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ACORN
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ACORN
issues a monthly e-newsletter to over 1000 people across the region. It
contains recent media news, events relating to food and agriculture,
and classifieds (ie. including jobs, land and even livestock for sale).
To subscribe, visit http://www.acornorganic.org/enewsregister.php
Quebec Commits $5 Million to Help Farmers Go Organic
The Quebec government is going organic.
An action plan unveiled by Agriculture Minister Claude Bechard outlines the government's commitment to increasing the availability of local organic produce on store shelves. The government will pump about $5 million into helping local growers convert to organic, as well as to educating the public about what organic really means and why it's more expensive.
"It's hard to monitor the growth of local organic produce because there's a lack of products," said Nicolas Turgeon, an expert in organic produce who works for the ministry. "But there is still a significant demand for it."
The government hasn't set an official target for growth, but it has established that it would like to increase the amount of land devoted to production of local organic produce by about 20 per cent by 2013. Currently, about 45,000 hectares of land is devoted to organic produce in Quebec and the goal is to have an additional 10,000 hectares by 2013.
To help bring about the change, the government will offer subsidies of up to $10,000 to help farmers make the conversion to organic.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Quebec+commits+local+organic+agriculture/3317514/story.html
How to build a local food system: The global food system has worked so well that Nova Scotia farms are disappearing, but with oil getting scarce, the days of food travelling over 8,000 km before finding a mouth are numbered.
by Chris Benjamin, The Coast
"We've had access to a global food basket for 25 to 50 years, cheaply," Richard Melvin says. "But people don't realize how fragile the food system is, how little inventory there is---just two to three days' inventory in food warehouses, and just 60 days' worth of grain. If a hiccup"--- a drought, oil price spike, spot gas shortage---"hits a major production area then within 60 days millions or billions could be without food."
The good news is we don't have to depend on the global food system to feed ourselves. For every hectare of farmland in this province, another nine hectares is suitable for farming. Less than half of that is needed to produce what we consume.
Yet, too often, we shove any old hunk of calories down our throats. We eat cheap. "Only nine percent of our income is spent on food," Richard Melvin tells me after a full day's work in the fields, "a historical low." We spent twice that 40 years ago.
Melvin is president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture and a fifth-generation Annapolis Valley farmer. He's also one of the more optimistic people I've met...
Jennifer Scott feels the first step is setting an ambitious but realistic goal for local production, as the state of Maine did (80 percent by 2020). "Increasing farmers' share of food revenues would also be a good start," she says.
But to reach 80 percent local production, or even 50 percent, a highly localized foodshed infrastructure must be created. A foodshed is everything involved in producing food---the land, equipment, seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, the roads food travels, processing and storage facilities, markets and kitchens. Building that infrastructure will take time, according to Paul Colville. "If Sobeys said today, 'we want to increase local selection in every store by 20 percent,' it would take years for us to get there."
If the geoscientists are right about impending oil shocks, we have just a few years of food imports left. Better start localizing now.
Read this insightful article at The Coast
We’re buying less locally — just 13¢ of every food dollar
The Chronicle Herald and Times & Transcript
We are spending less for local farm products than they did 11 years ago, a disturbing trend for farmers and the agricultural industry, says a report released Tuesday. Only about 13 per cent of the food dollar Nova Scotians spent was earned by local farmers in 2008, the last year for which figures were available, said a joint report by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture and the Ecology Action Centre.
That’s down from 17 per cent in 1997, said the report, titled Is Nova Scotia Eating Local, and If Not, Where is Our Food Coming From? It was released publicly Tuesday night at the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s semi-annual meeting in Halifax.
New Brunswick farmers say they share the same plight as farmers across the border in Nova Scotia where a report was released this month that says fewer local products are being consumed, and imported food is coming from farther abroad.
Full story (NS)
Full story (NB)
Organic food: what’s behind certification and organic logo?
By Brenda Frick
Organic, natural, pesticide-free — there are many food claims out there today. To what extent are these claims meaningful? How can we be sure we are getting what we want?
The Hartman group, a major analyst of consumer trends, recently completed a study to determine what consumers understand about food claims. They discovered that the terms natural and organic mean many of the same things to American consumers: without pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, artificial ingredients, genetic modifications and antibiotics.
Often consumers considered organic to be more about how the product was grown or raised, and natural to be more about what happens in processing.
