summit despite being a landowner directly impacted.

The
public hearing, which will still have the ALR inclusion as the agenda
item, resumes April 14 at the South Delta Recreation Centre at 7 p.m.

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Southlands public hearing to continue Monday

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From the Vancouver Sun – March 4, 2011

by Sandor Gyarmati

METRO VANCOUVER — Three days of a public hearing this week have
shown how the Southlands is still as divisive an issue as ever for
Tsawwassen.

The third evening of the public hearing on the
proposed Tsawwassen Area Plan took place at the South Delta Recreation
Centre on Thursday.

The crowd of roughly 150 was noticeably
thinner than the first day of the hearing Tuesday, when more than 400
came to hear submissions on the contentious 538-acre Southlands
property.

A controversial recommendation in the area plan by CAO
George Harvie would see Delta apply to the Agricultural Land Commission
to have the Southlands placed back in the Agricultural Land Reserve.

The
property was removed from the reserve amid much controversy three
decades ago, but the proposal to have the land put back has proved just
as contentious.

Only seven people, all in favour of Delta’s
proposal, got to speak on the recommendation when the item came up for
input during the first evening of the hearing, including Southlands the
Facts spokesperson Dana Maslovat, who said inclusion in the ALR would
ensure the community’s wishes are met.

However, the majority of
speakers the following evening, by about a three-to-one margin, spoke in
opposition to the recommendation, including former councillor and
provincial agriculture minister John Savage, who said he tried to farm
the Southlands but had only marginal crops due to poor soil quality.

Those
opposed also outnumbered those in favour during Thursday’s session, by
about a two-to-one margin, with many of the speakers and others in the
audience showing support for the property owner, the Century Group, by
wearing green anti-ALR T-shirts.

Many of the same arguments by
opponents expressed in the previous two evenings were conveyed to Delta
council Thursday, including the lack of due process for the affected
landowners, a disrespect shown for Century Group president Sean Hodgins,
handing over local control to an outside agency and the undetermined
irrigation and drainage costs that would hit taxpayers to upgrade the
land for farming.

Several speakers also expressed dismay at the
Tsawwassen Area Plan process itself and that the community wasn’t
afforded the chance to have a dialogue on the Century Group’s
development proposal, which would have combined housing with urban
agriculture.

Some also warned of the consequences, including the
landowner having no choice but to build a large greenhouse on the
property, which would create much strife with the surrounding
residential neighbourhood.

Several speakers on both sides also conveyed dismay at their opposition, accusing each other of bullying tactics.

Some
of the speakers asked if there was any room for compromise, noting they
were opposed to the ALR inclusion but the 1,900 homes proposed by the
Century Group were too many.

Helen Kettle, who was on the
Tsawwassen Area Plan Committee as well as Century Group’s Southlands
Community Planning Team, argued Century’s proposal was never given a
chance for a fair review.

“With all due respect, I believe many in
this community have been unduly influenced by a small and vocal group
at a time when thoughtful people are aware of the pressing need to
retain and enhance local agriculture capability,” she said.

“It’s
very easy for individuals to join the cry to retain agricultural land
… they offer a simplistic solution to a multi-faceted problem. What is
the problem? The problem is how to make the best use of a large piece
of land in the middle of a built-up community.”

Saying Delta
should be able to handle its own issues rather than trying to hand them
off to other authorities, Firth Bateman suggested Ladner and North Delta
also be included in any discussions when it comes to having the
Southlands in the ALR.

He was also critical of the “veiled animosity and lack of respect” in the public hearing.

Those
speaking in favour Thursday included Richmond Coun. Harold Steves, who
noted his city council voted to have the Garden City and Terra Nova
lands put into Metro Vancouver’s Green Zone. He said the Southlands had
drainage and irrigation provided when the Spetifore family owned it,
however, the new owner never maintained it and allowed the site to go
fallow.

