4 All together, now


January is a time of new beginnings and fresh resolve. We make resolutions and hope to do better. We reflect on what happened last year and set goals for the year ahead.


Anyone who’s travelled across Canada knows that BC stands out as particularly different, and demands special resolve to negotiate not only the landscape but the pressures that come from being jammed up against mountains, sea and – in a word – people. City dwellers often idealize rural areas as community-focused but if you’re on the wrong side of the community, watch out.


The rural-urban interface is one of the perennial issues farmers and their residential neighbours face, especially in BC. It’s not just where warehouses meet berry fields in the Lower Mainland, it’s where retirees settle on Vancouver Island and in the Interior. Being able to farm – profitably – amid diverse activities is what BC farmers do year in and year out.


It’s therefore heartening to read Business Council of BC chief economist Ken Peacock’s recent report on the province’s farm sector. While senior levels of government champion the role of exports in growing BC’s farm economy, Peacock reminds us that the food we export has local benefits, too. “While expanding and deepening the export base is essential to ensuring BC’s future prosperity, it is also important to recognize that the local population benefits immensely from having a rich and diverse domestic agriculture sector,” he writes. “Much of the province’s agri-food industry is comprised of smaller, niche producers, often cultivating higher-value products used in the domestic food services sector. This product diversity coupled with growing success in export markets is the foundation of the sector’s strength and resiliency.” The interdependence of urban and rural activities defines BC as much as the


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JANUARY 2017


competition between these activities for land, people and other resources. BC’s small but growing urban farm sector, the revival of hop and grain farms to serve urban food artisans, and the relocation of large-scale farms to tracts of land in the Interior that simply aren’t available elsewhere reflect the dynamism and versatility of BC farms.


Whether we’re managing urban development or rural nutrients, we’ve all got a role to play in the province. This year, let’s find a way to make our roles work for everyone.


First-World issues on a one-world planet


There are times when it seems as if complaining and moaning are in danger of replacing ice hockey and Internet kitten videos as our national pastimes. This is not to say there are not issues that deserve concern and comment but someone’s latte- mucho-grande having the


The Back 40 BOB COLLINS


wrong flavoured drizzle probably


isn’t one of them. Neither is an hour-long airport delay on the way to Mazatlán.


To put such problems in perspective, a tenth of the people in the world earn less than $2 a day. It would take all the wages for two days to pay for that latte and all the wages for the next five years to cover the cost of ten days in Mexico. Canadians are among the most advantaged people in the world. We live in one of the most technologically advanced societies on the planet. We have a stable, democratic government, a charter of rights and freedoms, and the rule of law. We have universal health care and a broad social safety net trying to help the disadvantaged and vulnerable. So why are so many people unhappy? And so


angry?


Try to imagine what kind of conversation we would be having right now if police had actually responded to the wishes of 1,000 Alberta protesters chanting “Lock her up” (in reference to Premier Rachael Notley) from the lawn of the legislature? The protest concerned a carbon tax in Alberta


and nothing seems to rile up Canadians more than taxes, carbon or otherwise. Reviled though they might be, the fact of the matter is taxes go straight to the heart of who we are and how our society works. We are one-and-all justified in expecting our governments to be prudent in spending our tax dollars but when it comes right down to cutting them deeply, what would we be willing to give up? The armed forces? The Americans have a large military and with a new president who likes to wheel-and-deal, we might save a bundle by contracting out our national security to them. How about transportation? Should we sell the infrastructure to private interests or go to a strict user-pay toll model? How much health care could we get rid of? Education? How much of the police force could we do without? Make everyone buy a fire extinguisher and close up some fire halls? Should we pull the plug on sewers? Privatize parks? Or, at the very least, sell the CBC to Rogers? Perhaps a little perspective is in order before we make those decisions.


Last summer, a friend we hadn’t seen in some time came to visit for a few days and told us of six months she spent in a developing country. The country is large, populous and entrepreneurial. People there earn roughly one-tenth of what we earn in Canada. Our friend spoke glowingly of the wonder and beauty of the nature there and the rich human culture. That said, she was appalled at so many crowded lives. The major tourist attractions were tidy and reasonably well-kept but away from the beaten tourist track, it was another story.


Publisher Cathy Glover


604-328-3814 . publisher@countrylifeinbc.com Associate Editor David Schmidt 604-793-9193 . davidschmidt@shaw.ca


The agricultural news source in British Columbia since 1915 Vol. 103 No 1 . JANUARY 2017


Published monthly by Country Life 2000 Ltd.


Contributing Editors Peter Mitham . Tamara Leigh news@countrylifeinbc.com


Advertising Sales & Marketing Cathy Glover sales@countrylifeinbc.com


Production Ass’t: Naomi McGeachy . Happy New Year, Peter! www.countrylifeinbc.com


Sometimes mere blocks away, the streets were filled with garbage and in many instances functioned as latrines as well. She spoke of the very beautiful beach where she went to watch the sunrise. In the pre-dawn light, she noticed small holes that had been dug over the entire tide flat. Closer inspection showed them to be toilets dug during the night awaiting the rising tide. How, she wondered, could people so seemingly educated and advanced live like this? So utterly different than us. But are we so different?


Remove the infrastructure we take for granted and ask, would we behave any differently? Google “garbage strike in Vancouver” and check out the images if you want to see just who we are when there isn’t someone cleaning up after us. Having had fishermen travelling up and down the riverbank on our farm for the past 37 years, I can attest to what happens all too frequently when someone on foot is more than a few hundred yards from a flush toilet.


We, too, often judge others’ behaviour in the same context as our own without considering what we might do in their place and what we might be capable of in more dire circumstances. For all our cultural differences, our human differences are negligible. A week without food and seven and a half billion of us would all be on the same page of a very scary story.


Most of our complaints must seem childishly ironic to at least 70% of our species. We probably owe it to ourselves to try to see how we look in their eyes.


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