Thursday, March 31, 2011

Writing to my MP

I thought this might be a timely topic given the election fervour/torpor that has gripped the nation.

I enjoy writing to MPs to test their willingness to engage in discussion, as a measure of how accountable they seem to feel to their voting public. I have gotten personalized (and personal) responses from the NDP and Liberal Agriculture critics, as well as the lone Saskatchewan Liberal MP. My success has not been so great with my own MP.

What follows is the text of emails we exchanged on the issue of Bill C-474, a private member's bill from the NDP's Alex Atamanenko that asks for a market assessment of harm before any approval of new genetically engineered crops. My first email each time is a modified version of a form email from C-BAN. My MP's responses... may be his own. You be the judge. If you make it to the end, that is.



Me on Mar 17, 2010:
Dear Anon., MP

Thank you for your responses to my earlier emails. I appreciate the time you take to consider constituents' concerns. I am writing again with another agriculture-related concern to ask you to support Private Member Bill C-474, when it is debated at second reading in mid-March.

The Bill would support Canadian farmers by requiring that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.”

This Bill is really important because, as we know from experience, the introduction of new genetically engineered (GE) crops can cause economic hardship to farmers. Since Saskatchewan farmers primarily produce crops for export, this is a crucial concern.

Farmers are at risk when GE crops are commercialized in Canada without also being first approved in our major export markets.

Flax farmers in Canada are now paying the price for this exact problem. Late last year, Canadian flax exports were discovered contaminated with a GE flax that is not approved in Europe or any of our other export markets.

Flax farmers actually foresaw that GE contamination or even the threat of contamination would close their export markets. This is why they took steps in 2001 to remove GE flax from the market. Despite this measure, flax farmers were not protected.

The GE flax contamination has created market uncertainty and depressed prices. Farmers are also paying for testing and cleanup and may be required to abandon their own farm-saved flax seed and buy certified seed instead. These costs are an unnecessary and preventable burden.

We cannot allow our export markets to close like this again. It is the government’s responsibility to protect Canadian farmers from predictable problems caused by the introduction of new GE crops that have not yet been regulated in our export markets.

Anon., please support Bill C-474 and protect Canada’s farmers and our markets.

Yours Sincerely, etc.


MP's reply on 26 March:

Dear Ms. Blogger,

Thank you very much for your email regarding Bill C-474, a Private Members Bill, an Act respecting the Seeds Regulations introduced by Mr Alex Atamanenko of the NDP.

The Government of Canada has always regulated for food safety and health and will continue to examine new products with that as the guiding principle. We are confident that environmental and economic interests are best protected in this fashion.

It is unfortunate that Bill C474 has so many negative consequences. If this Bill had been previously passed by Parliament, there would be no canola industry in Canada - the $12.2 billion dollars that is generated annually in Western Canada would be lost. Bill C-474 adds more regulatory burden on the entire value chain without contributing to our ability to innovate, compete and provide valuable crops to feed and fuel a growing world.

Bill C-474 would also have hampered the ongoing development of the soybean industry. Over half of the soybean production in the world is GMO and these products have revolutionized soybean production. Millions of people around the world benefit from this technology which (NDP MP) Mr. Alex Atamanenko and his party oppose. Mr. Atamanenko uses the past years flax challenges as his reason for why we need this Bill. He is playing games with Triffid flax - that specific example has nothing to do with this Bill.

The Bill will clearly restrict technology and science. New technology holds the key to future prosperity. The clauses of this bill fail to deal with the challenges and opportunities presented by new scientific developments. Instead they would impose an impossible burden, requesting an unscientific 'analysis' that must be based on future prophecies and projections rather than on issues of food safety and health.  The Bill also ignores producers - failing to ask for an analysis of the possible benefits of new varieties to our producers.

While I appreciate your concerns regarding what happened in the flax industry, I believe that this Bill is not the way to address those issues.

Thank you for taking time to express your concerns to me on this piece of legislation. Should you have any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my office.

Sincerely, etc.

My response March 31:
Dear Mr. Anon.,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns. We seem to be at odds on certain points, so I would like to explain further a couple of key issues that were elided in your response.

