Provocations

Prison Farms - support growing

In March I wrote to our local MP about the proposed closing of Canada's prison farms.  It was a polite, even complimentary, letter but I received no acknowledgment at all. 

This federal government move seems to be driven by an ideologically-driven wish to punish and, perhaps, a lack of respect for the fact that learning to grow food is one of the most important skills a citizen in this era could have -  not to mention the fact that farming provides very good learning opportunities to develop the basic attitudes and understanding that makes for a good worker. (I speak from my experience as a market gardener). According to Kingston this Week:

Dianne Dowling, Vice President of the National Farmers Union . . . argues that the farms allow inmates to acquire key transferable skills. They not only learn practical trades such as meat-cutting, food processing, and equipment operations, but also become accustomed to acceptable workplace behaviour.

“The prison farms offer inmates a chance to rehabilitate by learning employment skills such as [punctuality], job commitment, and teamwork,” she says.

Productivity at these farms is worth noting, she says.

The eggs and dairy products produced at Frontenac Institution and meat processed at the Pittsburgh Institution abattoir are used in federal prisons in Ontario and Quebec, and hundreds of dozens of eggs have been donated to the local food bank. The farm at Frontenac spends about $900,000 in the local economy, Dowling points out, helping support businesses such as farm equipment dealers, feed mills and tradespeople.

As the sign says, the inmates are paying their way through agriculture, Dowling states.

With continued public protest against the proposed closures and examples like New Zealand's successful organic prison farms, there's hope yet that we may see the continuation of a simple, sane and productive aspect of prisons and prison life.

• The Future of Prison Farms - audio and transcript
• Ending prison farms defies logic - Oct.24/09
• Cultivating convicts - Dec.4/09
  

Greater long-run savings and humanity in small, de-centralized businesses.

Quote for the month:

How can individuals assist the transition? Support the small, local alternative, even if it entails inconvenience. And often it will. The big, mainstream standbys (big banks, chain stores etc.) are often subsidized in hidden ways to make them more convenient, and to make them seem to the individual consumer to be more economical. According to dominant theory, bigness implies an "economy of scale" through mass production and bulk purchasing. But the real costs of added transportation resulting from centralized production and control (including extra pollution and its cascading environmental effects) are rarely factored into the accounting. Also we must learn always to question the ideology of efficiency, since many human needs and interests are only degraded by its ruthless, myopic calculus (should one, after all, strive to be an "efficient" parent, giving a minimum of love for a maximum of obedience?).

 - Richard Heinberg

The Kaslo Food Security Project

A good example of a community approach to food security:

Planting the Seeds from Hadas Levy on Vimeo.

A Blueprint for Restoring Fragile Ecosystems

By piecing together a complex ecological puzzle, biologist Willie Smits has found a way to re-grow clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans - and creating a thrilling blueprint for restoring fragile ecosystems.

About Willie Smits
Willie Smits has devoted his life to saving the forest habitat of orangutans, the "thinkers of the jungle." As towns, farms and wars encroach on native forests, Smits works to save what is left.

Watch this remarkable and inspiring 20-minute video.

Harper government's plans to shut prison farms show lack of vision

It's coming up for a week since I sent an e-mail to our local (Kamloops - Thompson - Cariboo) member of parliament, Cathy McLeod. With no acknowledgment or reply yet, I will publish it here as an open letter:

To: Cathy McLeod MP

Greetings,

I've found your presence in this area to be refreshing. While it will take a bit to get me to vote Conservative, your style and apparent substance have had me paying attention and considering dropping in to your 100 Mile Office.

However, today I was reminded of your leader's style of governing and, unfortunately I have to see you in that context. I awoke to the story about the Harper government's plans to shut prison farms and, aside from vague rationalizations, what came thorough to me was meanness, lack of social vision and the blinkers of ideology.

Living in a more rural area, I'm hoping you will understand the folly of this move and perhaps can persuade Mr Harper that there is little to be gained and much to be lost by shutting down these farms. I suspect the ideological drive is a punitive one and a fear of being "soft on crime". However, if people are to leave prison with some hope of success in our society and a reduced likelihood of recidivism, surely it can only help for them to develop the work habits that form the foundation of job success. While I've been a web designer for ten years, for three years I ran a three-acre commercial vegetable garden. I saw how the compulsions of caring for animals and crops created a meaningful framework for some of the young people who worked for me, one in which their actions had clear consequences.

Add to this, the expanding importance of local food supplies and the related value of growing/raising at least some of our own food and I can only wonder: what is he thinking? Please see what you can do to get your leader/party to exercise a little more social vision and keep his eye on the big picture.

