Provisioning and Protectionism

My father loved farming. After his death I learned how torn he was about leaving the farm, and going on to university. But could a living be made as a farmer? He was, as you can see from this picture, a member of the Future Farmers of America at his high school, in the 1940s. In the late 1970s, I was the first female member of that same high school's FFA. Though he worked with agriculture, in some ways the education Dad got at this time--and the one that I, in some fashion, rejected, ultimately, by becoming a poet-- was an education that helped along the consumer economy (teaching farmers how "produce, more and more" without paying attention to the external costs of that over-mechanization, over-fertilization, and all else)...the consumer economy we're now desperately trying to heal ourselves of....


In West Virginia there are a handful of folks trying to re-orient the food system. But the mid-Atlantic state, like elsewhere in the nation, is going to face an uphill battle doing so, now that fuel prices have plummeted. It’s going to be difficult to get people to re-think a food system that went national in another time period, another period of low fuel prices.

If I had the opportunity to speak with the new President of the United States, I would tell him to re-think the fear-mongering about protectionism that has been accompanying his valiant efforts to heal the ailing economy. I would tell him that protecting one’s national interests is not necessarily a bad thing.

Too, I’d tell him that not all Canadians are in favour of “free trade” – because it’s not free and it’s not fair, in most instances. And, although it helps a few businesses here and there who have learned to do well across a border, by and large it helps those at the top of the economic "heap," not the majority of us here just trying to get by. That's not to say to throw all international agreements out the window; but....we need to recognize each nation's, each locality's need to feed and otherwise provide for itself, to create a healthier whole nation and planet.

We in Canada are a part of a resource economy, and if we focused on provisioning ourselves first, in all dimensions (primary, secondary, tertiary), and then went outside of our borders to do some business, we would survive the current storms. We might be labeled protectionist but we would, if we focused region by region, build in the end a healthier economy, one less prone to the kinds of catastrophic fluctuations we’ve been seeing in the last six months. By the same token, it should be recognized that the Americans are going to do what is in the best interest of their country (and so they should). And so, if we look after re-orienting the Canadian economy, and making it more self sufficient instead of hoping that the Americans don’t enact a domestic procurement policy, then we as Canadians would be better off in the short term and the long term, regardless of what the Americans do.

There is an irony to the fact that I fought against NAFTA, and yet I owe my being in Canada to its skilled labour provisions....a story for another day...

This morning’s CBC radio news report out of Halifax was astounding—interviewing shoppers at a local mall, it appeared the majority of people don’t pay any attention to where what they’re buying comes from, or bother to make the effort to buy locally or Canadian! I am within walking/biking distance of an abattoir that offers locally processed meats, those animals grown locally as well. There are farmers in my village, and a mom and pop business just up the road that sells the catch from Arichat. I think, with gratitude, of the true wealth they are creating by their efforts. But more needs to be done to support them.

When I did my little 96 k way experiment and, after a modest Christmas shop (still all local foods) stopped buying—meaning that, other than butter and milk or what’s called half-n-half or “blend” I pretty much stopped going to the store—all of a sudden I realized what was right by my doorstep, practically. And I didn’t wonder, either, about what was in the package that I’d purchased: I knew. And I knew that, if I was unhappy with the quality or if something was not quite right, I knew exactly where to go to deal with it....not to a bunch of UPC codes on a website, frantic about food safety. No, I have been eating well, and healthily, and deliciously. A fact for which I remain grateful...

The local food realities, such as they are and such as they could be developed, could also be incorporated into a regional food system, which would have, of course, consequences for big-scale agri-business in Florida or California. But this in fact might be a bit-more-do-able, in terms of keeping costs down and lessening the impacts of truck transportation on roads, the climate, our wallets....if less food, and only those items that some Northerners cannot live without (mangoes! almonds!) which will not grow but in these places....And, next time, I’ll be putting up my “Exclusions” list...my own personal list of what I figured I couldn’t live without (completely) which meant thinking long and hard about the fair trade and organic options from “away”....