You are invited to Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society (PALS) 39th Annual Meeting.
Ontario farm rep and keynote speaker at PALS annual meeting Elboert vanDonkersgoed
WHEN ; Tuesday March 24th 7 :00 p. St. Catharines Centennial Library 54 Church St.
SPEAKER : Elbert vanDonkersgoed
Editor Locavore News and former ED The Christian Farmers’ Federation of Ontario
FARM VIEWS OF ONTARIO’S GREENBELT
Light refreshments at 7:00 p.m. Business 7:30 p.m. Speaker 8 p.m.
Find out more about the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society, one of the oldest surviving citizens group in Niagara, Ontario, by clicking on http://members.becon.org/~pals/AboutPals.html .
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
Niagara At Large 
In times of geopolitical stress, a country that loses its ability to produce its own food, make things and control its energy & resources, ceases to be a sustainable nation.
Food is at the top of the list of these national security issues, and it would be in everyone’s interests to take this subject seriously. As a nation dependant on trading internationally for food, we are irreversibly heading into the jaws of a major calamity.
Recent devastating droughts in US, Mexican and Chilean farm belts will likely result in the cessation of seasonal food exports to Canada. Political turmoil in places like Argentina, Ukraine, and the Middle East, normally able to feed themselves will strain and possibly overwhelm the international supply chain. There may come a point where certain foods will not be available at any price, and supermarket shelves begin to resemble those of Stalinist Russia. It would not be a stretch to see other trading partners reflexively ration their exports.
In such a situation, what would happen if say China decided that it would no longer be in their national interest to export food produce? What if food production becomes “weaponized” by a hostile power?
Canada’s existential needs should mobilize a sense of urgency in our Provincial & Federal governments to reassess their punitive policies of marginalizing non-urban agricultural communities in pursuit of their own political agendas. Agricultural policy cannot be spun on a dime like war-time manufacturing – it a lagging enterprise requiring serious lead times. They should do so before we are confronted by food shortages, rationing with the resultant civil unrest.
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Where is Gracia Janes who was once so active in PALS? There are only two tender fruit areas in Canada; our Niagara and the Okanogan which – unlike Niagara – has to have a network of concrete trenches to irrigate an otherwise arid environment. Citizen efforts to save the planet are mitigated when developers are allowed to pave over large tracts of Class 1 and 2 soils. Food security is losing ground to greed.
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