First, the argument that there would be no canola industry in Canada with Bill C474 is a red herring. Canola was developed before widespread opposition to GMO's, and the current GM variety is opposed in countries such as Australia. As well, if we want to talk canola, it must be mentioned that canola was developed in a public university, not by a private corporation that siphons off the benefits. The case of GM soybeans, which you mention, clearly shows that the majority of benefits go to the owner of the patent. In this way, GM crops have very little benefit for farmers (many of your constituents) who must buy seed year after year instead of keeping it, and who must pay licensing fees, and many other nickel-and-dimed-to-death costs associated with GMOs. The NFU, on behalf of many farmers, has researched these issues and speaks on their behalf in calling for a ban. Your call for an analysis of cost-benefits to producers is reasonable, but I believe that if you look more closely, this has been done already by various organizations.

There are also doubts as to whether soy is benefiting millions of people around the world, as you have claimed. Primarily, it is used as cattle feed, and those who eat the majority of the beef are found in North America and Europe, struggling with an obesity epidemic, while many poor people have been pushed off their subsistence farms so soybean farmers can produce for export. I fail to see how those poor benefit from GM soybeans.

Finally, you claim that this Bill will "restrict technology and science" which "holds the key to future prosperity." Surely you do not dogmatically accept that all technology is good and inevitable? Perhaps a dramatic example: Nuclear weapons and thalidomide should be unregulated?

Thank you for your consideration, etc.

NO ANSWER

And me again on Oct 22 when the Bill comes up again:

Dear Anon., MP

I am writing again to ask you to vote in support of Private Members Bill C-474 in order to protect Canada’s family farms. I also ask that you vote, on October 27, for a 30-day extension to the Agriculture Committee debate on Bill C-474. This debate is essential to sustain the presence of
democracy in our government.

As you know, Bill C-474 would support Canadian farmers by requiring that “an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before the sale of any new genetically engineered seed is permitted.”

It is imperative that our government assesses the possible export market impact of introducing new GE seeds. Bill C-474 would simply require the federal government to conduct such an economic analysis.

Farmers are at risk when GE crops are commercialized in Canada without also being approved in our major export markets. For example, flax farmers in Canada are paid the price for unwanted GE contamination that damage their export markets late in 2009. Flax farmers foresaw that GE
contamination would close their export markets.

It’s the government’s responsibility to protect Canadian farmers from predictable problems caused by the introduction of new GE crops that have not yet been regulated in our export markets. Bill C-474 would help our government meet this responsibility.

The House of Commons Agriculture Committee has already heard a strong message of support for Bill C-474 from Canada’s alfalfa growers. On October 27, please vote in favour of a 30-day extension to the Committe hearings, to allow this important debate to continue.

Anon., please vote for Bill C-474 to make sure that alfalfa growers and other farmers do not face the same market harm caused by GE contamination that continues to hurt our flax farmers.

Yours Sincerely, etc.

His response on Oct 25:
Dear Blogger,

Thank you very much for your email regarding Bill C-474, a Private Members Bill, an Act respecting the Seeds Regulations introduced by Mr Alex Atamanenko of the NDP.

The Government of Canada has always regulated for food safety and health ... [see email from him, above]... Thank you for taking time to express your concerns to me on this piece of legislation. Should you have any comments or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact my office.

My response on October 25:
Dear Anon.,

I addressed your points about canola, and the other arguments you raise, already in a previous email. I'm sorry to see that you did not take that into consideration when re-sending me this email. I would appreciate an explanation of the assumed correlation between protection of health interests and economic/environmental interests that you refer to in your second paragraph.

Sincerely, etc.

NO ANSWER.


I tend to call it as I see it, so these letters above are actually models of restraint and courtesy on my part, and that of my patient husband who edited all but the last for courtesy and restraint. I'm not sure why I put so much effort into them. Now I just send him letters to use up 2 minutes of his - or a staffer's - time cutting and pasting a response. At least he works for 2 minutes a day, right?

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Spring is here!

Can't you tell?


My seed orders have arrived! I've gardened some in the past, and my mom had one of those famed giant, farmwife gardens for years, so I'm not inexperienced - but I've happily bitten off far more than I can chew this year. I want ALL THE VEGETABLES!

I did something quite foolish last year. I only had access to about 20 square feet of garden space, so I planted spinach, peppers, and tomatoes. Mostly tomatoes. The spinach had bolted by the end of June, so effectively, I monocropped. In the wettest summer in decades. My tomatoes got early blight. My tomatoes got late blight. I got a scant boxful of tomatoes, many of which subsequently rotted. I learned my lesson.

