Farmland preservation part of new world order

We have been warned of this situation for decades, if not generations. Food -- the main product of the Annapolis Valley -- is rapidly becoming a premium around the world.

Things as simple as rice or flour cost more and more as the months pass and people who could ill afford it in the recent past simply can't now.

Many fowl have come back to roost to cause this situation. Fossil fuel prices make transportation more expensive everywhere around the globe. As well, related to this, petroleum companies are using more and more ethanol produced from corn and other food items in order to stretch stocks.

This situation affects individuals around the world as well as large companies like Frito-Lay, which has a facility in New Minas that depends on corn and the like for food and snack production.

As well, the growing economies and relative affluence of China and India require more and more meat, which takes even more grain to produce. But who can argue with their right to eat the foods we've enjoyed for generations, often to excess?

Add to this mix climate change and its destruction of traditional farming areas from the North American prairies to Asia to Australia and the problem compounds dramatically.

There are increasingly complicated and competitive world marketing systems for food, especially with these new or expanded demands and uses of agricultural products. The increasing oil crisis should have been a heads-up for us.

In fact, there is reported talk among Asian countries such as Thailand, China and Vietnam to create a rice cartel.

And, as is happening here in Kings County, there is the major issue of rival uses for farmland. As the situation in east Greenwich and elsewhere in the county shows, local farmers have to be able to make the most of their lands. They can't be an encumbrance. So we have to take a long look at releasing such lands in urban zones or collective compensation for those affected by the need to preserve the general agricultural nature of most of a lot of farmland.

Given the widespread effect of the food crisis, the situation isn't going away for some time and maybe it's a permanent fact of life and death in our new world order.

Not too long ago, people were saying that farmers around the globe were producing twice as much food as necessary and eradicating hunger was simply a matter of proper distribution.

Larger countries were exporting more to poorer ones, stifling the local production means and know-how, particularly in Africa, and those African countries helped curtail their agricultural sectors to make way for those foreign products. Now we're reaping what has been sown -- or not sown.

Here in Canada, Nova Scotia and Kings County, it's time we understood the importance of producing our own food and not just repeat that as a patronizing mantra.

We can do it and transportation costs -- at least into the province -- make it viable.

Until then, respect is due the sector in general. People have to learn about one of the most important aspects of a society -- its food sources, and how to produce it domestically. The general move away from the farm in recent generations has to stop, at least in attitude. We are, after all, still a rural country, which should help us overcome most of the challenges we're about to face.