Is this true? Food that carries the organic logo has been certified and is produced according to organic standards that require a high degree of care for the environment and for the health of both farmer and consumer. These standards prohibit the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, growth hormones, genetically modified foods and antibiotics.
The regulations apply to the management of the land, plants and animals. They also apply to all processing that is done to convert the plants and animals into food products.
What about food that doesn't have the logo? Farms or processing plants that are certified as organic have been inspected by a trained and independent inspector. This person reports to a certification body that issues a certificate if the inspector's report is positive.
Packaged products should include the name of the certification body. If the farmer sells without packaging, such as carrots at the farmers' market, he or she should display a certificate at the point of sale. If they don't, ask. If they don't have one, they aren't certified.
How can you trust the certifiers did their job with due diligence? They also have to pass inspections that verify that their process is rigorous.
What if the product isn't certified? Then verification is up to you. If a product is locally produced, you can talk to the producer and you may be able to visit the farm.
What does natural mean?
According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the term is often misused on labels or in advertising. CFIA states that natural should be used only if the food is not chemically altered to add anything such as vitamins or take anything away such as caffeine. They do not specify how the plant should be grown or how the animal should be raised.
The natural label is used for meat, where the animal did not receive routine antibiotics or growth hormones. Generally the animal is fed cheaper conventional feed, because organic feed can be expensive. The meat is not processed with fillers or chemicals. Use of the term natural is not governed by any mandatory regulation.
Pesticide-free is a phrase that was used to describe grains that were not sprayed with pesticides. It did not mean that pesticides were banned from the land before seeding or after harvest, or that the system of production itself was free from pesticides. The term has recently been used by urban groups seeking to ban cosmetic spraying of lawns.
What products are free of pesticides? It would be incredibly difficult to find products that were entirely free from pesticides. Pesticides have been found in the air and in rainfall. Although organic production practices don't add to these problems, they don't filter the chemicals out of the rain. Some studies confirm that organic food has lower pesticide levels and eating organic foods reduces a person's pesticide load.
According to the Hartman study, people are looking for quality food that is clean, fresh, healthy, real, pure, authentic, simple, safe and local. They want it from a small scale family farm that is socially responsible, kind to animals, good to the environment and supportive of farmers. The product should also be convenient to find and prepare and not too expensive.
Organic and natural are words that reassure the consumer that they are buying these desirable qualities. Getting these qualities may take a little more investigation.
Brenda Frick, Ph.D., P.Ag. is the co-ordinator of organic research and extension at the University of Saskatchewan. She welcomes your comments at 306-966-4975 or via email at organic@usask.ca.
Original article is here
An alder bush energy source alternative
By CBC News, NS
Alder bush farms could help create biomass to burn for energy and save the province's forests from clear cutting, a forester from England says. Linda Mallet, a forester in England's Sherwood Forest - best known as the home of the legendary Robin Hood - said her idea to create alder bush farms could help fix forests, improve the value of farm land, and produce energy from biomass.
Mallett, who lives part of the year on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore, said in modern day terms, coppicing also means using a fast growing tree, such as alder, to cut every few years to make fuel chips.
"If you look in the fields of Nottinghamshire, Sherwood Forest, there are biomass fields, as well, feeding our power stations," she said Thursday. Mallett said she's concerned about plans by Nova Scotia Power to use biomass for fuel because it could lead to clear cutting.
Biomass, which includes wood shavings and junk logs, is a key part of the province's plan to reduce its dependence on coal. Mallett said she sees potential in thousands of acres of marginal farmland, contaminated land and industrial land that surround airports or other sites.
"That's what they're doing in the U.K. - they are using marginal land," Mallett said. "This is why I was hoping this kind of idea of short rotation coppice would then enable people to leave the forests alone, so that we could start growing our veteran trees for the future."...
Read the full story at CBC
The North American organic coffee market tops 1.4 billion dollars in 2009
According to Giovannucci’s North American Organic Coffee Industry Report 2010, more than 93 million pounds of organic coffee were imported into the United States and Canada in 2009.
Giovannucci, the world’s most respected authority on the topic of sustainability, notes “The 4.1 percent growth of the organic coffee market this past year is an important achievement for a higher priced product during a recession and when much of the conventional coffee industry has been stagnant.” The average annual growth rate of 21 percent for organic coffee documented by Giovannucci in the five years from 2004 to 2009 dwarfs the estimated one percent annual growth of the conventional coffee industry.
Full article at OTA
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