The numbers published from the Statistics Canada Census indicate we might find the cupboards a little bare in future years when it comes to food that has been produced in Canada.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the numbers show Canada is continuously gaining more people, while we are losing our ability to feed them.
In 2011 Canada had 205,730 farms, a decrease of 23,643 farms, or 10.3 per cent since 2006. That’s just in five years. If this trend continues we will have lost another 10.3 per cent by 2016.
However, the population of Canada increased by 5.9 per cent between the 2006 and 2011 censuses, compared with a 5.4 per cent increase during the previous five-year period. Canada’s population increased at a faster rate than the population of any other member of the G8 group of industrialized nations between 2006 and 2011. This was also the case between 2001 and 2006.
What adds more concern to future food production in Canada is that it shows our farmers are getting older, and when they retire the family’s younger members are not carrying on through succession. Frequently prime farm land is hotly pursued and purchased by developers who do not have food production on their agenda. As we lose the farms and the people who work them, so will we also lose our ability to produce sufficient food for our own means. The only option that will be available to us is to bring what we eat in from other countries; that’s if they have any to spare, and we can afford to buy.
If we continue to follow what the statistics are showing, we will be going down a dangerous path of no return.
Once we lose the ability to feed ourselves we will lose our independence and our sustainable future.
Keeping Canada’s kitchen fully stocked should be the goal of every politician in Canada. Agriculture in this country needs more than a fair shake, it needs a bounty of support from government at all levels and in all jurisdictions.
You can’t eat ore, oil or condos.
– Barriere Star Journal