Resident Peter Malim echoed the words of several
supporters of the recommendation about the importance of retaining and
preserving agricultural land. He described supporters of the Century
plan as an “insular and closeted minority,” which drew scoffs from the
audience.

“They’ve tried in vain to convince us that much of the
land is unfarmable. They’ve tried in vain to sell us on such terms as
agricultural urbanism and have tried to greenwash their construction
plans to help us to digest them,” he said.

“We have to make it
clear to speculators that it will no longer be acceptable to buy up this
country’s prime farmland and expect to build houses on them,” Malim
said.

Hodgins told the Optimist after the first session Tuesday he would probably speak as well.

After three nights the speakers’ list included 135 names, 89 of which had spoken.

The hearing resumes Monday at 7 p.m, this time at municipal hall.

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Global unrest, rising fuel prices expected to trigger 5% food price hike in B.C.

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From The Province – March .6, 2011

by Susan Lazaruk & Glenda Luymes

Expect to pay more per mouthful as global unrest and rising fuel prices drive up the cost of food both internationally and at home.

That’s the message from analysts as Canada’s wholesale suppliers and grocers are hinting they may pass on rising commodity prices to consumers.

“We’ve heard from suppliers in the last few weeks that they expect to raise prices up to five per cent,” Union Gospel Mission spokesman Derek Weiss said Saturday.

Weiss said the latest increases are part of a larger trend. UGM increased its food budget by about five per cent from 2008 to 2009, but higher-than-anticipated costs actually resulted in a 10 per cent increase.

Projections for 2011 are similar.

“This hits us two ways,” he said. “We’re facing higher costs, but our clients are also being squeezed. A pinch for us is a genuine plight for them.”

CEO of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society Cheryl Carline said rising food prices will “impact us in a big way,” adding the foods most affected are staples.

“It’s difficult because the factors that are affecting prices are, to a large degree, external to the country as a whole, and there’s not a lot we can do about it.”

Sustained increases in the cost of food commodities are also expected to trickle down every aisle of the grocery store by year’s end, according to analysts.

BMO Capital Markets economist Kenrick Jordan said there’s always a lag between higher commodity prices and consumer food prices, so shoppers should expect a five- to seven-per-cent jump in consumer food prices.

“We’re concerned as a business and we’re concerned as consumers,” said Frank Deacon, general manager at Stong’s Market, an independent grocery store in Vancouver.

He said the rise in prices for corn and wheat, caused by the drought in China, and in meat and deli products is worrying and noted “produce is completely affected by the rising oil prices, especially at this time of year when everything is coming from the U.S. and Mexico.”

He said as an independent, Stong’s buyers can price out new suppliers weekly to look for the lowest wholesale price to try to keep prices low but there are some hikes it can’t avoid, like the five per cent minimum increase for Weston’s bakery products announced last week.

“(Baked goods) is not something we can shop around for,” he said.

Deacon said customers can expect increases in the cereal and pasta aisles generally and for certain produce items because of the recent cold snap on the Pacific Coast.

Rising fuel prices and uncertainty in oil-producing countries like Libya are only compounding the situation, said David Wilkes with the Retail Council of Canada. Canada’s highly competitive grocery sector can only shield food shoppers from higher prices for so long, he added.

According to GasBuddy.com, the average price of unleaded gas in Vancouver Saturday was 129.9, up from 126.4 last week, 120.5 one month ago and 114 last year at this time.

For their part, Canada’s major grocers — including Loblaw, Sobeys, Metro Inc. and Walmart Canada — declined to comment on possible price hikes.

Their response comes after the Weston foods division of George Weston Inc. announced the company is increasing the price of its bun and bread products by an average of five per cent, beginning next month. This means retail grocers will have to pay the baked good giants more for products sold under brands such as Harvest Country bread, Wonder Bread, Weston and D’Italiano — and decide whether to pass on the difference to shoppers.

Local restaurateurs have been dealing with steadily-rising food prices for months.

