This destruction of the family farm in the prairies began over thirty years ago, before Cargill, Kraft created the conditions of buying up dairy farms and prairie dairy operations in order to drive milk prices down by controlling the market. Thus the National Farmers Union in the early seventies called for the first ever national agribusiness boycott of Kraft.
In Canada the Kraft boycott in the seventies was the equivalent of, and cooresponded too, the grape boycott in the U.S. It was all about saving the family farm.
After Kraftco. came the American giant Cargill in the late seventies and early eighties buying up the grain elevator business. Green Cargill elevators dominated the prairies. Slowly at first and then becoming ever dominant. As the farm economy collapsed during the eighties more and more family farms in Canada and the U.S. were sold off to the agribusiness giants like Cargill and then ADM.
Farmers who survived did so because they bought up their neighbours farms, added mechanization, and cooresponding bank debt, and increased crop yeilds with fertilizers and seed from Cargill and then Monsanto. Crop production such as GMO Canola from Monsanto became a major export product. Farm production of grains was now part of the global agribusiness market, no longer did we have local food production for local use.
This was the changing and is the changing nature of food production in Canada. First the Loaf: And it has been subsidized and supported by the government. Regardless of political stripe. Mulroney Conservatives opened up the market to ADM, they allowed the last independent mill to be sold to them, Robin Hood Mills, and for a reward Mulroney was give a post as a director of ADM.
The Liberals before them had allowed Cargill in with a wink and a nod. Trudeau's disdain for the west and farmers was well known. And its cost was the death of the family farm.
The new Liberal regime, under Chretien and Martin, added the stake to the heart of farmers by allowing Monsanto's expansion of GMO production of canola, they opened up the possibility of radioactive food sterlization, and the Supreme Court allowed for Monsanto's patent and control of it's GMO seeds at the expense of the soveriegnty of the family farm.
No one is innocent in the death of the Family Farm in Canada, no government federally or provincially.
Read the whole article here:
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/04/truth-about-farm-crisis.html
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on April 17, 2006]
Note: http://plawiuk.blogspot...
The Truth About The Farm Crisis
Posted on Monday, April 17 at 09:13 by eugeneContributed By
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Some of us realized it over 50 years ago that mechanized, chemical farming is the death knell not only of the family farms, but of the overall system of food production.
We were having lunch one day in one of the Chivers orchards at Hardwick, about 5 miles from Cambridge, in the early '50s, when my old friend George Kester said to me: "I'm telling you Eddie mate, all we're dong here is breeding f.... super bugs".
The chemicals killed George, with multiple cancers, as they have killed millions of others around the world since. I was lucky to get out of it, but at a very high price.
The Green Revolution was and still is a monumental fraud, as I've been saying, again, for over 50 years. Its whole purpose was the forced collectivization and expropriation of the family farm system to please the corporate Mafia, its paid off politicians and its priesthood of con artist economists, using fraudulent statistics to justify it as the "road to salvation".
Now we have children who look and behave like pigs, 30 to 50% cancer rates, a diabetic explosion, sicknesses we've never heard of, more and more medications, allergies etc. etc. all over the world.
So, what else is new and for what logical, or humanly acceptable reason ?
Come on you brave supporters of the neocon system, but first let's hear what your farming experience is ?
Ed Deak, Big Lake. BC.
