Last week, this space dealt on a very introductory level with the issue of food supply and finished up by saying that I would have an idea for you next week. That’s today. I should have said then that I would have a question today, since a question is what most of this column is going to be. We’ll get to that shortly.
But there was also at the end of last week’s space a mention that there was going to be a meeting of the ‘Local Food Matters’ group and that you might consider attending.
As it turned out, I did attend.
My reason for going was to learn what I could about a group of Golden people who were interested in securing our food supply in a world which seems to be changing daily from a variety of directions.
I was glad I went.
Not because I can now pass a test on agricultural issues, because that may not be true, but it was just good to see that there are people in our valley who are interested in farming and would possibly be interested in increasing our capabilities in that area. They were young (anyone less than 60 is young!) and involved enough in producing food that they knew some of the challenges that growers live with.
I would, however, today, like to back up a bit and look at the problem as it is, if it’s a problem at all. And it seems to me that it is an issue that deserves our attention. We all find ourselves eating three times a day, and in order to keep doing that, we need to have a secure food supply. Of all the things that are part of our lives, and that need stability and certainty more than anything else, it’s the food on our tables.
Most of us are busy people, busy at work and a hundred other things. But an interruption in our food supply could sneak up on us, and it wouldn’t necessarily come with five years’ advance notice, time to arrange our own food chain. To use a comparison, we never get any notice when a house catches on fire. It’s no time to think about a fire department when the flames are in the air.
This isn’t a column that is going to suggest that we all raise a garden this year or next. A solution may have to be bigger than gardens. If we are going to ever have a solution, it has to be one that is big enough, not just to feed the families who already have green thumbs. It has to be of sufficient scale to feed eight to ten thousand people. It has to feed the young, the old, the in between, those who are interested and those who want to watch the Blue Jays. Those who want to play golf in the summer, and especially those who do most of their gardening at IGA and Save-on-Foods.
Now here’s the problem.
If we are going to truly secure a food supply for those of us here in the Golden area, and I’m only talking about the Golden area, the Invermere and Revelstoke areas have just as much land, or more, than we do, and just as much expertise, or maybe more, than we do. But if the chips ever fell in the wrong way and we were seriously short of food, every area would be responsible for its own welfare. We’ll never be able to blame anybody else if we don’t have enough oats for breakfast. Well, we might try, but ten years from now we’ll still be hungry three times a day.
But a guaranteed food supply, or somewhat guaranteed food supply, is not going to mature overnight, and our valley has a lot of young people that we should think of.
So here’s the question that I referred to above: Is certainty in our food supply important?
That, however, is really just a motherhood question. Nobody would ever seriously answer that question with a ‘no.’
So the real question is this: Is stability in our food supply important enough that we should give it some real attention to a point where we know Golden’s people would have at least a basic food supply? All eight or ten thousand.
I think the answer to that question is yes. But I may be wrong. Maybe we have enough confidence in our current food chain that we don’t need to worry about it. I would be very happy for the answer to this question to be ‘no.’ It’s easy to carry on doing what we have been doing in the past. Maybe just add a few whistles or bells, enough to make it look like we had thought about it.
If we look back at our Golden history, I think we can honestly say that we haven’t always thought and planned far enough ahead on everything. One case in point today is the town’s (and other nearby municipalities’) water and sewer infrastructure. Can Golden exist/grow as we would like it to be able to today? The answer to that question is likely fairly complicated. If you really want to know, ask the local builders and developers. They know.
So where do we go from here?
If we said the answer to that question is ‘yes’, where would that take us?
What are the options?
That’s next week.
