Small farm owners Pam and Clint Cavers were blindsided on August 28, 2013 when Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives (MAFRI) staff showed up to “seize and destroy” their locally produced and cured prosciutto (pork).
Ironically, just months ago, MAFRI presented the Cavers with $10,000, naming their prosciutto the “Best New Food Product” in the Great Manitoba Food Fight competition.
Pam Cavers neatly summed up the Province’s approach to supporting local food, “With one hand they giveth and the other they taketh away.”
Agriculture
With the widespread damage to environmental protection inflicted by the federal government's omnibus Bill C-38, it was easy to miss the fate of more than a million acres of humble prairie grasslands. These grasslands provide habitat for endangered prairie species and provide carbon sequestration and other important ecosystem services.
Once the victim of hasty prairie settlement, the PFRA Community Pastures became grassland jewels through belated foresight and science-based planning. The termination of this world-class program was embedded in omnibus bill C-38, with ownership of the land returned to the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan government’s plan is to sell or lease the 62 individual pastures, privatizing these important public commons.
Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship is not living up to its name. Problems with the Environment Act, the environmental assessment, licensing and appeal process, and crown-indigenous nation relations become obvious in the case of the Daly Irrigation Development Group (DIGD) Environment Act License 3010, issued on July 5, 2012.
The next day, Water Licensing gave DGIG the go ahead to install irrigation equipment and to withdraw water from the Little Saskatchewan River to irrigate potatoes and other crops near Rivers, Manitoba.
In Canada, large industrial operations designed to raise hundreds to thousands of pigs in confinement have largely replaced the small, mixed farms that dominated the landscape before the Second World War. These pig factories typically rely on liquid manure systems and have been widely criticized for their negative impact on the environment, and worker health.
Food issues have been much in the news recently, but I want to focus on what can only be called an attempt to trash organic food and organic farming – an attempt that, as we shall see, fits into a larger agenda.
What do community gardens on vacant urban lots, mobilizations against sea-lice infestations on the B.C. coast, support for small-scale fishers, university and community-led elementary school food programs that promote local food, and farmer protests against the Canadian Wheat Board and the Trans-Pacific Partnership have in common?
They are all part of a growing movement in Canada towards food sovereignty.
Just one day after the May 2nd federal election, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz made it clear that the Conservative government would move to eliminate the Canadian Wheat Board's single-desk marketing power with legislation as soon as this fall.
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