Where is canada going?

[JLM]

Here is something for you to think about Countryboy. Every day when I go for my walk, I see lots of land where there doesn't appear to be much happening. And then I get to thinking that 3/4 of the world is starving, and then I get to thinking back to the land that I'm sure could at least grow spuds. Tell me if I'm onto something here.

 

[countryboy]

Here is something for you to think about Countryboy. Every day when I go for my walk, I see lots of land where there doesn't appear to be much happening. And then I get to thinking that 3/4 of the world is starving, and then I get to thinking back to the land that I'm sure could at least grow spuds. Tell me if I'm onto something here.

Oh yeah, I think you are. We have a great deal of potential to grow more food...the only thing holding it up is that nobody cares. Well, not enough of them anyway.

With the exception of citrus and some tropical fruits (like bananas), there isn't much we can't grow in Canada. I would love to see the bulk of Canada's food growing revert back to "the good old days" (like '59) where we had small farmers producing more natural foods. And making a decent living doing it.

This would likely involve some greenhouse operations which could be run year round for fresh veggies, salad ingredients, etc.

If anyone reads this, I guarantee you will see a litany of negative remarks about why that can't be done, how crazy it is, and all the things "wrong" with the idea.

If you stop and think about the benefits of a more local food production system, they are many...to name just a few:

Less strain on big city infrastructure - fewer people flocking to the big cities
Better food quality - more nutrition from more natural foods
Less pollution - no concentration of animals wastes in large batches
The old carbon footprint would be reduced - you wouldn't have to truck some much stuff into and around the country
...and there are lots more.

I think the problem - as I said earlier - is that not many people understand food or care about it. It's just "there" and they want it cheap.

The ability for a country to feed itself is very important, in my opinion, and some have found that out the hard way - when they can no longer feed themselves. An example would be Japan, where food is held in very high esteem by the average person. Some of them still remember WWII and the years following it.

So far, we've been pretty lucky and insulated from a reality like that, but if we don't pay attention to it, you never know what could happen...

 

[Bar Sinister]

Countryboy: One other you could add to your list would be improvement of Canada's broadband service. Compared to many nations what passes for internet speeds in Canada is quite poor. Many Canadians cannot get so called high speed. I currently have access only to satellite internet which is expensive, slow, and unreliable. Compare this to a country like Finland which has currently mandated speeds of 10 megabits and is going to upgrade the country to 100 megabits by 2020. Certainly if Finland can do this then so can Canada.

 

[china]

:canada::canada:Countryboy

Thus far, we seem to have 2 ideas...Go Green (as an industry) and a new approach to agriculture/food. So far, so good! Thanks.

..

This is part of my thread ..Poland as No. One.In it, you and others may find something more than just "ideas"to help Canada. If you don't see anything worthwhile
implementing into your plan of bettering our country than I can say without a doubt that in a 1-3 years Poland will have a better standard of living than Canada .
Don't get me wrong , I love Canada ; don't think that i,m insulting this great land .What I,m saying is ,well ,it's just the way it is .

********
In the midst of turmoil, in September 1989, Leszek Balcerowicz, a slender 42-year-old economist with an MBA from St. John's University, came to Washington seeking help. In a memorable press conference in the musty, seldom-used ballroom of the Polish embassy, Balcerowicz outlined an astonishing plan for quickly converting Poland's communist system into a western style market economy.
Jointly developed with Jeffrey Sachs, then a top economist at Harvard, the Balcerowicz Plan had two components, stabilization and institutional reform. The immediate need was food aid, debt relief and emergency loans. Then, hyperinflation would be halted by monetary restraint. Prices, for decades set by government bureaucrats, would be freed and determined by market forces. Protected state enterprises would have to compete with imported goods. Polish citizens would gain access to credit and be allowed to start businesses.
Poland's big bang drive to build a market economy was launched January 1, 1990. Aware that the reforms would be painful, Balcerowicz believed that given enough time shock therapy would succeed. "We are starting," he said, "in extremely difficult conditions...(but) we are determined to go ahead." Sachs said, "It was a terrifying and unpredictable period."
As expected, the first months were hard. Unemployment soared as industrial subsidies were cut. Living standards fell and poverty jumped as prices rose faster than wages. But fresh fruit and goods of all kinds began to fill empty shelves, boosting confidence that the plan might be working. Curbs on government spending and monetary discipline brought down inflation. The new government stuck with the program.
Two years later, the transition recession ended and an entrepreneurial Poland was registering rapid growth. By the mid-90s, growth reached 5% and Poland became the first post-communist economy to match the living standards that prevailed ten years earlier. Democracy became entrenched as elected governments came and went, but the reforms persisted. Poland joined NATO, and in 2004 the European Union. Annual growth rates well above those of Western Europe began to narrow the income gap with the west. Today, Poland is Europe's 6th and the world's 18th largest economy.
Proud of his country's achievements, conservative prime minister Donald Tusk told the Financial Times (January 27th) that .Poland's success is based "on the fundamental values of freedom, private property, competitiveness, and a limited role of the state."" Tusk's government is raising the retirement age and pushing down the budget deficit so that Poland will qualify for membership in the Euro currency zone.
Balcerowicz, too, is proud of what's been accomplished. He credits monetary discipline with helping Poland avoid the housing bubbles that swept through the three neighboring Baltic States, resulting in their economies registering 15% declines while Poland grew by over 1.5% in 2009.

