I’VE TRAVELLED around Saskatchewan recently, gathering impressions of life. Since those road trips, I’ve been trying to sort out a series of conflicting feelings.
One of the most striking impressions, and the thing that bothered me most, was the number of For Sale signs.
Every time I see one of those on farmland, I think of Charlie Pride’s song, Down on the Farm.
Many of those signs were close to cities or towns, particularly along major highways. Sometimes the signs had been replaced by large homes on large lots.
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My first thought was about the value of the land and agricultural production versus real estate.
In some countries, people spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food.
Last time I checked, Canadians were still spending more on entertainment than on food bought for home preparation and eating.
Canadians have spending priorities that demand cheap food. Since consumers outnumber producers, the consumers tend to win without recognizing the deeper implications of their victory.
One of the implications is For Sale signs on farmland, land that’s more valuable for houses than crops.
I flew to Ontario a few years ago over Collingwood, site of the inland grain terminal that started receiving prairie grain in 1929. For the next 100 kilometres, all the way to Toronto, the land was a patchwork of agricultural and urban land use, urban meaning housing developments and towns.
That’s not surprising, since 80 percent of Canadians live in towns or cities. But the Collingwood to Toronto sprawl covers much of Canada’s best farmland.
There’s urban sprawl around Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina and many smaller places.
How important is it that farmland is eaten up by houses and streets, permanently taken from agricultural production?
A growing world population means more people need food. As long as we have yearly carryover grain stocks, it will seem like there’s a balance.
But that could change quickly, depending on war, disease, drought, flooding and famine.
The challenge of the future is more productivity out of less land, often marginal land.
We’ve had one green revolution. Can we have another one? And if so, at what cost to producers and the land itself?
A major challenge with urban sprawl is that many places have policies favouring large houses on large land bases. I’m not sure that makes sense.
To curb urban sprawl, some communities favour building up, not out. That makes some sense.
Either way, there are huge infrastructure problems when large numbers of people crowd into any designated area.
Worst of all, I think that, while we are living in 2009, many people have a development mentality from the 1970s. There are visionary and current ideas about community and land use. But I fear too few people grasp the implications of those visions. There are not enough to cause real, significant change.
We desperately need to rethink all our land use before our need for homes destroys our food base.
Rob Brown is a former agricultural writer and broadcaster now doing studies in ethics. He can be reached at moral.economy@sasktel.net.
