It’s now becoming clear to people the world over that we live on a small planet and depend on resources that are far from limitless, says David Neufeld, a greenhouse operator and social activist from Boissevain, Man.
“Climate change and peak oil are changing how we think about the world and our inter-relationships with each other,” said Neufeld, speaking at a 100-mile luncheon hosted by Assiniboine Community College as part of its Prairie Innovation Forum 2008, a series of presentations that runs March 10-28.
“I call it a revolution. It’s not at this point a violent one, although you do see food situations arising where people can get quite heated. It has the potential to turn our world as we know it upside down, but in a good way.”
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Until recently, he noted, people have thought of the world as being able to absorb every side effect of human activity.
“This is really the first time that whole societies have realized the folly of our ways,” he said.
Getting into the habit of buying locally produced food is one way to make a difference that doesn’t involve a lot of effort, said Neufeld.
“It’s the decision that you and I make that give the environmental movement traction and trajectory. We’re really in the driver’s seat on this, and the sooner that we each start moving in the direction that the world needs us to move, the better for all of us,” he said.
Nobody likes government intervention in their daily lives, so the best way to avoid it is to begin doing “what we know is right.”
Neufeld recalled his own travails in establishing the first organic greenhouse in the province in the early 1990s. Back then standards did not exist, so he had to write them himself.
As is commonly the case with innovators, some people were suspicious of his motives.
“People would stop us on the street and ask, ‘What are you doing? Are you saying that the rest of us aren’t growing good food?’ ” he said.
Now, with organic production well established and gaining market share every year, the struggle has moved into a new phase.
“We know that we can grow enough food organically to feed the world,” he added. “I think where we need to put our effort is learning how to source that food locally.”
That’s because rising fuel prices will start playing havoc with the old system of transporting food thousands of kilometres from the producers to the consumers.
It is a practice that is not only morally suspect in the face of global warming, but may also become increasingly unsustainable for economic reasons, said Neufeld.
“Gas is going up to $1.40. We know that it’s going up to $5 a litre. We know this because peak oil is upon us.”
The rich will be able to absorb the impact of rising fuel prices on their food bills, but the poor will eventually reach the breaking point.
“There have been lots of violent revolutions around food. Why don’t we see this one coming? Not having adequate food causes people to act in irrational ways.”
On a small planet, everything is interconnected, he said.
“What undergirds this whole social revolution is the understanding that we’re all connected. We cannot act excessively here and expect that there will not be consequences in some other place.”
