Flip of the Coyne

Save Bill C-474 on April 14! Your new action can stop the biotech industry from defeating this Bill!

Dear Spencer,

Your actions are making a huge difference. The biotech industry has launched a heavy lobbying campaign to stop Bill C-474. Despite this industry pressure, the Liberals spoke in favour of Bill C-474 tonight – but their voice was not strong enough to drown out Conservative opposition, yet. The Conservatives voted against the Bill, but Bill C-474 is not dead yet. The official vote on Bill C-474 will happen on April 14!

Bill C-474 would require that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.” The Bill could stop GE alfalfa and GE wheat.

The industry association CropLife is so worried about the influence of your letters that they have copied CBAN’s campaign, asking their own public to write to MPs as well. (You can have a peek at the copy-cat campaign here: http://www.croplife.ca/web/english/biotechnology/Bill_C-474). We also know that key Liberal MPs have been under a lot of pressure from the biotech industry, including a steady stream of calls to their offices. But your voices are still being heard!

Here are some ways you can make a difference, today:

1. We have set up a new action. You can write an instant letter to Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party leader from CBAN’s website http://cban.ca/liberalact474 Ask him to make sure all Liberal MPs are present on April 14 to vote in favour of Bill C-474. Tonight, the Liberal Party spoke in favour of a transparent debate on the Bill in the Agriculture Committee but will they vote for the Bill on April 14? (The NDP and Bloc support the Bill.)

2. You can also send your MP another letter from http://cban.ca/474action – Your continued pressure is important.

3. Below is an action alert that you can send around to your family, friends, and around your community. For more information and other action see http://cban.ca/474

4. Please consider supporting CBAN’s work with a financial contribution so we can continue this strong campaigning. CBAN is a small organization that is entirely funded by charitable donations and small project grants. CBAN has limited resources but is up against well-financed corporate giants like Monsanto. Donate online to keep this work going and to help us start our new campaign to stop the GE “Enviropig™” at http://cban.ca/donate

Please join us to stop GE crops from causing untold harm to Canadian farmers.

Thank you for your continued action and support, Best regards

Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network

P.S. Contact me any time at 613 241 2267 ext.6 or coordinator@cban.ca

It has been 11 days since I planted my little garden in the window and I have to tell you I am very happy with the way it is progressing.

Everything has come up now even the few little herbs I planted have started to pop their heads through the soil. The green onions have taken the longest to get going and I have already thinned out some of the carrots I planted.

I am also happy to report that I have had great success with my beans and peas that I planted as a test to check the germination rate. The peas surprised me the most since I did nothing to them last year we left the plants on the wire and I just picked a couple of pods and planted them 100% success. The beans I only had 1 out of 8 that did not come up. All in all it has been pretty successful so far.

I was able to plant my tote garden on Friday the 19th after leaving the bin in front of the fire for a while.  I wanted to let the soil warm

up before planting my seeds in it.

Shortly before noon on Friday I planted my seeds.  Carrots, spinach, lettuce mix, swiss chard, green onions, basil and parsley and a few radishes mixed in for good measure.

Planting my little inside garden was a greater experience that I had originally thought it would be but not for the reasons I originally thought.  My 6 month old son got to sit beside me in his excuser-saucer and watch me.  I was a great moment we got to plant our first seeds together.

I have been keeping the tote as warm as I can.  I placed it where it gets a good amount of sun light but not so that it takes up the entire window.  I did this on purpose.  I wanted to provide the amount of sunlight that someone in an apartment may have.  So I have just pushed over the kitchen table a bit giving the tote half the window.  At night I close the blind to keep some of the draft off and I have a small lamp that I turn on to provide some light and some heat.

Sunday I came in the house around 3pm and was surprised to see that sometime in the past 24 hours the radishes, lettuce and 1 swiss chard were already coming up.  I couldn’t believe it, I know that it doesn’t take long but with the cool nights you never know if the seeds will sprout fast or take their time.

Monday (Today), even more lettuce, radishes and swiss chard is up. I am excited that things are coming around so fast.  To be honest I almost thought that I may have to start over I have used some seeds that are not exactly new, some may even be a few years old.

More updates in the days to come as I am sure that even more activity is coming soon.

I have been talking the talk for a long time but I have not really been a container gardener. I thought that today I would change that not only to show that it can be done but it can be done cheaply too.

Fresh Food From Small Spaces

Rather than reinvent the wheel I dug out my book Fresh Food From Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal to find a design for a container garden that uses a tote.  So off town to find an affordable tote that I can cut up for my project.  I found myself in the local Fields store where I found exactly what I was looking for a tote for $12.00 but thanks to a 10% off sale I got the bin for $12.10 with taxes.

