Depending on where you live in South Delta, you may have heard the sound of heavy farm equipment in the pre-dawn hours moving to the farm site the past few months.
Plowing, planting, irrigating and harvesting requires large tractors and other vehicles. I know of many who complain about the noise. For me it is a comforting sound and although I awake to it, I am appreciative of the hard work our farming community engages in to keep us food secure.
Canada is generally a food secure country, and we should be grateful for that, however, as we all should know by now, a changing climate can present many challenges for food production.
There are many examples of dire conditions that threaten food production all over the world. Throw in a little geo-political strife in various scenarios and you can see that we should not take food for granted.
California has been especially hard hit over the past few years. The breadbasket of North America has seen drought, wildfires, and recently massive flooding that have rendered thousands and thousands of food-producing acres unfarmable.
The State of Georgia, known as the “Peach State,” may have to change its motto after a series of late frosts followed by cataclysmique downpours have almost completely decimated the crop.
Most of Europe has been in a drought for the entire growing season and food prices are soaring.
We have been reasonably lucky regionally with the exception of the Sumas prairie disaster in November of 2021. This is not an excuse for complacency, in fact, we need to be more collectively aware of our circumstances and be prepared to innovate because it is increasingly obvious that a food status quo is a ridiculous assumption.
I call on B.C.’s ministries of education, agriculture and advanced education to be forward thinking and collaborate to integrate agri-food and agri-tech food security strategies into our school curriculums.
Future generations need to better understand the challenges that the food system is facing so that they can prepare accordingly to keep us food secure.
