About 23 years ago, I advocated for increased daycare. I discovered to my amazement that some right-wing groups were against Statistics Canada. StatsCan was painted as a leftist organization because they showed that more women were working outside the home and they had a poverty line that the right-wing think tanks disagreed with. As a librarian, I have to say that Stats Can had never struck me as a biased organization.

So we should not be surprised that the Harper government wants to stop making the Long Form Census mandatory.  The actual lives of Canadians do not match the social conservative agenda. Statistics show that Canadians aren’t made up exclusively of religious white married two parent families with several children; Mom at home and Dad working hard enough to support them all.  In fact we are all over the map.

My friend who is unemployed and whose husband is retraining thinks that the next census will show through the employment and income figures that the recession is not ending, that many Canadians are still in dire straits and looking for employment.

Making the long form mandatory is important. I belong to organizations like the Crime Prevention Council who regularly conduct surveys, as does the Region. The most difficult part of voluntary statistics is the response rate. It can be 5% or 54%(a very good rate) but never almost 100% like the census. This means that the data is reflecting those who answer. Wikipedia uses the example of a survey of how hard professionals work that would be incorrect because those working hardest probably don’t have time to answer a voluntary survey. How many of us hang up the phone when Angus Reid comes calling?

The region uses census data to plan transit, bicycle paths, and social programs. How easy it will be for the federal government to cut programs, especially those pesky social and housing programs, when the data is no longer accurate.

Here are some information sheets the planners at the region have created from the last census to give an accurate snapshot of the region. http://bit.ly/9Lzggd

At Barries asparagus farm with Mr. Barrie and some of his products

A few posts ago, I discussed my reading of the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” Not wanting to be one of those “city folks with a garden” who get all their agriculture info from books, I jumped at the chance this year to take the Waterloo Federation of Agriculture’s farm tour.

First of all, don’t mention “Factory Farms” in a bus full of farmers! Intensive farming is also a sensitive phrase. They also rolled their eyes (I saw you guys) when the owners of Oakridge said people used to come in looking for meat from happy cows. Pesticides are a hot topic. One said to me that the world could not be fed if pesticides were discontinued. Another noted that in the case of animals and anti-biotics, he would rather eat from a healthy animal.

Onto the trip.

Farms are experiencing land pressure from commercial/industrial/residential development/hobby farms/gravel/environmentally protected areas.

It is hard to make a living on a farm, especially with one crop like asparagus. A lot of farmers and/or their spouses are working off the farm as well as trying to run the farm. We visited three farms where the owners are making a go of full time farming.

First we visited Barries asparagus farm. Their famous asparagus is only available for approximately 6 weeks in the spring. They are thriving on asparagus only by partnering with local canning and manufacturing enterprises to put asparagus in all kinds of products such as salsa, pickles, crackers. The Barries run a store on their property to sell their goods and the food goods of other local or nearly local farmers. These small enterprises need the help of municipalities willing to permit it! They barter with the other farm stores, trading corn and even coffee for asparagus products. I found Barrie asparagus in my local farm store, Herrles, famous for their corn (and the golden beets are great too). Barries is so successful that they renovated the old homestead into the store. http://www.barriebrothers.com

The farm next door, Herman Poultry Barns, run a conventional farm, raising and selling broiler chickens to KFC,Maple Lodge and Swiss chalet. Their chickens are sent to a distributor in Toronto. So when you go to KFC and Swiss Chalet, there is a good chance you are eating local! Who knew?

 The chickens are grown for 34 days in an open barn (not caged), before sold. They have to have low dose antibiotics as any chickens in numbers are prone to disease. I know my daughters’ three chickens had to have feed with antibiotics in it when they were chicks. That’s why she calls her eggs ”free range” not “organic”.  The Herman chickens are fed from corn grown on the farm. The land is fertilized with leaf litter from the Region of Waterloo leaf collection program and chicken manure.  At the end of the 34 days when the chickens are gone, the two barns are cleaned and sterilized before a new batch comes in.  Herman’s uses solar walls for energy efficiency and have worked on environment improvements for manure management. The farmer is able to make a living from his conventional farm.