<br />
<br />
Eating Fossil Fuels <br />
<br />
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer<br />
<br />
SNIP<br />
<br />
<br />
The Green Revolution<br />
<br />
In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.<br />
<br />
The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6<br />
<br />
In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7<br />
<br />
SNIP<br />
<br />
To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute (<a href="http://www.tfi.org">http://www.tfi.org</a>), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.<br />
<br />
Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.<br />
<br />
In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt. <br />
<br />
SNIP<br />
<br />
Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.<br />
<br />
It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22 Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.23 Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.<br />
<br />
Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from farmland.24 Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability. Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.<br />
<br />
Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.28<br />
<br />
SNIP<br />
<br />
Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.<br />
<br />
Continued at:<br />
<a href="http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html">http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html</a><br />
<br />
So what are the alternatives?<br />
<br />
Making the World Sustainable<br />
<br />
Mae-Wan Ho<br />
Biophysics Group, Dept. of Pharmacy, King’s College, Franklin-Wilkins Bldg.<br />
London SE1 9NN, UK.<br />
<br />
Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 0XR, UK<br />
<br />
Plenary lecture at Food Security in An Energy-Scarce World international conference, 23-25 June 2005, University College, Dublin, Ireland.<br />
<br />
A fuller version with references and figures are posted on ISIS Members’ website. <br />
<br />
Abstract<br />
<br />
Decades of an "environmental bubble economy" built on the over-exploitation of natural resources has accelerated global warming, environmental degradation, depletion of water and oil, and brought falling crop yields, precipitating a crisis in world food security with no prospects for improvement under the business as usual scenario.<br />
<br />
There is, nevertheless, a wealth of knowledge for making our food system sustainable that not only can provide food security and health for all, but can also go a long way towards mitigating global warming by preventing greenhouse gas emissions and creating new carbon stocks and sinks.<br />
<br />
One of the most important obstacles to implementing the existing knowledge is the dominant economic model of unrestrained, unbalanced growth that has already failed the reality test. I describe a highly productive integrated farming system based on maximising internal input to illustrate a theory of sustainable organic growth as alternative to the dominant model. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MTWS.php">http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MTWS.php</a><br />
<br />
<br />
How to Beat Climate Change & Post Fossil Fuel Economy<br />
<br />
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho tables a proposal around a zero-emission, zero-waste farm after a highly successful workshop with living legend George Chan, who created dozens such farms to eradicate poverty in third world countries<br />
<br />
“Dream Farm is exactly what we need to feed the world, mitigate climate change and let everyone thrive in good health and wealth in a post-fossil fuel economy”<br />
<br />
A fully referenced illustrated version of this paper is posted on SIS members’ website. <br />
Why Dream Farm?<br />
<br />
We featured Professor George Chan’s “zero emission” or “integrated food and waste management system” in an article entitled “Dream Farm” in a recent issue of our magazine (SiS 27). This farm could potentially solve the energy and food crisis that the world is facing (see Box 1), and contribute significantly to mitigating climate change. That is why we are proposing to set up Dream Farm II here in Britain.<br />
<br />
Box 1<br />
Why We Need Dream Farm<br />
<br />
No more cheap fossil fuels<br />
<br />
United States food sector uses 17 percent and Canada 11.2 percent energy, not including export-import, food-processing machinery and buildings, waste collection and treatment, and roads for transport<br />
<br />
Water running out<br />
<br />
It takes 1 000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain; aquifers are severely depleted in major breadbaskets of the world<br />
<br />
Productivity falling<br />
<br />
Grain yields fell for four successive years; world reserves are at lowest levels in 30 years<br />
<br />
Loss of croplands from unsustainable practices<br />
<br />
The world loses 20 m ha, or 1.3 percent croplands annually from soil erosion and salination; replacing lost croplands accounts for 60 percent deforestation annually, which greatly accelerates global warming<br />
<br />
Urgent need to reduce emissions<br />
<br />
Food sector in a European country (France) is responsible for more than 30 percent carbon emissions, not including import/export, household use and storage, processing, and imported fertilizers<br />
<br />
Global warming threatens food production<br />
<br />
Yields fall 10 percent for every deg. C rise in night temperature; the latest prediction is an increase in the earth’s average temperature of 1.9 to 11.5 deg. C within this century <br />
<br />
Continued at:<br />
<a href="http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DFHTBCC.php">http://www.i-sis.org.uk/DFHTBCC.php</a><br />
<br />
<br />