Contacted recently about the cost of tomatoes due to a cold snap in Mexico, co-owner of Vera’s Burger Shack Gerald Tritt said weather always plays a role in produce availability, “but there doesn’t seem to be an end to the rising of food prices in general.”

Tritt blamed natural disasters, political instability in wheat-producing nations and the use of corn for fuel.

“It’s typical to experience some shortages, but I think people need to get ready for a major jolt in the economy of food,” he told The Province.

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Banned Video on Southlands Battle!

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A new 13 min documentary – produced by filmmaker Damien Gillis in
partnership with a number of Tsawwassen groups and citizens – is now
available online, after having been banned by Delta Council from public
hearings they are currently conducting. “Saving the Southlands” tells
the story of the 30-year battle to protect a 500-acre parcel of prime
farmland in Tsawwassen from proposed housing development – set against
the backdrop of an emerging food security crisis in BC….Now see for yourselves the film Delta
Council has tried to keep from the public. read more below

The film was recently censored by Delta Council after attempts to submit
it to a hearing on the question of returning the Southlands property to
the ALR. Having allowed the first five minutes to be
played on the opening night of the hearing – over the vocal objections
of supporters of owner Century Group’s proposed development of 1,900
homes on
the property – Council refused the following evening to play the
remainder. What’s more, they refused even to allow the film as a
submission for
councillors to view privately, on the grounds that it “may contain
libel” – pending prior “vetting” and approval by a bureaucrat. They made this statement without having seen the film for
themselves – which begs the question, how do they know it “may contain
libel”? Moreover, why should a film submission be treated any
differently than a spoken one – and if all future video submissions are to require “vetting”, as council has stated, why should video presentations be subjected to different standards than oral ones? Does this not open the door to the “vetting” of all submissions to public hearings – by bureaucrats, no less? Imagine the next time you go to speak at a hearing on an industrial project that threatens the environment in your community, you have to gain government approval for you remarks before delivering them! Is this not a slippery slope?

“Saving the Southlands” features a number of Tsawwassen residents,
Richmond City Councillor and ALR co-founder Harold Steves, agrologist
Arzeena Hamir, and also profiles several local community farming success
stories.  The film is a unique new media story – funded entirely by
citizens, a number of whom were also involved in the production. Its
release comes in the midst of a landmark public hearing after which
council will vote on whether to apply to the Agricultural Land
Commission to return the Southlands to the ALR. The property was removed
30 years ago under questionable evidence, but has remained protected by
its municipal agricultural zoning. Owner Century Group has been ramping
up its efforts over the past year to get that changed. Now inclusion in
the ALR could finally bring this saga to a close, opening the door to
other potential models, such as a land trust with urban farming and
nature conservancy components, favoured by many int he community.


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Paul Krugman in New York Times: Droughts, Floods & Food Crisis

Farmland and Food Security, Food
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From New York Times – Feb 7, 2011

by Paul Krugman

We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years.
World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in
the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had
only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by
historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s
poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs.

The consequences of this food crisis go far beyond economics. After all,
the big question about uprisings against corrupt and oppressive regimes
in the Middle East isn’t so much why they’re happening as why they’re
happening now. And there’s little question that sky-high food prices
have been an important trigger for popular rage.

So what’s behind the price spike? American right-wingers (and the
Chinese) blame easy-money policies at the Federal Reserve, with at
least one commentator
declaring that there is “blood on Bernanke’s hands.” Meanwhile,
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France blames speculators, accusing them of
“extortion and pillaging.”

But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While
several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really
stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted
agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the
kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse
gases change our climate — which means that the current food price
surge may be just the beginning.

Now, to some extent soaring food prices are part of a general commodity
boom: the prices of many raw materials, running the gamut from aluminum
to zinc, have been rising rapidly since early 2009, mainly thanks to
rapid industrial growth in emerging markets.

But the link between industrial growth and demand is a lot clearer for,
say, copper than it is for food. Except in very poor countries, rising
incomes don’t have much effect on how much people eat.