Our final stop was Oakridge Farms. Mark and Cindy Gerber run an enterprisse that champions “fair trade” for local farmers. Chicken, pork, game, and the Gerber’s beef is sold by asking the farmers to look at their costs and a reasonable return and that is what the meat will be sold for. The meat I bought seemed the same price as Sobeys regular prices. Each freezer has the name of the farmer and a picture of the family raising the meat.  This method stops the ups and downs that farmers experience selling on the open market.

The Gerbers raise Angus beef that is drug free and fed on oats, barley and grass. All the meat is frozen right after butchering to cut down on disease or you can go out on the kill day for fresh. http://www.oakridgeacres.ca/

Our final stop was at FS Partners, Ayr branch, a farm service supplier. They are a coop who buy cash crops like corn and wheat from farmers. They sell soybeans all over the world but they cannot be genetically modified as they sell to Europe and China who do not accept GMO soybeans for human consumption. For the farmers they work with flexible financing and sell their product. they also sell seeds, marketing and chemicals  to conventional farmers. They are a division of Growmarket Agriculture Cooperative in the States and compete with the world. Today it is a global market and the farm service sector must be nimble. Farmers are competing with the cost of fertilizer in China, for instance.

Emerging trends in farming are larger farms, part time farmers, an aging population, and lack of succession planning. Also new technology the up and down of commodity prices, environmental concerns, consumer buying habits and traceability.

Here are two good websites about Canadian farming.

http://www.foodlink.ca for Waterloo Region local farming and farm products.

http://www.farmissues.com/ Includes a pdf of a great booklet on Canadian farming under resources. For instance, Did you know?

1 98 % of Canadian farms are family owned.

2. More traditional farms will not feed the world

3. Hormones are not used in dairy cows, poultry and pigs in Canada

4. Farmers have reduced pesticide use by 52% since 1983.

5. Organic farms are the fastest growing segment of Canadian agriculture.

Last Friday, I took a tour of North Dumfries with the Waterloo Federation of Agriculture. Much to my surprise, not only agriculture was on the agenda. We also toured some “rehabilitated” gravel pits.

First let me say that we need gravel. It is used to build houses, stores and roads. Gravel was used to make the 401 in 1963 and we saw the remains of the pit where the gravel came from, now covered in corn. The problem with this pit and others, according to the WFA, is that the process removes the topsoil,then digs out the gravel. The company is supposed to rehabilitate the land back to agricultural land but in fact it cannot be rehabilitated or is not rehabilitated. For example, the former pit we saw from 1963.

The land in North Dumfries is some of the best agricultural land in the province because it sits atop gravel and is therefore well drained. The topsoil is excellent. But the extraction process scrapes off the topsoil and removes the gravel. The company is supposed to put everything back but there is a hole where the gravel was and the top soil is not returned. The corn in the field now used for farming is smaller and stunted compared to spots that have never had the gravel removed. The farmer is working and has worked for years with manure and crop rotation with hay and alfalfa to rehabilitate the soil. We also saw areas were the gravel pit wasn’t rehabilitated at all and another spot that had been turned into a golf course. A golf course is fine, but good agriculture land is forever out of production. 

One solution that seems to be working is a farm where the farmer did not sell his land to the gravel company but only rented it. The farm family keeps a close eye on the operation and makes sure that a field where the gravel is removed is returned almost completely to agricultural land. It should be noted that large sections of North Dumfries farmland are designated by the province as areas of gravel extraction. North Dumfries also includes environmentally significant lands and sensitive water recharge.

This leads to the problem the Region is having with the province.  The province does not like our proposals to deal with gravel, as noted in the June report on the Regional Official Plan. Everything was OK with the province except for this section:

 The Province has recommended two significant modifications to the ROP that are inconsistent with the policy direction as adopted by Regional Council. More specifically, the Province is proposing modifications that would:

Permit mineral aggregate extraction within the two year time of travel in Wellhead Protection within Wellhead Protection Areas.

Permit manufacturing of asphalt materials associated with mineral aggregate operations

The Region does not want this to happen as most of the Region’s water comes through groundwater filtered by gravel. We are one of the few areas in the province that gets its water from groundwater.

When it comes to gravel, the province of Ontario, environmentally progressive in other ways, still seems stuck in the early 19th century, when mineral extraction was King.