This year, I have a strategy - and access to three garden plots. I concentrated on ordering short-season crops (we have 109 frost-free days where I live, which makes it riskier to grow, for example, an onion with a 110 day maturity from direct seed rather than transplant.) I ordered some hybrids so I'd have more of a guarantee of a good yield, and I ordered some heirlooms so I could save seed and choose varieties bred for my specific climate by local growers. I've started two varieties of onion and three of peppers already. I plan to succession plant (in this happy future when I have endless leisure time) to hopefully have at least one planting that grows during the weather it likes best. I also ordered.... wait for it... over fifty varieties of vegetable.

I've ordered some pretty interesting ones - Riesetomate, like a cluster of partially fused cherry tomatoes; Dragon Tongue beans - but the vegetable I'm most excited about is the Costata Romanesco zucchini.

That's right, I'm excited about zucchini. I generally like zucchini, because I see it as a blank canvas on which delicious sauces may be poured. But this zucchini - they say this zucchini is different. That it has flavour.

I can't wait.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Whereupon I put on my spectacles and grown-up voice. Ahem.

I am presenting a paper as part of a panel at the Joint 2011 Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, Association for the Study of Food and Society, and Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition from June 9 – 12, 2011 at the University of Montana.

The conference is called "Food and Agriculture Under the Big Sky". (Montana has big skies, we have living skies: I think we can connect on this.) My paper has the unimaginative yet apt title, "Visions of Food Sovereign Land Tenure in Saskatchewan". Here's the beginning:
Last November, I was driving out to conduct an interview in southwestern Saskatchewan and stopped in a small town cafe for lunch. I happened to overhear some of the chat on coffee row. You could tell they were farmers by the ag company caps. One was holding forth on how there were a few farmers in the area who had most of the land, and these big farmers did business directly with Viterra, who offered them all sorts of deals to get their business, and because of this, soon the Co-op in the town would close. None of the farmers chatting seemed to like the prospect, but they didn't propose any solutions, and they all agreed with the main speaker at the conversation's close: “That's business.
In a similar vein, a professor here told me not to study agriculture, because it was done. Not meaning that it was thoroughly studied, but that from a progressive point of view, there was no hope; it was finished. Well, in the words of one of my interviewees, “Agriculture can't be done. It has to be redone.”
Are you with me? Do you like it? Well, here's the abstract:


A radically different vision of access to and control over land, as the basis of a new food system, is necessary in striving for a socially and ecologically just agriculture. Using data from in-depth interviews of farmers involved in a progressive agrarian organization and in alternative land tenure models, this paper explores visions of radical changes to the dominant agricultural land tenure system in Saskatchewan. Interviewees address primary problems of loss of farmers and rural communities, and accessibility, affordability, and concentration of land, as the result of market forces. They agree on several key points, including the importance of collective action, community, and values of interdependence, diversity, and sustainability, all consonant with food sovereignty's conception of land as multidimensional and noncommodifiable. In the struggle against the hegemonic ideology of private ownership of land, a common politicized vocabulary and frame of reference, and greater communication between actors about strategies, practices, and insights, may facilitate action. Food sovereignty can provide these for various groups tackling land tenure problems in Saskatchewan. 

We'll see how much of this is retained in the paper, which I am still writing. Questions? Comments?

Happy Weekend! I'm off to small-town-with-no-internet.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Gendered Doughnuts

My partner and I are not sporty types, but I'm trying to keep this from our kids in the hopes that they will be encouraged to discover the joys of exercise that I've heard so much about. So we took the kids to cheer on our nephew in a hockey game last Sunday.

After the game celebration of Canadian identity, Vincent's 11-year-old hockey star cousin took four-year-old Vin* to the Tim Hortons in the sports complex for a donut. Or a doughnut. Whichever is Canadian.

Vincent chose the "fanciest" doughnut and showed it to us, beaming.


It is a very pretty doughnut.

I don't give a hot goldarn if my son wants to eat something fancy and pink. What I want to know, though, is how to prepare him for a world that believes that certain foods are gendered and will respond to such choices with derision.

*I have a vague feeling I ought to pseudonymize my children.  Something to do with safety... ?

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Food. Did you guess it?

Canadian food guru Wayne Roberts has been credited with the characterization of food as "the point of a million connections." Food concerns everyone, and not just because we all eat. It connects with nutrition and health, with gastronomy, gardening, animal husbandry, global trade, development models, genetics, botany, education, Canadian history, social movements, elitism, human rights, religion, whackos of every stripe, and your grandmother. I've been studying food issues for a while now as I pursue a masters degree,  and getting more interested in the issues the more I read, discuss, and see.

This blog will be a smorgasbord of food topics. Please join me at the table.