The Rural Voice, 1989-12, Page 56OF S
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54 THE RURAL VOICE
NEWS
FARM PRACTICES DISCUSSED AT MEETING
At a meeting held last month to discuss environmental issues: TonyMcQuail of the
New Democratic Party, chairman during the evening; Bill Andrews, professor of
environmental studies at the University of Toronto; C. Lynn Fielder of the Bruce
County Federation of Agriculture; and Ted Zettel, public relations officer for the
Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario.
At a meeting held to discuss environ-
mental issues last month, Ted Zettel, a
Bruce County organic farmer, told con-
cerned citizens that farmers and con-
sumers must take two steps.
The first, he said, is to "recognize
that we have a problem" with some of
our farming methods. "The farmers
don't really recognize that yet. They're
starting to."
The second is to understand clearly
what the issues are. "The food safety
issue," Zettel said, "is very very minor in
comparison to the environmental issue
at stake."
Zettel told the crowd at the meeting
hosted by the Huron -Bruce New Demo-
crats that he started farming convention-
ally 11 years ago, but for the past 6 years
he has used no herbicides, insecticides,
or synthetic fertilizers on his farm.
A farm, he said, is "a diverse ecosys-
tem" with the soil as the focus. "The soil
is a living organism. I think that's
what's lacking in today's agriculture.
We don't think of the soil as a living
entity."
"We're victims," Zettel added, "of
the traditions that have been built up
over the years in farming, and those
things are difficult to change."
"But the single most important thing
that has to be changed is our own atti-
tude," he said —"the competitive ideol-
ogy" that we benefit at the cost of some-
one else.
"The world is too small for us to go
on doing that."
Organic farming works, he added.
"We know it works because there are
enough people doing it."
Also speaking at the meeting in
Lucknow was Bill Andrews, professor
of environmental studies at the Univer-
sity of Toronto. "You can't grow cheap
food without polluting the environ-
ment," he told the audience.
He also said that one cause of forest
die -back in the area — in addition to
ozone pollution, drought, acid rain, in-
sects, and other factors — is the herbi-
cides and the ammonia from nitrogen
fertilizers used by farmers.
Andrews criticized development on
agricultural land as well. "The best farm
land on earth," he commented, "was
around Mississauga."
Paul Weitendorf of the Maitland
Valley Conservation Authority intro-
duced the audience to the authority's
new long-term conservation strategy.
Soil, he said, "is the cornerstone of our
local economy, but this is slowly being
degraded by our production practices."0