So, carrying on from last week, what are the options for a food supply for our Golden people, all eight or ten thousand of us?
Making a list of options would take some thinking.
Thinking, of course, isn’t easy. It’s not something that we really like to do. At least not about everything. We’re happy, of course, to think about the fun stuff. But we’ve never had to think about where the spuds really come from, so to ask any of us to think about it is almost rude.
‘Go waste your own time thinking about it if you want, I’m busy!’
Of course, we’re busy, I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy, and to get our heads around an issue that may never happen is a real challenge. It’s worse when it’s all so vague, when there’s nothing to look at and say whether we agree with it or not. And it isn’t our job anyway, that kind of stuff is up to the government!
Of course it is, isn’t everything?
Of course, as much as we would like the government to do all the things that we can’t or don’t want to do for ourselves, governments don’t do everything for us.
Let me suggest some examples that indicate that they don’t do everything for us, and since we’re talking local issues here, I’ll talk mostly about regional district issues, since that is largely my background and what I know a little bit about.
Around Golden, we have done several things for ourselves, and they are all things the provincial or federal governments wouldn’t do for us.
When I first became Area ‘A’ Director in 1977, there were four things that the town and rural people shared costs on. They were the arena, curling rink, landfill and library. Since that time, we have added the Nicholson Fire Department, mosquito control, house numbering, ski hill and, for about thirty-five years, television. All of these were Area ‘A’ funded projects except the ski hill, which started out funded only by the rural area. And a similar list could be put together for projects that the town residents funded without the rural area.
So we have done things in the past that the provincial or federal government didn’t do for us. And a little bird could say that some of the things on the list above were necessities, and we didn’t have any choice in doing them. In fact, there isn’t one mentioned above that was an absolute necessity. There were people here long before any of those things.
But do you know what is an absolute necessity?
Eating.
And not just once a day, but three times a day.
So we need a secure food supply.
I mentioned above that it’s hard to get our heads around something that we can’t see.
I agree.
So let me put a little meat on the bones of a food supply discussion. And again, in doing so, these are just ‘blue sky’ ideas that have occurred to me. You might have much better ideas than I do.
In putting forward food supply options, it would seem to me that there are two major things we would have to keep in mind.
I think we would need to plan a supply that would keep our Golden people supplied with some basic food items that would sustain us at least in the short term, but hopefully also in the long-term. And again, that’s eight to ten thousand people.
Secondly, it would have to involve local production, meaning the food would have to be grown here. As I understand it, reducing the cost of freight on food is one of the ways to make it successful. Freight from California may not be out of reason, but it’s still a cost, and reducing it may help pay for other parts of the package, which would not be as efficient here as in other places.
So, I think those two elements are important.
But after that, what could the infrastructure of a food supply look like?
There might be two ways.
One, you might have heard of quota systems. We have a quota system in B.C. for the amount of timber that can be cut in the province each year. This was designed to make sure we didn’t overcut in some years and then run out of timber in later years. This was put in place in the early 1960’s, where the average of what sawmills had cut in the years 1959, 1960 and 1961 was averaged, and those averages became the annual quotas for those mills to cut of crown timber.
Quotas are common in the agricultural world, where dairies can only produce so much milk, chicken farms can only raise so many chickens, and similar situations exist in other lines.
So quotas for food production could perhaps be geared to food products grown locally, with, perhaps, for example, so many tons for potatoes, so many tons for carrots, so many tons for peas, etc. Now, there are likely a hundred arguments for why this wouldn’t work, or some could say that those same foods could be grown right now, without any quotas.
Yes, they could be, and they are in limited numbers, but are there enough frown here to feed eight thousand of us? A quota system can do, as it does with timber, control the size of the harvest; it could encourage the size of it by offering incentives, etc. Limiting production sounds like a negative thing; the positive side of quotas means that markets are largely guaranteed, allowing private operators to be assured of product sales and make the investments required to warrant production.
So if you were the king or queen of the land and were worried about how you were going to feed your people in a future trade war, famine or natural disaster, it might be one of the options you would give some thought to.
And a second idea, somewhat related to the one above, will need much more space than I have here, so that will be next week.
When I started this food supply line of thought two weeks ago, I never thought it would take four weeks to cover it, but the issue of its importance would seem to make it worthwhile.
