Recent comments

I was lucky enough to find Wendell Berry early on in university (through reading Barbara Kingsolver) who has wrote a lot on this problem. In particular is an essay called 'Conservationist and Agrarian.' I think a lot of work could be done applying Berry's ideas of good work/farming/life to an urban/city setting and something along the line of Jane Jacobs to ideas about planning in the country/rural setting. One particular incidence of this problem is Canada's Federal Government. As much as a sustainable "wilderness" would/should benefit country folk more than city folk it seems that only the Conservatives speak effectively to non-urban Canadians. In particular the Liberals, I think, need to do a lot better at this because as much as I would like there to be more options and more party representation in the government, in the near future at least, our Prime Minister is either going to be a Conservative or a Liberal. I would prefer a Liberal Prime Minister myself, ideally with a minority government including a good number of NDP, Green and Bloc MPs, but it isn't going to happen unless Liberal MPs are elected in country ridings by rural Canadians.

Having recently entered a university horticulture program, I've been researching jobs. One of the biggest problems, especially in the agricultural area, is the low rate of pay as compared to the high cost of education. And the labour intensive greenhouse food production jobs are treated by the companies as jobs for people for whom minimum wages and minimum working conditions are 'good enough'. If the sector really wants to attract people, they'd better start treating those people decently. This, too, is a reflection of the attitude that growing crops is menial work.

Two observations having lived in huge cities and in villages. The first observation is about language. I now live in the country, now a rural area. We divide people by the language choices we make. Rural and urban instead of city and country draw real and hard lines in conversations from my experience. The second barrier is not considering the 'other' person's situation. We often treat 'other' places like a novelty, amusement or theme park - whether city or country. The country is not a personal picnic area to wander about and dig out wildflowers at whim. In the same way that the city is not the place to toss garbage on the subway or be rude to strangers. If want to work with people for our collective good we need to acknowledge that people live where they live. I have seen too many well-intentioned policies get passed that result in further impoverishing our farmers. Just think of the Northern Shrike protection on the Carden Alvar that resulted in ranchers cutting down Hawthorn trees to avoid further impact income and the perseption of devalued land, which is inessence many farmers retirement fund. We too often define being environmental with taking the people and their everyday life out of nature to protect it. The world doesn't work that way. We need to redefine how we live with(in) nature and its limits.

Great comments, Peter... I've always felt that the environmental community was mistaken for not trying to appeal more to rural Canada. Not only is this an opportunity to effect real change - it's also essential. Farmers care about their land, and they have intimate, life-long experience living and working on it. In short, the fact that environmentalism is often considered an "urbanite" endeavour by the vast majority of Canadians, is perhaps our largest obstacle to making any progress. I hate to say it, but environmentalists themselves share some of the blame for furthering this perception. No time like the present to change that.

Small-scale and local production systems would work if we weren't trying to feed 7 billion people. If our goal is to feed everyone on this planet, then small-scale/local often makes little sense from an energy and material efficiency perspective. It also makes a lot of sense to consider the life cycle of a food product when deciding if small-scale and local is the better option. The environmental benefits of small-scale local food production may be lost if the product is overly packaged or is driven to market in pickup trucks by individual farmers. Alternately, a large-scale overseas food production system may use very energy efficient modes of production (i.e. human labour) and use very energy efficient containerized shipping to get their product to the North American market. Of course, you then get into issues of different environmental standards, potentially weak labour laws, lack of fair trade options, etc... There is no easy answer to the debate of small-scale/local vs large-scale/global in the context of 7 billion people. There is no way of escaping the fact food production systems, whichever form they take, will result in some level of environmental impact. There ARE easy answers when it comes to choosing whether or not to eat meat, however. Study after study shows that even a small-scale, local diet consisting of meat will be more energy and resource intensive than a vegetarian diet from near and far. Emma in Sointula, BC

Unfortunately, the locations we've identified for eating bugs in Toronto are all candy shops serving up candy coated crickets; not exactly a dining "experience." There is, however, an annual event in at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls where you can enjoy a bug feast (usually held some time around February). For more information, you can check out their website at: http://www.journeysontario.ca/Adventure/Butterfly_conservatory.html If you get to the bug feast or find some other place to actually dine this way, we'd love to hear your review here!

So refreshing to hear someone speaking the truth about the ecological limits to our economic delusions. And Dr. Rees speaks so intelligently about this. He should be an advisor to both Harper and Obama. Rex Weyler.