The next thing I would be a colander and some sort of cloth to cover the water feed tube.  I ended up at Princeton’s Loonie Bin (don’t worry it is just the local dollar store) where I found a plastic colander for $2.00 and a package of cheese cloth for $1.00.  Things were looking up.  The next thing I would need would be some soil but it is the middle of March where would I find a bag of potting mix this time of year.  I decided to check out the local Home Hardware which was the right choice.  Home Hardware had bags of soil for just $3.69 each so I picked up 2 sacks for a total of $7.75.

Soil

I was surprised that my total so far is as low as it is at $23.21.  Now I have not bought seeds yet, to be honest I am not going to I have a big box of seeds sitting in my living room and I really don’t want to buy any more.

I have bought all the parts to this project that I needed and then I looked around my place for the rest.

What I was missing was a couple of pieces of 2×4 roughly 10 inches long and a piece of pipe or a tube 18 inches or longer for the watering tube.  Of course I will need something to hold the tube in place and some tools.

The tools I will need are a jig saw, hack saw, electric drill, marker and tape measure.

mark out where you need to cut

Step 1 to my container garden.

Put your 2×4′s in the bottom of your tote standing on their side.  Measure the dimensions of the inside of the tote from where the 2×4′s sit.

Step 2

Take your maker and mark on the lid of the tote the dimensions that you just measured.  Place the colander in the centre of your lid and trace around with your marker.

Step 3

With your lid on the tote cut the centre out where you traced for the colander cut a little inside the mark so that it will not fall all the way through.  Then cut the rest so you get the bottom of your inside.

Floor to your container garden

Once you have cut your lid to the right size then you need to attach the 2×4′s on their side on the bottom of the new floor.  There is a reason to do this.

Step 4

Take the pipe that you have and put it in one corner of the tote.  This will be for future watering.  On the bottom end of the pipe take some of the cheese cloth or you can use burlap if you have any and cover the end.  Attach it with something that will keep it there, a rubber band, wire, string what ever you have.  You will need to make one last cut to your lid where in the corner where the pipe will go.

When you secure the pipe in it’s corner make sure it is not directly on the bottom of the tote you want to have some room so water can still drain out.

Step 5

Put the floor in place.  Once you have the floor in it’s place put the colander in the hole you cut out.  You may have to cut the handle off it is has one if not carry on.

just before the soil is added

Now that everything is in place dump 1 bag of soil into the tote.  Depending on what you are going to try and grow in your new tote garden will determine how much soil you will need to add.  The bags I used the first one gave me 6 inches of soil I then added another inch from the other bag.  6 inches should be enough but I wanted to make sure since I am going to try carrots in my tote garden.

Now that you have read my really bad directions I bet some of you are still trying to figure out why the false floor, the pipe and the colander.  Well it is really simple and actually pretty ingenious.  The colander is to put dirt all the way into the bottom of the tote.  The false floor provides a reservoir for water and that is why you have the pipe.  The pipe will provide water directly to the reservoir and with the soil being in the water it will allow the soil to draw from the water source as needed so on those hot days when you put your tote garden in the sun you shouldn’t have to worry about it drying out too fast.  The colander should also act as a drain when you are watering from the top down allowing the water to drip out and into the reservoir below.

Well that is part one of this little experiment I will update as progress is made and I will take more time to ensure that it is up to snuff I know this entry is a little poor.

If you want to know more about container gardening or you want a better set of plans than the ones I provided I strongly suggest you get the book Fresh Food From Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal it is packed full of information.

Published Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Vol. 61 Issue 6 Page A4

Since I have started writing about food security people have been coming up to me on the streets in shops and even at work and have asked me, “What can I do?”

This week I am going to focus on what we can do.  Although there will be a role for local government I believe that most of our local food economy needs to be driven by we the people.  Food security needs to be a grassroots movement.  Food has become part of the global economy and when this happened government stopped concerning itself with feeding the local population and became more concerned about imports and exports and how it affects GDP.  We all need to eat; without food you die.  For this reason food is something that we need to take ownership in and work together to secure.

I have talked to many local residents who all say they would shop at a local farmers’ market.  I love this idea but saying you would shop there is one thing.  If there is to be a farmers’ market there needs to be two things: a group of residents who are willing to organize it, and farmers who will supply the market.  Before farmers will grow produce for a market they need a market for which to grow, so if people in Princeton really want a farmers’ market they need to get one organized.  It’s that old saying; if you build it they will come.

Plant a garden this spring.  People think that gardening is hard.  Growing is easy.  Some of the preparation is hard.  With the economic climate everyone should be thinking about planting a small garden even if it is just some lettuce and tomatoes you can offset some of the hard times with only a few dollars in initial expenses.

