An event put on by the organization Food Secure Canada (FSC), held at Bronson Place earlier this month, talked about food scarcity and climate change. While the lobby was swamped in corduroy, hair and bohemian scarves, it is an issue that even non-hippies are getting together to talk about.
In fact, the three speakers for the event looked nothing like hippies. They were: Olivier de Schutter, a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Rene Segbenou from the Coalition for the Protection of Africa’s Genetic Heritage (COPAGEN) and Colleen Ross, the Women’s President of the National Farmer’s Union. All three come from very different experience and expertise yet their messages, collectively, said the same things.
- If we look at food, food scarcity and climate change differently, a solution will be better found. Food should not be regarded as a commodity or product.
- If we step out of the crisis we can see it with a new perspective and actually find a solution, rather than new ways to adapt i.e. chemical use in farming
- Eating locally and seasonally with crop-diverse farms, spreads the risks of bad harvests, cuts down on transporting emissions and allows for other parts of the world to do the same.
- By including human rights in the discussion of food and climate change, we introduce a more developed legal structure that demands a responsible party as well as for all parties to be aware and actively participate.
- Regions and peoples of the world already affected by climate change, as well as those most vulnerable to its effects, will fall directly into warfare and insecurity. The link between food scarcity and instability are well known and proven. If the international community agrees we should step in when there is conflict, why not with climate change.
- The use of chemicals in farming is cyclical with farmers’ debt. Farmers are forced to use specific and expensive chemicals to combat things that can be handled by knowing, listening and working with the land better. Things like weeds, infestations and yielding better crops. Modern day farmers cannot learn and practice these techniques because most are forced to work off-farm as well, to keep their debt at bay. Mono-cropping (growing only one type of food for sale) also adds to this mix.
- Colleen Ross from the National Farmer’s Union mentions that there is a new wave of women – even those not originally from farming backgrounds – which want to take hold of their own food sovereignty. Some are doing this through a new phenomenon of landless farming. This is where people farm other peoples’ land at the meager cost of fresh vegetables.
- One of Ross’ supporters went so far as to say climate change is man-made, not woman-made. Rafael Mejia, a male environmental studies student who attended the event says, for him, this isn’t the best thing to say. “If you look at Parliament Hill, it is males who have made the laws,” he says. “Climate change may have been man-made but it will be both sexes who find the solution.”