Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

from Canada

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On 1/2/2004 at 7:58 PM Elbert van Donkersgoed <elbert@christianfarmers.org> 
wrote:

>Corner Post
>Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed
>December 29, 2003
>
>The year 2003 ushered in big changes for farmers. The consequences, both
>good and bad, will reach far beyond the New Year.
>
>Provincially, it's the Nutrient Management Act and the different approach
>envisaged by our new Liberal government. Nationally, there's the Canadian
>Agricultural Income Stabilization program, recently confirmed by
>federal/provincial signatures. Internationally, one sick cow has rewritten
>the future for Canadian beef production and other ruminants.
>
>"Refocused" is a good way to think about our new Liberal government's plans
>for the Nutrient Management Act. No longer will the regulations under this
>act be agriculture's primary contribution to environmental stewardship.
>Source water protection rules are coming, designed to implement all the
>recommendations of the Walkerton Inquiry into the tainted water tragedy.
>Not
>only will this refocus enforcement responsibilities on the Ministry of
>Environment: more significantly, nutrient management rules will start off
>farm, pushing into the background the balance between on-farm nutrients and
>crop needs.
>
> "Permanent" is a good way to think about the just-signed
>federal-provincial
>Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program. This is a good attempt
>to overcome the need for ad hoc programs triggered almost annually by
>crises
>due to weather calamities or price disasters, and a much-improved approach
>to stabilizing farm incomes. When prices or production collapse,
>governments
>are committed to substantial support. What's the hitch? Payments will be
>based on the average of previous years -- and we know that those averages
>are set to continue their long pattern of decline.
>
>"Unreal" is the catastrophic impact of one sick cow in Alberta. Ad hoc
>guidelines developed in response to an outbreak of epidemic proportions in
>Great Britain have been implemented holus-bolus in response to one sick
>cow.
>The tortuous process of writing new, more appropriate international trade
>rules for countries with a documented low level of mad cow disease, just
>got
>longer and more convoluted -- the result of the identification of one BSE
>dairy cow in Washington State.
>
>On the surface, our food system has become a maze of contradictory
>messages.
>One sick cow in Alberta -- the U.S. slams its border shut to good Canadian
>beef. One sick cow in Washington -- American beef remains safe and
>wholesome. The search for the source of the infection is just an abundance
>of caution, and designed to strengthen safeguards and firewalls. At a
>deeper
>level, the adoption of industrial approaches to food safety and promises of
>"satisfaction guaranteed or your money refunded" has created expectations
>of
>"no risk" in the food system. But, food starts out as living organisms --
>plants and animals. Claims of "no risk" are out of reach. We have created
>expectations the food system cannot meet.
>__________
>Elbert van Donkersgoed is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the Christian
>Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post has been heard weekly on
>CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario since 1997. Corner
>Post
>has an email subscriber list of more than 3,000 and appears regularly on @g
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>

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