A program I have been reading about lately is called “Grow a Row, Share a Row”.  This program helps those who might not have the ability to help themselves.  If you have a garden, you grow an extra row and it goes to a local food bank or other local social program.  This could be taken a step farther if you have a neighbour who cannot garden due to health, age or living condition.  You could grow a garden with them in mind.  I am starting to really love this idea as it is not about me but about helping my community.

Lastly we come to a community garden project.  I have stayed off this topic for a reason. I was once an elected official and when I look at projects now I have to admit I look at them and ask how much will this cost the taxpayers?  For this reason I have been looking at how can we do a local community garden plan that costs taxpayers little to nothing at all.  I have come up with two ideas: firstly, Town Council grants use of some public land to a community garden society to develop.  I am not sure if this would work.  My second idea costs taxpayers upfront but would see the costs recovered over a period of time.  Town Council would need to see if there is really a need first then depending on demand council would develop a percent of a park or parks with a deer fence and plots and water.  Water is already accessible in the parks so there would only be a need for some hydrants.  The costs would then be recovered with a plot rental or lease.  The recovery cost would be spread across the plots and time to make it affordable to those who need the plots.

Published Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Vol. 61 Issue 6 Page A4

Inspect yourself. The Federal government has proposed that poultry processing plant employees would be responsible for policing themselves under the proposed “poultry rejection program.” The program would make processing plants responsible for monitoring the birds as they pass down the line, and according to veterinarians who monitor food safety, the plants would no longer have to publicize the reasons that the birds were rejected.

This is mind-boggling to me. We have an avian flu outbreak in the Fraser Valley, an ever growing peanut recall, and recalls on some products for listeria and our government has turned over the safety of our food system to someone who may have just started working in a processing plant making less than 12 dollars an hour. I just cannot wrap my head around it.

I have been talking about food security and the need for local, sustainable and safe food systems. I have begun to pay more attention to what is happening with our food systems and it is not good. All you need to do is turn on the evening news and you will hear of more health risks due to our factory farm system. Take the peanut recall; it now seems that the peanuts that contaminated the products being recalled were actually turned away at the Canadian border for being dirty and then taken to a plant in the US where they were processed and sent around North America. A handful of dirty peanuts have contaminated millions of dollars worth of products.

Food is a commodity because we trade it, but food is not like other commodities; we cannot live without food. We have allowed our governments to dismantle our agriculture in return for agribusiness. Agribusiness has centralized the means of production and has over processed our food stuffs to the point that when we have a small outbreak or contamination we end up with a large percentage of our system being compromised. Be it lack inspection or new unproven science or genetically modified seeds our food system is under attack twenty four hours a day seven days a week. Small family farms are swallowed up by larger ones that need to produce more to stay competitive and keep costs down so food processors can bring us the newest, cheapest and fastest way to make dinner.

Take a look at the products on the shelves at your local grocery store. How much of it is raw natural food? A bit of produce, some meat, and a bit of dairy and in some places there is natural flour. You can now buy a roast that you take out of your ice cream tub looking container put it in your slow cooker, add water and you’re done. It might have taken a couple extra minutes to add a couple spices and a potato, but a roast is a roast. The difference is the frozen one you buy has preservatives and has been prepared and frozen for you before packaging. I would wager the one you bought from the local rancher and some fresh vegetables would taste better and would only add five minutes to your cooking time. If we have fewer controls in these massive processing plants the chances of things going wrong shoot up drastically. So at a time when our food system is under siege our government has decided to take a page from Wall Street and let the processors police themselves.

Published Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Vol. 61 Issue 5 Page A4

60,000 turkeys from one farm will be killed and disposed of by the time you read this and that number may rise before publication date.  Why are 60,000 turkeys being killed?  There has been another outbreak of Avian Flu (bird flu) at an Abbotsford farm and there are at least 23 other neighbouring farms under quarantine.

It is time that we as a society begin to re-examine our farming practices.  Factory farming has allowed us to mass produce our food, but at the same time, when you have outbreaks of disease you are also losing massive quantities of your food line and the possible spread and mutation of the disease can cause devastating results.  The 2004 outbreak of avian flu saw the destruction of 17 million birds.  17 million!  Of course, not all the birds culled were infected, but officials could not take the chance since bird flu can jump straight from birds to humans with devastating effects.

It seems that these types of outbreaks are becoming more and more common, be it avian flu or another salmonella contamination.  It has become clear that factory farming is failing us.  I will agree that a small local producer will have higher overhead, might not produce as much per acre, but I will argue that local production can meet local demand and can do it in a more ecologically sensitive manner.  This means that in the end the local farmers can feed their community in a way that is sustainable and at the end of the day will help create a stronger and healthier community.

