Cracks in agricultural base more apparent

We live in a scary world right now.

As much as one can argue that we’re insulated and protected in rural Nova Scotia, any economic or social buffer that may have existed in the past is disappearing quickly.

There’s a serious storm on the global horizon pertaining to the issue of food or fuel and to dismiss it as something occurring elsewhere is to deny our future and put it at risk.

A worldwide shortage of each resource looms, lending credence to any argument that supports the preservation of farmland locally and a move toward alternative energy.

We have witnessed an ongoing and vitriolic debate concerning the disposition of agricultural land in Kings County in the face of persistent urban creep and a sense that some area farmers can’t make a go of it using traditional paradigms of operation.

Debt loads are onerous, there’s not enough return on the fiscal and human investment to farm and there’s only so much a person can do to add value to a product before creativity is exhausted.

Add to this a relentless consumer demand that wants new and improved at a cheaper price and small wonder farmers are feeling pinched, punched and underappreciated.

When the expense outstrips the income, who wouldn’t look elsewhere for a way to float the boat, meet the bills and make a buck, right?

But international rumblings should encourage politicians, farmers, consumers and stakeholders to reconsider the value of farming in the region and how crucial a role it’s likely to assume in the long-run.

Once you surrender agricultural land for development, for instance, there’s no reclamation. When you pave a field, the opportunity to farm it goes the minute asphalt is applied.

Can we afford to forfeit so valuable a resource because political will and/or vision are lacking to explore workable and reasonable alternatives? I wish I knew the answer, but smarter folks than me will have to come together to brainstorm a resolution.

All I know is the economic base of this region – our agriculture industry – has been under pressure for some time now and the cracks are starting to show.

I sense that the foundation has weakened somewhat and we must do everything we can to sustain the stability we have enjoyed in the past. We need to take care of our own as much as we should share our bounty with the province, the nation and overseas.

It’ll be no small task, however, because we suffer I think from a not-in-my-backyard attitude that whatever’s happening ‘out there’ won’t filter down sufficiently to have an effect here.

That may have held true once upon a time, but as Bob Dylan once sang, the times they are a-changin’, and we have no choice now but to accept the reality and plan accordingly.

The world will soon come knocking and it’d be foolish not to have an answer.