No fad to feeding ourselves

It’s hard to get a good reading on how important people see our agricultural industry.

Humour me while I reiterate some somewhat dated, but very useful statistics from the August 2005 study conducted by the Acadia Centre for Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship.

In Kings County in 2001, total gross farm receipts reached $160 million. Farm and farm-related employment stood at 2,500. The multiplier for the full employment effect: 2.9.

There are other considerations: total sales impact in the county due to the industry is $650 million, about a quarter of the county’s total output.

Food processing involved about $350 million, sales in finance, insurance and real estate accounted for $29 million.

That was all before the severe blow of the Canard poultry plant closure and its still-to-be quantified ripple effect. There is much still here – direct sales, agri-tourism and so on.

We could import more food, probably cheaper, from elsewhere – even in Canada. Recent experiences have shown foreign food supplies aren’t always safe, or available.

The short of it is, you can’t control quality and health standards in production in other countries. It’s not that you can’t always control them; it’s that you can’t control them at all.

It can be the standards have met our wants and needs - so far, in most cases - but there is no saying how long that will last. Or how long borders remain open.

At the Eastern Kings Chamber of Commerce quarterly session Sept. 13, horticultural producer Andy Vermeulen, poultry processor Sue Payne and grocery chain buyers Brian Pitts and Mike Mauti spoke of the intricacies and pressures involved in the agri-food production and processing sector.

Agriculture is one of those things everybody seems to have caught hold of, but don’t quite know exactly what to do with. What we’ve been hearing lately is all good, but it’s little - and late.

An answer to the lack of public knowledge and awareness of agriculture and its place in our economy and society – and culture – is to have the subject taught in schools. Northeast Kings Education Centre offers agriculture as a credit course, among the first in the province. It should be mandatory, with special effort put into getting its point across in urban areas - not that folk in more rural settings aren’t often as needy of agricultural education.

As an aside, the move by local schools to get healthy may be getting out of the realm of usefulness. For example, whatever their policies on “eating healthy,” schools should allow cafeterias to sell locally-produced potato chips, made with local potatoes and healthy oils; locally processed, fair-trade plain chocolate bars; provincially-produced cola; and locally-processed, fair-trade coffees. We all know the brand names of these products. Apples should be a main feature. At one time, schools used to give apples to students.

The current “buy-local” campaign and resulting awareness are certainly constructive; hopefully, they’re not a fad. There are countries around – some reasonably well off – that can’t feed themselves. They are, and will probably remain, at the mercy of others.