The mass production of food is starting to endanger our food delivery system.  Just think back to last summer when the salmonella outbreak was thought to be from tomatoes.  The tomato supply was completely shut off and the industry was devastated as a result.  In the end it turned out to be something other than tomatoes.  There was also the California spinach incident.  This week it is peanut paste and peanut butter products.  In the end it doesn’t really matter what is infected.  It is that fact that it is happening more and more often and people are dying as a result that is unacceptable.

Our food is no longer local.  It comes from all across the world and we have very little control over quality or growing conditions.  When there is a disruption in the supply line or if there is a health risk our grocery chains’ shelves become bare and we run out of food.  When there are disease outbreaks in livestock we end up losing not only a few head of cattle or a couple flocks of chickens.  We lose a percentage of the entire national production and in many cases it causes shortages and puts the entire food system under stress.  We need to change in order to protect ourselves from disease or other food borne illness but also to protect ourselves from food shortages.  We need to change not only how we produce food but how we think of food.

Published Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Vol. 61 Issue 4 Page A4

It’s hard these days not to discuss President Barack Obama.  When I was thinking about what to write about, I was going to avoid talking about the topic because of the 24-hour coverage since the inauguration, but really, how can you not talk about what could be one of the most significant moments in history since the fall of Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square and the end of the Soviet Union?  Obama has inspired a generation of Americans, not to mention all peoples around the world.  I personally have big hopes for Obama.

My hopes for Obama aren’t for him to bring an end to the war in Iraq, or to save the economy, although it would be nice to see both.  My hope is that Obama recognizes that urgent action needs to be taken to reign in green house gases.  Without real leadership, alternative energy will not grow out of its infancy and into the mainstream.

Obama needs to break America of its oil addiction.  If America does it, the world will follow.  Obama needs to look at the massive trade deficit with the rest of the world and get the American people back to work.  Again, if America does it, the world will follow.

Why do I want America to break the chains of oil and head back down the road to self-sufficiency, ultimately hurting the Canadian economy?  The answer is simple: if America changes its economy to a self-sufficient green economy, Canadian governments will follow suit, new markets will open up and new companies will rise to fill demand.

The green economy or eco-economy is the future and it will take some real leadership to make the change.  Nations, or more specifically, regions, will need to become more sufficient to make the new economy work.  With the current economic collapse, it is time to take advantage and begin the switch in earnest.

Our national government is slow to make any major changes in the way we do business.  Our government decided not to follow the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to which our nation had agreed.  This is where we need strong leadership from our southern neighbours.  Obama and his Democratic Congress and Senate can show the world that it needs to change, and with the stroke of a pen, they can make this happen.  Ottawa would have a hard time not signing onto a new economic plan when our largest trading partner no longer does business as usual.

It’s time for change.  Obama might just be the person who can make that change happen.  Now we need to have hope that he will do the right thing and make the change that he promised.

Published Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Vol. 61 Issue 3 Page A4

Thinking about the future can be a scary thing.  Global climate change, peak oil, food shortages and so many other dire warnings are thrown at us daily.  Out of all these depressing warnings could come a brighter future.

I will admit that there is probably not a silver bullet that will save the planet, replace cheap oil and produce copious amounts of food, but there could be a multilayered strategy that could steer us in a new direction.  If we look at the peak oil and the inevitable collapse of the oil industry (which will have catastrophic effect on how we live our daily lives), there might be a way to lessen the impact by looking at our past.

At one time in our history we had local power production that powered local businesses and homes.  There is also local agriculture.  It feels that every year another family farm is sold off and is used for recreational property, or worse, subdivided.  The loss of local agriculture is a trend that has swept across North America leaving communities at the mercy of the oil-intense industrial agriculture and the oil-dependent transportation system to bring it from processing plant to big box outlet.  At one time communities just like ours had an agriculture base that could provide a large percentage of the total food consumed in the area.  Today those farms are mostly gone.  The grain fields that once grew on the Summerland Road or Dairies that provided milk to the community are but footnotes in our 150 year history.  Today dairy is something that comes on a truck, not from a cow, and grain is something that is grown far off on the Prairies.

Local agriculture has become non feasible because a family farm has a hard time competing against a factory farm that can outproduce them for half the cost.  The lack of local markets and new regulations have made it hard for farmers to rationalize working a full day’s work at a job then coming home to farm for the next 8 plus hours.  People have become detached from where their food comes from.  Some younger people have never even seen a cow or a chicken.  They have never cooked a meal from scratch.  This disconnection and the want for cheap fast processed food has helped push the family farm further into obscurity making it part of history, not part of reality.

In the end if the warnings about global warming and the estimates of 30 to 40 years for the end of cheap oil are accurate we may have no choice, if it’s not too late, to look at the way we have done things in the past.  Those old ideas of local economy may just be the way to save our way of life.