The mainstream media has pretty much failed to pick up on this story. Here are a few references added subsequent to the above post:

• Prison workers protest closure of farm programs for inmates
• Canada's prison farm system being phased out - announcement (read comments that follow)
• Prison farm closures imply farming irrelevant: NFU - National Farmers Union responds
• [update June 3, 2009] Union fighting government's plan to close prison farm

US Politicans and FDA accept continued use of bisphenol-A

Image © Michael Jastremski under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 License

If you follow this kind of thing, you probably heard that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared the plastic-modifying chemical, bisphenol-A, to be safe.  From here in Canada, where our ideologically-conservative government recently banned its use in baby bottles, this came as a bit of a surprise.  My skeptical stance did get me wondering what role lobbying might have played in rescuing the peddlers of BPA but, to be fair to me, I did withhold judgement. This article, by the generally-conservative Economist, quickly tipped me back into a more familiar, corporate-wary view.  It does a good job in clearing cobwebs and uncertainly on the issue. My conclusion: avoid the stuff. A few quotes:

A bill in the California assembly, which passed the state senate in May, would have banned the use of bisphenol-A (BPA) in products used by children under the age of three. An avalanche of shameless lobbying killed it: the vote was 31 to 27 against, with 22 weaselly abstentions.

The brouhaha over BPA echoes the battle over smoking and cancer a generation ago. Sooner or later, health authorities in most developed countries will heed the scientific evidence and follow Canada’s lead in banning BPA - at least in baby bottles, if not in all household products.
...............................................................................................
. . . over 100 scientific studies have linked low doses of BPA to prostate and breast cancer, reproductive abnormalities, accelerated puberty in females, low sperm count in males, neurological effects similar to ADHD, diabetes and even obesity.

The effects have their biggest impact during early stages of development. Hence the special concern about protecting infants and young children from exposure to even the smallest doses of BPA. Altogether, more than 300 research papers have now been published on the health hazards associated with BPA.

Grow up? Highrise farming, is it viable?

Dwindling land, expanding population . . . where will we grow our food? The back- or even front yard vegetable garden is gaining in popularity. Yet even "yards" are a dwindling phenomenon. So, where do we go?

"Up", some say - and inner city gardens are beginning to catch on. At a recent Sustainable Buildings Canada gathering in Toronto, reported by the Toronto Sun, there were advocates urging us to go higher:

Graff, a master's student in architecture at the University of Waterloo, is urging us to see acreage in stacks, not spreads: his prototype for vertical agriculture – aptly dubbed "Skyfarm"– climbs 59 storeys, with intensive hydroponics packed onto every level.

By his calculations, Skyfarm could grow enough food for 50,000 people a year – nowhere near enough for a substantial portion of the city. But install several Skyfarms in neighbourhoods throughout any major metropolis, and the prospect is tantalizing.

For inspiration and assistance:

• The Rooftop Garden Project
• Prepare for an urban disaster with an urban garden
• The urban vegetable garden brings health and community

Expanding local food options

I guess this is something of a public service announcement, especially for those northern hemisphere folks into summer right now and exploring options in the light of new energy and food realities:

Energy Farms Network  -   Exploring your local food shed

This summer, eschewing the long distance, jet-fuelled holiday, and not going far from home can present a dual opportunity: first, for those with gardens, extra time and effort can be spent to increase the yield and variety; and second, time can be taken to do a reconnaissance in search of local producers of food that the garden cannot supply. These actions can assist in building local food reliance.

Summer is a time for planting, tending and harvesting. A garden can be created almost anywhere, whether you have a large yard, a porch, or a window box. With a good yield you can practice preserving it for the winter. Traditional and effective methods of food preserving include pickling, canning, fermenting and drying.

Read more

See also: Front Yard Vegetable Garden

Intermediary corporations making large profits from the food crisis

This video from The Real News expands on the influences behind the global food crisis. An extract from the transcript:

DEVLIN KUYEK, RESEARCHER, GRAIN: The food crisis is essentially a structural problem. It goes much deeper than this kind of perfect storm scenario that a lot of people have been painting. It has to do with three decades or more of structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization policies that have forced many countries to dramatically alter their food production and to shift to becoming, in many cases, import-dependent. So there's been this move to push production into places that they say is more efficient, and the advice given by agencies like the World Bank and the IMF has been to say, "Let others look after your food production. They can do it more efficiently. You focus on other things."

A simple explanation of how we got into the food shortage

If you're not distracted by terms like "green" "left" and "socialist", here's an article that, in my opinion, does a pretty good job of explaining the current food shortage situation, one which most news media tend to describe as taking us by surprise.  Not much of a surprise is the fact that the religion of the markets, with its belief in minimal "interference", is at the "heart" of this mess. A couple of extracts to set the scene:

In Haiti, where most people get 22% fewer calories than the minimum needed for good health, some are staving off their hunger pangs by eating “mud biscuits” made by mixing clay and water with a bit of vegetable oil and salt.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the federal government is currently paying C$225 for each pig killed in a mass cull of breeding swine, as part of a plan to reduce hog production. Hog farmers, squeezed by low hog prices and high feed costs, have responded so enthusiastically that the kill will likely use up all the allocated funds before the program ends in September.

Some of the slaughtered hogs may be given to local Food Banks, but most will be destroyed or made into pet food. None will go to Haiti.
................................................
A senior editor of Time warned in the magazine’s April 11 edition: “The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War … And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world … when circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose.”

Read on