If we have a revolution count me in Cb.:canada::lol:

 

[Cliffy]

Our political and monetary systems will destroy us. We cannot have continuous economic growth without a corresponding destruction of our life support system. What we need is total economic collapse in order for people to wake up to what we are doing to the planet. If our activities are not in harmony with the web of life, we will be the makers of our own demise. There is no life in stuff. It contributes nothing to the over all well being of life on this planet. Time to start living in the real world and not this capitalist nightmare.

 

[china]

:canada: Posted 2x

 

[countryboy]

Countryboy: One other you could add to your list would be improvement of Canada's broadband service. Compared to many nations what passes for internet speeds in Canada is quite poor. Many Canadians cannot get so called high speed. I currently have access only to satellite internet which is expensive, slow, and unreliable. Compare this to a country like Finland which has currently mandated speeds of 10 megabits and is going to upgrade the country to 100 megabits by 2020. Certainly if Finland can do this then so can Canada.

I hear you...I'm in the same predicament. Most provinces have some plans underway to remedy this, but I hear some federal rumblings about requiring ISPs to provide HS Broadband to all their customers. In BC, the government arm responsible it called "Network BC" and they're about to approve a bunch of grants in late March to construct more broadband wireless towers to many of the far-reaching areas of BC. The towers have to work on "line of sight" and that presents some very expensive problems out here in the land of the mountains.

I'm still on dial-up myself and it's a pain, for sure. Fingers crossed that the towers in this area will be up and running by around June.

As for the rest of Canada, I think the powers that be might already have recognized this problems, through the CRTC, I think...

 

[countryboy]

Our political and monetary systems will destroy us. We cannot have continuous economic growth without a corresponding destruction of our life support system. What we need is total economic collapse in order for people to wake up to what we are doing to the planet. If our activities are not in harmony with the web of life, we will be the makers of our own demise. There is no life in stuff. It contributes nothing to the over all well being of life on this planet. Time to start living in the real world and not this capitalist nightmare.

Hey Cliff - In the big bad corporate world of nasty business (which I was a part of), we used to say that trends can only be changed quickly if a dramatic event takes place. We called it "bending the trend."

I think you are absolutely right on the money (if you'll pardon the expression)...we are "sh*tting in our own nest" and something is going to happen to make us wake up to that fact. I'm just not sure of what it will be.

Getting collective attentions all at the same time (to make an impact) seems to be a daunting challenge, but...what would happen if every computer in the world shut down instantly, without warning, and the message popped up that things were going to have to change and pretty damned quickly? Hmm...it's a thought...the biggest problem is getting people's attention, at least as a first step. You're into computers...what do you think?

 

[countryboy]

:canada::canada:Countryboy
..



If we have a revolution count me in Cb.:canada::lol:

No question Poland is a huge success story, and they've worked hard at it. We're going a somewhat different way, it seems. I am most definitely a free-enterpriser, but I'm also wishing that we (Canada) could create a good balanced approach to growth, which would include a simple set of business laws/rules printed on two pages or less (which would feature environment/resources front and centre), a clear & severe set of penalties for breaking the rules, a minimum of hands-on government interference, a simple tax structure,
and reasonable incentives to encourage the creation of new industries necessary for our future prosperity. Am I wishing for too much?

