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Shaking up the food supply

World food prices have set a new record, according to United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization, and that’s why one local agricultural producer says the need for a major upswing in urban gardening will prove to be one of the top three stories of 2011.
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Urban farming

World food prices have set a new record, according to United Nations’s Food and Agricultural Organization, and that’s why one local agricultural producer says the need for a major upswing in urban gardening will prove to be one of the top three stories of 2011.

Dirk Becker, a Lantzville-area farmer and local food advocate, said the food distribution system is going to be shaken up considerably over the next 12 months — and Oceanside residents likely won’t be immune.

Becker said the fact much of Oceanside’s produce comes from California and other points south of the border means disruptions to the food distribution system are not only possible, but likely.

“Food travels from 1,000 to 3,000 kilometres on average,” he said. “This is going to be a big story because our current economy and overall industrialized society relies on cheap fossil fuel for that transport. All you need is one bombing in Canada and watch how quickly the borders close.”

When that happens and store shelves start to empty — and prices start to spike — he said, local residents could find themselves scrambling to get seeds in the ground.

“On Vancouver Island, 95 per cent of our food is imported, so urban farming is going to be huge,” he said. “The beauty of urban farming is it’s another way to re-localize the economy and reduce the number of miles covered by the potatoes that go onto your plate.”

This trend, he said, is already starting, with canning jar sales spiking in the United States and the sale of vegetable seeds doubling.

“There will be a wave of public demand for local food to purchase — as well as the right to grow it,” he said. “That, immediately, will affect policy on every level.”

This week, the UN released a report that said food prices surged 11.7 per cent in November, taking them beyond the 2008 levels, which sparked rioting in several developing countries.

The spike, said the report, comes after Russia stopped exporting grain last year because of drought and noted that both flooding and drought in Australia will likely have a serious impact on that country’s grain crop.

This ominous news appears to be sinking in locally, says Seedy Saturday organizer Craig Young.

“With Seedy Saturday last year, all our vendors made the comment that they sold more vegetable seeds than they had ever done,” Young said. “We had several vendors who sold hundreds of seed packets, with vegetable seeds by far the biggest item.”

Seedy Saturday is an event held for the past nine years in Qualicum Beach where farmers and gardeners can sell their home-grown flower and vegetable seeds.

Young said this year’s event appears to be following last year’s trend of increased interest and participation.

“When we are setting up we normally open registration in mid-October and by mid-January we are wondering if the last tables are going to fill,” he said. “This year we were full by mid-November. I think the message is getting around.”

Young likened the situation to that of England in the Second World War, where residents dug up their lawns and put in what were called victory gardens.

“All of a sudden there was a limited supply of food coming into England and everyone stepped up to the plate,” he said. “They dug up their front and back yards and planted them with veggies.”

As well, Young cited the old Soviet Union, where the vast majority of produce sold in local markets didn’t come from the huge co-operative farms, but rather, from people’s individual garden plots.

“It was the little home plots of the workers that produced two thirds of the food that appeared in local markets,” he said.

Although he said Vancouver Island is more fortunate than many places in the world in terms of climate, it has a very limited supply of agricultural land.

“We are sitting in a pretty nice part of the world,” he said. “In a lot of places, the options aren’t there, so for instance you have people in Ethiopia scrabbling in dry dirt, trying to grow grain. It doesn’t work. Here, we do have a limited amount of arable soil, but we need to be cognizant of that limit and use it as effectively as we can.”

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