This week we welcome new columnists to the Producer, one of whom appears today on this page.
Chris Lind is one of four writers who will take turns writing The Moral Economy, a column that will run every other week. He will share writing duties with Rob Brown, Nettie Wiebe and Cam Harder, each of whom have an interest in or connection with prairie agriculture.
Lind is president and a long-time faculty member at St. Andrews College in Saskatoon. He writes frequently about ethics and economics and is the author of Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis.
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Brown is a United Church minister who spent a decade in agricultural journalism and is now engaged in graduate studies in ethics. Born in Toronto, he moved “out West” in 1971.
Wiebe is a professor of Church and Society at St. Andrews, as well as a farmer in the Delisle, Sask., area and former president of the National Farmers Union.
Harder is an associate professor of systemic theology, also at St. Andrews. He was a pastor in the Lutheran church for 16 years and spent 13 of those in Camrose. His doctoral thesis, The Shame of Farm Bankruptcy, explored the events and emotions that can surround the loss of a farm.
The four theologians thought carefully about the name of the column and the purpose they want it to serve.
“What people believe affects the way they structure their lives,” says Harder. “We want to get at the underlying assumptions people are making in proposing or avoiding certain polices.”
Adds Wiebe: “I am hopeful that it will broaden the range of thinking people are invited to do on issues that are familiar to all of us. … We are all part of the material economy, but that’s not all there is to think about.”
The four columnists and the Producer welcome reader comments on the new addition to page 7.
We also want to call attention to a column starting this week on page 46 called The Water Clinic. It is designed to address water quality issues and to answer questions from readers.
Columnist Philip Stadnyk is president of The Water Clinic, a Saskatoon-based business, and he has 20 years of experience in water-related consultation.
He promises unbiased advice to readers on matters such as spring run-off concerns, iron content and hard water, bacteria and coliform contamination. See the Production section for details.
