Most of what I am today I owe to a healthy appetite and an endless supply of good home cooking.
Whether I’m feeling good and hungry or just a little peckish, whether I’m feeling up or down, whether I’ve worked hard or just sat on my butt all day, when there’s plenty of food in the fridge I can’t complain.
Canadians enjoy eating. It sustains us physically and socially. We gather with our children around the dinner table to share a meal. When a special occasion arrives we cook something nice and invite people over.
When friends drop by we throw a few more shrimp on the barbie. When we stop for coffee, which we frequently do, we very often have a little something with it.
Maybe that’s why our country doesn’t cause much trouble and Canadians are generally thought to be apathetic and complacent. Well-fed cats don’t stray too far from home.
They just eat and get fat and content.
But picture this. What would you do if the dinner invitations started to dry up? What would you feed your family if the cost of food kept rising until it took an entire day’s pay to buy a loaf of bread?
And then, on your next shopping trip you notice that the grocery store aisles have a lot of empty shelves and you are lucky if you can even find a loaf of bread to buy.
But even though the bread is all gone the Internet still survives and you see pictures of Stephen Harper dripping Béarnaise sauce on his stylish, new sweater vest. And then you see John Baird tearing into a huge, fatty slab of prime rib.
At the same time Bev Oda is doing her best to provide relief for poor, hungry Canadians – NOT!
And then taxes go up, all social services are cancelled and children everywhere are sick and malnourished. The multi-billion dollar renovation of Parliament Hill continues.
What would you do then? The people of Tunisia were faced with food shortages and government indifference in December and they decided to take it to the street. The resulting riots eventually drove their dictator from power.
Remember, hungry people the world over may not have food but they still have the internet. What happened in Tunisia soon spread to Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya may be next to fall.
These uprisings have many causes but hunger and the high cost of food are at the root. When faced with starvation the prospect of facing live ammunition is only slightly less desirable. Dictators everywhere are discovering that the road to political suicide is short when citizens are denied affordable food.
There may be more to come. Crippling droughts in Russia and Argentina lead to shortages and steeply rising prices. World food prices hit their highest level on record this past January.
Torrential rains in Australia and Canada had the same effect. In Saskatchewan last year 10 million acres went unplanted. What’s more, the world’s largest wheat crop, in China, is threatened by drought.
Billions of hungry mouths worldwide will soon be competing for less food. We may be looking at a Global Food Fight.
Here in Thunder Bay we lead a sheltered life. If we want fresh strawberries in January or tropical fruit all year round we can get it. We can feast on exotic foods from around the world, even from countries with starving populations.
This could change. As food shortages and oil shortages work their way through the global economy, we may start looking a little closer to home for our nutritional needs. It’s all about food security.
I started thinking about all this after watching a locally produced film entitled Northern Grown: How is Thunder Bay Feeding Itself?
The film profiles some local farmers/entrepreneurs in the context of the security of our locally produced food supply.
Farming in Northwestern Ontario is a challenging adventure, but local farmers are a hardy lot and endure the hardship for their love of the land. Unfortunately right now their efforts are under-appreciated and undervalued.
Nobody really knows how global forces will affect our local food supply but we would be foolish to ignore it. Having to rely more on local farmers and producers would require lifestyle changes but it would provide us with a secure source of safe, nutritious food.
And if we have to wait until June for fresh strawberries, that’s a small price to pay.
Whether I’m feeling good and hungry or just a little peckish, whether I’m feeling up or down, whether I’ve worked hard or just sat on my butt all day, when there’s plenty of food in the fridge I can’t complain.
Canadians enjoy eating. It sustains us physically and socially. We gather with our children around the dinner table to share a meal. When a special occasion arrives we cook something nice and invite people over.
When friends drop by we throw a few more shrimp on the barbie. When we stop for coffee, which we frequently do, we very often have a little something with it.
Maybe that’s why our country doesn’t cause much trouble and Canadians are generally thought to be apathetic and complacent. Well-fed cats don’t stray too far from home.
They just eat and get fat and content.
But picture this. What would you do if the dinner invitations started to dry up? What would you feed your family if the cost of food kept rising until it took an entire day’s pay to buy a loaf of bread?
And then, on your next shopping trip you notice that the grocery store aisles have a lot of empty shelves and you are lucky if you can even find a loaf of bread to buy.
But even though the bread is all gone the Internet still survives and you see pictures of Stephen Harper dripping Béarnaise sauce on his stylish, new sweater vest. And then you see John Baird tearing into a huge, fatty slab of prime rib.
At the same time Bev Oda is doing her best to provide relief for poor, hungry Canadians – NOT!
And then taxes go up, all social services are cancelled and children everywhere are sick and malnourished. The multi-billion dollar renovation of Parliament Hill continues.
What would you do then? The people of Tunisia were faced with food shortages and government indifference in December and they decided to take it to the street. The resulting riots eventually drove their dictator from power.
Remember, hungry people the world over may not have food but they still have the internet. What happened in Tunisia soon spread to Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria. Moammar Gadhafi in Libya may be next to fall.
These uprisings have many causes but hunger and the high cost of food are at the root. When faced with starvation the prospect of facing live ammunition is only slightly less desirable. Dictators everywhere are discovering that the road to political suicide is short when citizens are denied affordable food.
There may be more to come. Crippling droughts in Russia and Argentina lead to shortages and steeply rising prices. World food prices hit their highest level on record this past January.
Torrential rains in Australia and Canada had the same effect. In Saskatchewan last year 10 million acres went unplanted. What’s more, the world’s largest wheat crop, in China, is threatened by drought.
Billions of hungry mouths worldwide will soon be competing for less food. We may be looking at a Global Food Fight.
Here in Thunder Bay we lead a sheltered life. If we want fresh strawberries in January or tropical fruit all year round we can get it. We can feast on exotic foods from around the world, even from countries with starving populations.
This could change. As food shortages and oil shortages work their way through the global economy, we may start looking a little closer to home for our nutritional needs. It’s all about food security.
I started thinking about all this after watching a locally produced film entitled Northern Grown: How is Thunder Bay Feeding Itself?
The film profiles some local farmers/entrepreneurs in the context of the security of our locally produced food supply.
Farming in Northwestern Ontario is a challenging adventure, but local farmers are a hardy lot and endure the hardship for their love of the land. Unfortunately right now their efforts are under-appreciated and undervalued.
Nobody really knows how global forces will affect our local food supply but we would be foolish to ignore it. Having to rely more on local farmers and producers would require lifestyle changes but it would provide us with a secure source of safe, nutritious food.
And if we have to wait until June for fresh strawberries, that’s a small price to pay.