It’s true that growth in emerging nations like China leads to rising
meat consumption, and hence rising demand for animal feed. It’s also
true that agricultural raw materials, especially cotton, compete for
land and other resources with food crops — as does the subsidized
production of ethanol, which consumes a lot of corn. So both economic
growth and bad energy policy have played some role in the food price
surge.

Still, food prices lagged behind the prices of other commodities until last summer. Then the weather struck.

Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the
summer. The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world
production is down sharply. The bulk of that production decline,
according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp
plunge in the former Soviet Union. And we know what that’s about: a
record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100
degrees for the first time ever.

The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather
events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in
Australia, that have damaged world food production.

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Bruce Swift of BC-based Swift Aquaculture discusses his closed-containment salmon famring business at the recent global Seafood Summit

Closed-Containment Salmon Farming Highlighted at Seafood Summit

Farmland and Food Security, Food, , ,
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Last week Vancouver played host to the annual Seafood Summit, a global conference that brings together fishermen, seafood buyers, chefs, scientists, conservationists, and just about anyone interested in discussing the future of global fisheries. My film “Farmed Salmon Exposed” – which documents the myriad problems with open net pen salmon aquaculture – screened at last year’s conference in Paris; this year I had a chance to hear about potential solutions to the industry’s problems when I attended the panel discussion on land-based closed-containment salmon farming.

The discussion, which featured short presentations from a number of leaders in the emerging industry, highlighted both the encouraging progress of closed-containment salmon aquaculture and the real challenges it faces to becoming a competitive large-scale player in the marketplace. Most importantly, it reinforced a recent shift in the tone of the closed-containment discussion. As panel co-moderator Eric Patel summarized, “The conversation has gone from, ‘Is it feasible?’ to ‘Where is it going to happen, how soon, and how much can it grow?'”

There are a number of concepts and designs for closed-containment salmon farming, but they all share a basic premise of separating farmed fish from the environment by enclosing them in some form of tank system. These methods carry commercial advantages for operators, such as being able to protect their farmed fish from wild parasites, diseases, and other problems like low oxygen events and algae blooms that threaten their stocks; they also allow farmers to better regulate feed, and the fish waste they capture can be converted to fertilizers for sale or used to cultivate other crops as part of a poly-culture system.

Among the Seafood Summit panel were the representatives of three existing and future closed-containment operations. Of particular interest was Per Heggelund, CEO of Washington State-based AquaSeed Corporation. His company has been rearing and selling proprietary breeds of land-based coho for several decades and in 2010 was named official supplier to the Pattison Group’s supermarkets, which include Overwaitea and Save-on-Foods. The decision by the Western Canadian grocery titan to begin phasing out open net pen farmed salmon in favour of closed-containment was an important milestone in the development of the industry.

Also on the panel was Bruce Swift of Swift Aquaculture – a land-based closed-containment farm in Agassiz, BC. Swift is a small family-run operation that raises coho in freshwater tanks, while using the water and waste fertilizers to grow a number of other agricultural products – including crayfish, wasabi, watercress, and garlic – all without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, or antibiotics. They mostly supply local restaurants, including famed Vancouver chef Robert Clark’s C, Nu, and Raincity Grill. Clark, who also presented at the conference on sustainability in the restaurant industry, has been an important customer and supporter of Swift.

The Swift family had a rough go of things initially, unable to escape the stigma of their open net pen counterparts – customers didn’t appreciate the distinction between their farmed product and the rest of the industry. Their experience raises another key challenge to closed-containment salmon aquaculture moving forward: the need to develop a third category of salmon in the marketplace, positioned somewhere between open net pen and wild. Through perseverance and cultivating the right allies, the Swifts have been able to overcome this hurdle. But the industry needs to be able to do the same on a larger scale – which likely requires both consumer education and developing a unique certification to distinguish their product.        

