Ghost towns our legacy if we ignore farm community

Last week I went into the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia to view a multimedia installation that reminded me why we all have to stand with the farmers of this province.

Nine works by Graeme Patterson comprise Woodrow. Woodrow is or was a once-bustling agricultural town in Saskatchewan. It now has 15 residents, including Patterson since he took over his late grandfather's machine shop as a place to make models, puppets and animated films.

On first glance, Woodrow appears devoid of life. All the buildings, the grain elevator and the church are gray, weathered and falling apart. The hockey arena is the only place showing obvious activity. But bend over and peer into Patterson's creations and you’ll see rats running through the floorboards of the farmhouse and ghostly deer with their eyes bright from unseen headlights.

One of the saddest pieces is called the Pothole and it masterfully depicts the wreckage that Woodrow has become.

Patterson used 16 hours of time-lapse photography as a skyscape to accompany the old trucks, machinery and building materials poured into this rural dumpsite. Woodrow symbolizes all the promise of Canadian agriculture that seems about to evaporate in the face of global forces.

In one province east of Woodrow, the Manitoba Farm and Rural Stress Line has been established to offer confidential information, support, counselling and referrals to farm and rural families. "We're just a phone call away," says their website.

Each Manitoba farm feeds 350 people, but it sounds as if their travails are similar to those developing for farmers in Nova Scotia.



Hard-pressed farmers

The bright yellow ‘Farmers Feed Cities’ campaign is another initiative by hard-pressed farmers trying to find ways of fighting back. It was launched two years ago by Ontario Grains and Oilseeds, a coalition that represents more than 25,000 farm families who grow corn, soybeans, wheat, seed corn, canola, white and coloured beans.

Ontario’s 25,000 grain and oilseed farmers are responsible for growing $1.7 billion in produce at the farm gate every year. These products make up a huge portion of Ontario’s $9.7 billion food processing industry, whose jobs are located mostly in towns and cities. It’s a remarkable economic engine, but not surprisingly the grain and oilseed sector has been facing serious financial challenges.

Ontario's closest competitors in the U.S. and Quebec have price protection programs; Ontario does not. In 2005, corn and soybean prices dropped to their lowest levels in 25 years, making it extremely difficult for farmers to sell their crop and make enough money to buy seed to plant again.

The ‘Farmers Feed Cities’ campaign seeks to make a stronger link between farm and non-farm families. The coalition arranged for over 30,000 postcards indicating support for farmers to be sent to Ontario's Premier Dalton McQuinty.

As well, the campaign has a significant educational component. Consumers simply don't understand how big business and government decision-making affects farming and the food on the family table.



‘Buy Nova Scotia’ campaign needed

I certainly wasn't the only one last week to feel encouraged when NDP leader Darrell Dexter said that this province needs a ‘Buy Nova Scotia’ campaign to help our struggling farmers. Dexter proposed spending $250,000 on an ad campaign to encourage Nova Scotians to buy local produce and meat.

The best party leader in the province indicated that the governing Tories have promised a similar campaign four times in the last eight years, but failed to follow up on it. "We say this is the time to deliver on this promise and farmers want them to," he said last Friday.

The NDP plan calls for provincially funded organizations to buy Nova Scotia-grown products whenever possible. Stickers would also be added to local goods to alert shoppers. A similar program in Manitoba helped farmers in that province, Dexter said. Seems to me this kind of drive is a no-brainer. If we support fair trade internationally, we should take care of our own first.

It was last July that the Women's Institutes started their WI Buy Local Challenge. Participants were asked to do the following: to eat at least one home-cooked meal per week using mainly local ingredients; to incorporate at least one never-before-tried local ingredient into their diet; to ‘brown-bag’ at least one meal per week that is primarily made of local ingredients; to talk to at least one food retailer and one food producer about local food choices; to complete the WI Buy Local Challenge survey; and to choose local food products whenever possible. I know WI survey-takers were at the

Wolfville Farm Market last fall and the results will be released soon.



Public consultation

Meanwhile, the Farmers Markets Cooperative of Nova Scotia, which is a network of 10 province-wide farm markets, is about to hold a public consultation. Sessions in Truro and Kentville are being sponsored to shape Agriculture and Agri-Food policy that will impact agriculture in Nova Scotia. The local one is slated for Friday, Feb. 23 at the Wandlyn

Inn. It will run from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

In addition, producer Eric Frank was telling me at the market Saturday that the Inaugural Assembly of the Nova Scotia Food Security Network and for the Annual Food Costing Partnership Workshop Day will take place March 8-9 in Debert.

It's being billed as an opportunity to talk about food security issues, network with others and become involved in a process called Provincial Participatory Food Costing.

I've encountered some farmers who understand the drive to sell from the farm gate and bypass the middleman who soaks up all the profit.

Listening to local producers like John Lohr and Lance Bishop, one senses they have the ideas to help turn certain components of agriculture around. Some government backing would be fine, if only government understood the mammoth issues involved in relocalization.

There are examples from elsewhere to light the way. Take Tom Janzen, owner of Bread and Circuses in Winnipeg. Janzen was a farmer who got his start in the food business by selling his bread at the Portage Farmers’ Market. He currently owns successful food restaurant/bakeries, is a strong advocate of local food and workshop speaker.

Nobody wants to see the fine family farms of the Annapolis Valley look like the decrepit and abandoned barns and grain elevators of Woodrow, Saskatchewan. There’s no question the challenge involves every one of us who live in the shadows of the North and South Mountains.