(Photo via American Feast)
How can city and country farming be the key to fixing the economy? How can it give a real alternative to the way we eat, live and work? Dr. Wayne Roberts gives you the whole 9 yards.
Eat This Recession | Alternatives Journal – Environmental Ideas + Action: “Instead of accepting today’s economic downturn as a pink slip that can’t be refused, what if our governments reacted as if they had received a Facebook invitation: by selecting ‘join cause,’ ‘learn more’ or ‘ignore’?
When faced with the possibility of a recession, panicked politicians from around the world didn’t consider a range of options; they didn’t click on ‘learn more.’ Instead, they hit ‘join cause.’ With a similar lack of vision, governments the world over are trying to spend their way out of the crisis by dumping loads of money into infrastructure projects, claiming a need for ‘shovel-ready’ projects to ‘kick start’ the recovery.”
PAYING YOU TO EAT LOCAL
Wayne Roberts does the math and finds that if government gave you $10 back for every $100 of local, chemical free, hormone free healthy food you bought you’d be pumping up to $15,000,000,000 (billion) Canadian back into the local economy. That would create a hell of a lot of jobs.
BUY LOCAL SAVES BIG
In fact the University of Toronto and the Town of Markham are doing just that and finding that even if they pay 10% extra at first it ends up they don’t at the end? Why? University of Toronto found that people respect the food more and waste it less, meaning U of T didn’t have to buy as much.
If every Canadian government agency did that local farmers would finally be able to meet demand from bigger supermarket stores.
BRING COMMUNITIES TO LIFE
Some of the money would have to be invested in “local food animators” who would help bring people together to buy local, environmentally friend and healthy food. The rest would go to teaching people in public agencies to make the switch to healthy, fresh local, chemical free food. All in all, if government spent $2 billion they could create 1500 long term jobs for animators and 18000 for food producers and service workers.
GREEN ROOFS GROW JOBS
1/6th of cities have flat roofs which are great for growing food. In fact, Russian cottage gardeners produced half the country’s food. In Canada’s warmer climate down south we could grow even more.
FARM ONE DAY A WEEK
Workers who go on a special plan to work 4 days and get employment insurance on the 5th day could spend that 5th day learning how to garden and cook. That could help them make up for the lost day of work according to Dr. Roberts. Of course they’d get lots of great exercise.
If 400,000 workers did it this way, they’d actually save 100,000 jobs. That’s just bloody amazing!
FARMING MAKES OTHER JOBS
There are lots of jobs that depend on farming and keeping money in the local economy. For example, if “a farmer spends new income on a haircut, the barber buys a book on wealthy barbers, the bookstore owner goes to hear a local rock band and so on.”
Some people estimate that you could create up to 1 million extra jobs this way.
The only thing standing in the way?
Government leadership.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I enjoyed reading Dr. Wayne Roberts article. I’ve know Wayne for many years and he knows how to get to the point. There are plenty of statistics to support more growing and eating more local produce. What is missing is the motivation on the part of middle-income people to take up the challenge of doing something about the current food production and distribution system. It is still too easy to just do what we’ve always done and go to the supermaket and buy what looks good.
One way around this apparently entrench behaviour is to educate young people about the value of local organic produce. This needs to be done at schools and particularly durng the summer months when kids have time to get outside and experience the environment when they are not all bundled up. Summer camps can be a great place to learn about the value of eating locally. They could, if they wanted to, provide vegetable gardens for kids to learn about growing their own food and how to prepare it for healthy eating. Once kids have had this type of opportunity and if they have found it to be a possitive experience, they will share what they’ve experienced with adults and peers. I think that’s the way we start turning the economy around to recognize the true value of locally produced agricultural products.
Finally, it will take people who have a positive approach to growing food locally to demonstrate to the kids how it is done. That should create well paid employment for those workers who are preparing the next generation of farmers.