Growing a local food supply

ON THE GARDEN PATH Carolyn Herriot

Contributing to our local food supply

How secure do you feel about the global food supply right now? The price of food is going up and there are unprecedented food surplus shortages due to impacts of climate change, peak oil, soil degradation, bee colony collapse, population explosion and fresh water shortages on global agriculture. How does the fact that, overall, BC imports 50 percent of the food it consumes strike you? (Vancouver Island imports 95 percent.)

How do you feel about the fact that one sixth of the Agricultural Land Reserve has been removed from production since 1974? Does any of this make sense given that we have increasing urban populations to feed? Who is setting the policies that allow such an unsustainable situation to occur? Am I right to feel nervous about the future while supermarket shelves are bulging with choices?

We can no longer depend on a cen tralized global food production system that depends heavily on fossil fuels for chemical inputs, packaging, processing and transportation. We have woken up to the fact that when we stopped feeding ourselves, the corporations moved in, and now we are all paying the price for the luxury of eating cheap, massproduced food shipped from all over the world. The link is being made between healthy individuals and communities and eating REAL food. (Regional, environmentally-responsible, agricultural, land use.)

Our parents and grandparents “Dug for Victory” during times of food scarcity in World War II and we can do it again. Rooftops, back lanes, schoolyards, city allotments, green spaces, traffic islands, public gardens and land zoned for agricultural use can all be planted with edible plants. How did we allow growing food to become such a disrepu table pastime? What good is all the money in the bank when we forget how to feed ourselves? Increasing incentives for young farmers to get back on the land and save seeds makes a lot of sense right now. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s food seed sales are now in the hands of six corporations; I believe that centralized control is a dangerous and vulnerable situation to be in during the best of times, never mind during uncertain times.

Gardeners can contribute to increasing local food security by joining the Grow-Your-Own-Food movement. The West Coast of Canada is one of the best places to grow food year-round so we have no excuse not to do so. Instead of growing pansies and petunias this year, we can grow potatoes because you can’t depend on flowers in a crisis. Gardeners can make edible landscaping de rigueur in 2008, but they will have to go to their local garden centers and demand a variety of fruits, food starts and seeds for this purpose. (Preferably organically-grown!) Ask your garden centre to provide winter vegetables in summer so you can harvest food from your backyard all winter.

Ask why your local public garden does not grow food. When we don’t see food plants growing around us, we forget where food comes from. When you see fruit rotting on the ground in fall, collect it and learn how to put it by for the win ter. You may just be very glad you did. We need to reconnect children to their food source and health and we need to get the next generation of food growers on board. We need to establish a new respect for nature by realizing that we do not have all the answers. By working in co-creation with Mother Nature, we will discover that she takes care of us as we take care of her.

Now’s the time to prepare the earth, order the seeds and shop for fruit and berry plants. I will talk you through growing your “New Victory Garden” in the months to come. Feed the soil right now, so it can feed the plants you plan to grow. The more fertile the soil, the more intensively you can plant for higher yields. Natural organic soil amendments such as compost, manures, leaf mulch and seaweed are bountiful and free, and exercise and fresh air will do you good. Happy digging for victory!

Carolyn Herriot is author of A Year on the Garden Path, which talks you through growing food year-round and seed saving. http://www.earthfuture. com/gardenpath/ Check out the weekly progress of The New Victory Garden in Victoria by following Carolyn’s blog on www.gardenwise.ca

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