 

[china]

:canada:[QUOTE.........a minimum of hands-on government interference, a simple tax structure, and reasonable incentives to encourage the creation of new industries necessary for our future prosperity. Am I wishing for too much?[/quote]

Absolutely not .There are 2 more issues tough regarding the banks and federal income tax .You want to talk about it ? I,m listening .:canada:

 

[Cliffy]

Hey Cliff - In the big bad corporate world of nasty business (which I was a part of), we used to say that trends can only be changed quickly if a dramatic event takes place. We called it "bending the trend."

I think you are absolutely right on the money (if you'll pardon the expression)...we are "sh*tting in our own nest" and something is going to happen to make us wake up to that fact. I'm just not sure of what it will be.

Getting collective attentions all at the same time (to make an impact) seems to be a daunting challenge, but...what would happen if every computer in the world shut down instantly, without warning, and the message popped up that things were going to have to change and pretty damned quickly? Hmm...it's a thought...the biggest problem is getting people's attention, at least as a first step. You're into computers...what do you think?

Computers are a poor substitute for real life. They are a dichotomy - at once linking us to people all over the world and at the same time isolating us from real contact with the physical world. I'm afraid that it will take something much more dramatic to get our collective consciousness to wake up, something on the magnitude of a freight train t-boning our car. As we become more dependent on machines we become less human, less connected to the web of life from which we sprang: we are aborting ourselves from our mother.

It appears that we are willingly and enthusiastically turning ourselves into cyborgs, part human, part machine, particularly in our attitude toward the web of life. As a species we have become narcissistic, so self absorbed that we fail to see that we are interdependent on all of the other living things on this planet. Pretty soon we will become just another machine, indifferent to our environment.

Some may say I'm a pessimist, but unless we wake up to where we are headed, we won't get very far down this road before we hit a dead end.

 

[JLM]

Our political and monetary systems will destroy us. We cannot have continuous economic growth without a corresponding destruction of our life support system. What we need is total economic collapse in order for people to wake up to what we are doing to the planet. If our activities are not in harmony with the web of life, we will be the makers of our own demise. There is no life in stuff. It contributes nothing to the over all well being of life on this planet. Time to start living in the real world and not this capitalist nightmare.

I think you are right on the money Cliff. However when it happens it wouldn't be too bad if you and I had a sh*t box full of it buried somewhere. :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

 

[countryboy]

Computers are a poor substitute for real life. They are a dichotomy - at once linking us to people all over the world and at the same time isolating us from real contact with the physical world. I'm afraid that it will take something much more dramatic to get our collective consciousness to wake up, something on the magnitude of a freight train t-boning our car. As we become more dependent on machines we become less human, less connected to the web of life from which we sprang: we are aborting ourselves from our mother.

It appears that we are willingly and enthusiastically turning ourselves into cyborgs, part human, part machine, particularly in our attitude toward the web of life. As a species we have become narcissistic, so self absorbed that we fail to see that we are interdependent on all of the other living things on this planet. Pretty soon we will become just another machine, indifferent to our environment.

Some may say I'm a pessimist, but unless we wake up to where we are headed, we won't get very far down this road before we hit a dead end.

Cliff, do you have scientifically documented proof of this? :lol:

Seriously, I do agree with you completely. Life is becoming for some, uh, I guess "unreal" is the best word I can come up with. There is much evidence to support what you're saying...I call it losing the ability to think (an observation made while watching people sending text messages and drive a car at the same time).

On a more "macro" scale, all you have to do is look at how we waste things like fresh water without a thought as to the consequences to realize that some serious "disconnects with reality" have become part of our everyday lives. Or the use of plastics in some very unthoughtful ways. And it goes on and on. There are some big problems coming our way.

On computers, I was suggesting their use as a tool to get a message across. Because that is all they really are - a tool. (So are some of the users, but that's a different story).

The saddest part is that many people seem to think it is someone else's responsibility to take care of these things, like perhaps the government. However, that is not true - the answers and the actions have to originate with the people...governments just respond to what people want, but they don't always do a good job of it. We all have a responsibility to clean up our act, but at the same time, I suspect that personal accountability for one's own actions is sliding lower on our list of things deemed to be important. That is the conundrum.

