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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
We need to be irreplaceable
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Blyth, ON.
I've been enjoying reading A Fool
and Forty Acres by Geoff Heinricks.
Heinricks was one of the pioneers
who have created a new Ontario wine
region in Prince Edward County near
Picton. In part, the book reminds you
of those 1970s' stories of people
rediscovering the beauties of living in
the country but Heinricks is much
different than the back -to -the -Zanders
of Harrowsmith magazine fame.
Those people wanted a simpler
life so bought a bit of land, any bit of
land that was cheap, and moved to
the country. Once there they tried to
find a way to support themselves.
Heinricks obviously loves the
country but he left Toronto with a
purpose and chose a very specific
place to settle because of the qualities
of the land.
Heinricks was a wine lover, with a
collection of vintages from around
the world in his Toronto wine cellar.
But he wanted to do more than just
collect wine. He wanted to make it.
He researched the areas of
Burgundy where the famous Pinot
Noir wine grape is grown and saw
they were limestone based, different
from the clay of the traditional
Ontario Niagara wine region.
Heinricks studied Ontario soil maps
and discovered that the Bay of Quinte
area has a stony, limestone -based.
soil. Prince Edward County often
suffers midsummer droughts but this,
too, mirrored the area of Burgundy
where Pinot Noir grows.
After years of research, he bought
a small plot of land and planted a
vineyard. Heinricks, and a handful of
other pioneers who came to the same
conclusion, are now establishing the
county as a centre for quality wine.
The wine makers (and their
customers) are devoted to the French
concept of "terroir": that local soil
and weather conditions create a taste
of "hereness" that creates something
that can't be created elsewhere.
Others have been grasping the
same concept lately in widely diverse
fields. Vidalia onions are a sweet
onions grown in a 20 -county area of
southeast Georgia, the mild flavour
coming, not from genetics, but the
soil which has a low sulfur content.
Farther south in Florida, Indian
River Citrus League has created a
sense that Indian River Grapefruit are
unique and irreplaceable.
The problem for most farmers
today is that their product is
replaceable. You want to hold your
corn off the market hoping for a
better price? Buyers will pay a little
more to import corn from Iowa and to
heck with you. Soybeans? If you're
not willing to sell for their price,
someone in Brazil will sell cheap
enough to pay the freight.
As long as your market is replace-
able you're never going to get a
decent return. Supply -managed com-
modities have managed to limit the
access to whatever is the cheapest
milk, eggs or poultry meat in the
world but if they ever lose border
controls, it will be like trying to keep
a leaky boat afloat when the water's
coming in faster than you can bale it
out.
So how do you get a unique
product that can only be made here?
Government researchers aren't
generally looking at "hereness" but at
global markets.
If you look back in history the
area to the east of Lake Huron once
supported a large industry producing
flax fibre. My town alone had two
different factories. The industry grew
because the warm rains of fall helped
the "retting" process, the breaking
down of the hard waxy stems to
allow recovery of the fibre. The flax
fibre industry is growing fast but
most fine linen comes from Europe
and most Canadian flax is now grown
on the Prairies for seed.
Would a fibre flax market work
today? Who knows? But it is one
example of using the unique
conditions of a region as an asset
instead of trying to compete with the
world in replaceable products.0