Finally, Chief Anne Mack of the Toquaht First Nation, near Uclulet on the west side of Vancouver Island, told the audience of her community’s plans to develop closed-containment farms on their territory (The Namgis First Nation are working on a similar pilot project near Port McNeil on Vancouver Island). Chief Mack discussed how her people are no longer able to live off wild salmon and other now-depleted natural food sources in the way they used to – which explains their interest in closed-containment salmon farming. “This project could help us return to living sustainably off our own territory,” she told the audience. Chief Mack also described the location as ideal in many ways for land-based farming, with good freshwater and brackish groundwater sources. The band is exploring alternate energy systems to help power the farms as well. While they’re still in the planning stage, the Toquaht seem committed and well-positioned to move forward. If they and the Namgis are successful, they could provide a model for other First Nations and similar community-based projects.   

Closed-containment salmon aquaculture faces several key challenges, made abundantly clear in the Seafood Summit session. First among these is scale. Can the industry grow enough – and fast enough – to replace, in part or in whole, its much better established open net pen counterpart? It’s clear that demand for the product will long outstrip supply – which is both good and bad. Any developer of a new product would envy the kind of demand closed-containment farmers enjoy from the outset – where the likes of Jimmy Pattison are saying they’ll take as much as you can sell them.

But the industry faces significant challenges to scaling up its operations – including technology, venture capital, and regulatory barriers. Swift Aquaculture may be the ideal model for the future of food production – a small-scale poly-culture system with a low eco-footprint, directly supplying local restaurants – but it’s an entirely different model than the current industrial-scale salmon aquaculture feed lots. And therein may lie the rub. Twenty years from now the only thing that makes sense may be small-scale, low-footprint, local food production – while unsustainable industrial feedlots prove to be a thing of the past. But that may mean years of continued environmental impacts from the open net pen industry before the likes of Marine Harvest collapse or evolve – an unwelcome prospect for those concerned about wild salmon and marine ecosystems today.

On the topic of scale, there is one closed-containment start-up whose system has the potential to compete with open net pen operations. Absent from this panel – but actively involved in the conference in other ways – was BC-based closed-containment pioneer Agrimarine Holdings, which I profiled in a recent video documenting the construction and installation of the world’s first marine closed-containemnt tank. This particular discussion focused on land-based systems, while Agrimarine has developed tanks that sit in near-shore marine waters, anchored to the ocean floor. The company began their research and development well over a decade ago with land-based tanks, but discovered that the energy required to pump salt water uphill was environmentally and cost-prohibitive (both Aquaseed and Swift Aquaculture have chosen to use freshwater for their coho tanks). Already bringing product to market in China, where they installed their first set of tanks last year, and soon to do the same in Canada, Agrimarine is bright spot in the emerging industry. And unlike the much smaller Swift and AquaSeed operations, a group of Agrimarine’s tanks – which range from 50,000-75,000 fish each at this stage – offers a production capacity that approaches large-scale open net pen farms.  

On the matter of economic viability for closed-containment salmon, there is much debate. A recent report by Dr. Andrew Wright (available here – second item down) surveyed existing off-the-shelf technology and concluded: “There is no technical or economic barrier to closed containment salmon farm aquaculture for the production of salmon. Moreover, B.C. is advantageously provisioned for catalyzing an industrial change and for retaining the new emergent industry in B.C.”

Predictably, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans – whose support of the Norwegian open net pen industry has constituted a major conflict of interest in the opinion of myself and many others – responded with their own report, downplaying Dr. Wright’s rosy outlook. But this is to be expected from DFO, which continues to ramp up its support of open net pen farms while denying the problems associated with them. While these various small-scale innovators in the closed-containment field may have a ways to go in terms of their unit cost for fish and their overall profitability, continued technical development and economies of scale will only improve their bottom line.

