The Rural Voice, 2002-09, Page 10"Our experience
assures lower cost
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6 THE RURAL VOICE
Keith Roulston
Farmers shouldn't fear environmentalists
Keith
Roulston is
editor and
publisher of
The Rural
Voice. He
lives near
Bluth, ON.
The railcar Toads of Ontario hay
heading west to help cattle producers
in Alberta and Saskatchewan are a
heart-warming sight but the nightly
videos of the desperate plight of
western farmers suffering their third
year of drought should raise concern
as well as sympathy from Ontario
farmers.
The very future of many farmers
out west is endangered by conditions
beyond their control. Dealing with
the vagaries of markets and herd
health are bad enough, but weather is
beyond the skills of even the most
brilliant farm manager.
While we're so much better off
than the situation out west that we
ought to be thankful and want to help
out, we've suffered our own weird
weather. After a winter of little snow,
we had a cold wet spring that set back
planting almost to the point of a crop
year being lost. Then the weather
switched and we've had a summer
with far above normal temperatures
both daytime and nighttime. While
we're grateful for the heat this year
given the late start for the crops, one
has to wonder what's going on.
Meanwhile we've been blanketed
with smog so often that "bad air"
days have become more common
than days when the air was clean. I
find it ironic that in mid -western
Ontario we get the pollution from
industry while others in the U.S.
midwest and the southwest of Ontario
get the jobs.
If indeed global warming is
behind the strange weather affecting
ourselves and the prairies, then the
livelihood of farmers is being
sacrificed for urban areas that get the
benefits from the creation of the
pollution, whether it lie from
smokestack industries or congested
urban traffic. Our way of life is being
threatened because the political clout
of urban industries blocks meaningful
cuts in greenhouse gases.
Farmers don't feel very comfort-
able with environmentalists. They
tend to sympathize more with bus-
inesses that are being attacked by
environmental watchdogs than with
those demanding environmental resp-
onsibility. This is probably because
farmers feel they, themselves, are
unfairly maligned for everything
from the crop -protection sprays they
use to the manure they spread.
Yet who has more to lose than
farmers if urban industries change the
weather enough that we can no longer
grow the crops or raise the livestock
that our farming life depends on?
A recent Natural Resource Canada
study, for instance, said that the next
century could see losses of farm
production if global surface -air
temperatures increase between 1.4
and 5.8 degrees C (I'd bet we've had
that level of increase this summer in
Ontario).
Those conditions would cause our
lakes to shrink, possibly making
shipping of farm products through the
Great Lakes more difficult. Reduced
flow of rivers might decrease hydro-
electric production which could drive
up electricity cost for farmers. Less
water in streams means a small
amount of pollution can have much
more effect: imagine if manure from
farm fields ran into a stream then.
If the dire predictions about global
warming come true, farmers have
more on the line than anyone else but
fishermen. We'II face the same
hardships as urbanites plus unique
trials of our own that might decimate
farm populations.
Perhaps farmers shouldn't be so
worried about environmentalists.
Imagine if, instead of being on the
defensive about nutrient manage-
ment, farmers went on the offensive
and joined environmental groups in
their campaign to clean up air
pollution and reduce global warming?
Rural residents have less to lose
by cleaning up the air that urbanites.
They have much more to lose if
global warming predictions prove
true — and by then it will be too late.0