Anne Murray in the Straight

The usual arguments are presented by Anne Murray in her recent Georgia straight article. The comments thus far are to be expected.

One item relating to the SFPR seems often overlooked. The farming community in Delta was not happy in losing the farmland along the pathway of the new route. They did not, however, give the land up immediately.

They negotiated with Government to secure millions of dollars of irrigation infrastructure that enable them to be more productive with the land that they have and help them stay in a tough business.

In regard to "food security" issues, we should also realize that many of the products grown in the Delta fill the commodity markets and have to compete with neighbouring markets for local, regional and national share.

When we can, we should eat locally when product is in season. This is common sense. We cannot think that we can insulate ourselves from the trading market. This would be economic suicide for our farmers who grow traditional industrial commodity product.

As the Provincial Governments' agriculture plan suggests, we should be exploring opportunities to get young people interested in farming and this may require looking at new types of food production and horticultural practice that does not require the massive capital investment to operate large machine based farms.

There needs to be some sort of effort toward finding new ways to grow food and maybe then we can more accurately talk about food security.

Broad generalizations about the ALR and farming do not address any of the problems of local production and distribution of food.

Perpetuating our good fortune in Canada through trade and infrastructure development is not about "greed", it is about keeping your "quality of life" where it is today and hopefully maintaining it in the future. 

Government policy in this regard requires decision making that is not always populist.