In the q&a session following the presentations, David Lane of BC-based conservation group the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation addressed the other elephant in the room, which is the impact of all salmon aquaculture on the world’s forage fish, needed to feed carnivorous farmed salmon. This subject was discussed in detail at an earlier session that day. Depending on which apples and oranges you’re comparing – and whom you believe, as the numbers are all over the map – it takes anywhere from a couple pounds to 5 or more pounds of wild forage fish, such as anchovies, sardines, and krill, to raise a single pound of farmed salmon. This is a challenge for the industry, whether you’re talking about open net pen or closed-containment farms.

Yet, considerable advances have been made in recent years to improve these feed ratios, and more are in the works. Soy and barley proteins are being used to substitute feed fish; and fish oils essential to boosting Omega-3’s in farmed fish can potentially be derived from algae. By-catch from other fisheries and leftovers from processing fish that would otherwise go to waste are also being used sensibly in farmed salmon feed. Moreover, by enabling less feed waste, closed-containment farms can help in this area as well. But much more needs to be done regarding the feed issue before any farmed salmon product can be touted as truly sustainable.

The most telling commentary at the closed-containment conference session came from Petter Arnesen, Vice-President for Feed and the Environment for Marine Harvest (global) – by far the biggest player in the salmon farming business and owner of roughly half of BC’s farms. Arnesen is a skilled operator who made the trip from Oslo to provide message control for his company – a task he performs far more effectively than the industry’s local PR flaks. His comments here were an interesting departure from what has up until now been the party line for the Norwegian industry with regards to closed-containment – that is, largely brushing it off as a wild-eyed pipe dream. On this occasion, Arnesen was considerably less dismissive: “Closed-containment is not the solution to all the problems of industry…The future of salmon farming is a combination of solutions.” He maintained companies that want to produce the kind of volumes of fish that his does will continue to rely on current methods – but even leaving the door open to some mix of closed-containment was a significant and telling concession from the world’s biggest salmon farmer.

My feeling is that – besides the daunting capital costs and challenges of reproducing the same scale of production via closed-containment – the Norwegian-dominated open net pen industry is reluctant to embrace this new technology because it could undermine the monopoly they currently enjoy in the market. Their vague declarations of “exploring” closed-containment call to mind General Motors’ experience with the EV-1, chronicled in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? Like GM didn’t want the electric car to succeed, Norwegian fish farmers really don’t want closed-containment to work – for now, anyway. 

Today, these companies enjoy the technical advantages of decades of research and development of their open net pen systems and the ability to externalize many of their costs onto the public and marine environment. Moreover, as ocean tenures are increasingly hard to come by for new farms, the Norwegians face very little prospect of competition from new open net pen players in the future. Were closed-containment to become the norm, opportunities would emerge for farms near urban consumption centres like California, New York and Tokyo – which could open up the market to other players. On the flip-side of this equation, however, is the fact that publicly traded companies such as Marine Harvest and Cermaq/Mainstream don’t just need to sustain themselves – the need growth to satisfy their shareholders. And given these barriers to expansion of the open net pen industry, they may eventually have to turn to closed-containment to provide that new production they crave. It’s a catch-22 you can be sure the industry is grappling with in light of these advances in closed-containment.

The key take-away for me from this Seafood Summit panel discussion and my recent observations on the emerging closed-containment industry is that while it faces an uphill climb and likely many years of continued development to compete head-on with or supplant the open net pen industry, it’s headed in the right direction. The market demand and technical advances for closed-containment are encouraging to say the least. The other piece of the puzzle – much-needed investment capital – would help take things to the next level, though it remains to be seen from where and how much of it will be available in the near future.

Most of the people and companies involved in the closed-containment game came to it because they experienced firsthand the challenges and limitations of open net pen farming. It’s a solution that grew out of a very real problem. Whether or not closed-containment can ultimately work on a large scale (or whether smaller, more local operations are the way of the future anyway), the status quo of open net pen farming is unsustainable in the long-term – politically, environmentally, and economically.

If the Marine Harvests of the world wait too long to evolve with this new technology, they may well find themselves left behind.

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