 

[taxslave]

Oh yeah, I think you are. We have a great deal of potential to grow more food...the only thing holding it up is that nobody cares. Well, not enough of them anyway.

With the exception of citrus and some tropical fruits (like bananas), there isn't much we can't grow in Canada. I would love to see the bulk of Canada's food growing revert back to "the good old days" (like '59) where we had small farmers producing more natural foods. And making a decent living doing it.

This would likely involve some greenhouse operations which could be run year round for fresh veggies, salad ingredients, etc.

If anyone reads this, I guarantee you will see a litany of negative remarks about why that can't be done, how crazy it is, and all the things "wrong" with the idea.

If you stop and think about the benefits of a more local food production system, they are many...to name just a few:

Less strain on big city infrastructure - fewer people flocking to the big cities
Better food quality - more nutrition from more natural foods
Less pollution - no concentration of animals wastes in large batches
The old carbon footprint would be reduced - you wouldn't have to truck some much stuff into and around the country
...and there are lots more.

I think the problem - as I said earlier - is that not many people understand food or care about it. It's just "there" and they want it cheap.

The ability for a country to feed itself is very important, in my opinion, and some have found that out the hard way - when they can no longer feed themselves. An example would be Japan, where food is held in very high esteem by the average person. Some of them still remember WWII and the years following it.

So far, we've been pretty lucky and insulated from a reality like that, but if we don't pay attention to it, you never know what could happen...

Where do you think you are going to find people dumb enough to be farmers? Almost all the small farmers I know subsidize their farming with real jobs that pay better than minimum wage, which if you are lucky is what you could expect to make farming in a good year.

 

[JLM]

Where do you think you are going to find people dumb enough to be farmers? Almost all the small farmers I know subsidize their farming with real jobs that pay better than minimum wage, which if you are lucky is what you could expect to make farming in a good year.

I think there are other possibilities not involving farmers. I was thinking small. Like you have a couple of hundred sq. feet in your back yard. It could be a little ma and pa operation, planting a few spuds and carrots or lettuce and selling what they can't use at farmer's market. Maybe ma & pa contribute to World Vision or something similar anyway, so maybe half the proceeds from the spuds would go there. Multiply that by ten thousand and maybe a difference is made in the world. Just one scenario.

 

[ironsides]

Our political and monetary systems will destroy us. We cannot have continuous economic growth without a corresponding destruction of our life support system. What we need is total economic collapse in order for people to wake up to what we are doing to the planet. If our activities are not in harmony with the web of life, we will be the makers of our own demise. There is no life in stuff. It contributes nothing to the over all well being of life on this planet. Time to start living in the real world and not this capitalist nightmare.

Are you sure the world you live in is the real world? The world you describe passed us by 50-60 years ago. What ever world you decide to build today, it must include feeding and supporting the world. Canada or the U.S. for that matter are not a entity unto themselves anymore. We cannot think about becoming self sufficient countries anymore, would be nice, but it is a passé statement.

 

[countryboy]

Where do you think you are going to find people dumb enough to be farmers? Almost all the small farmers I know subsidize their farming with real jobs that pay better than minimum wage, which if you are lucky is what you could expect to make farming in a good year.

Well, first of all I don't think being "dumb" is a requirement to be a farmer...quite the opposite, actually. As a comparison, a typical farmer has to know a lot of things (technical stuff, business practices, how to fix things that break, and so on) compared to many other occupations.

In my post on this (#82), I mentioned a couple of times that one of the issues is that people want their food cheap. That is why our "food system" is what it is today...it provides relatively cheap food. Most of the time.

The post outlined some thoughts on the issue, but it wasn't some kind of "master plan" to fix everything. Any changes we see in farming and food production have been, and will likely continue to be small and gradual. A lot of changes are taking place, but without the market needs changing (which would require people understanding more about their food), huge and dramatic changes just aren't possible or practical.

I think there is some growth happening in the overall awareness of the importance of food (its impact on health), and that is a positive thing. As more people become aware, their needs change, and they seek out better sources of food. And that is what causes changes in production...the producers (farmers) are responding to those changing needs, and I am thankful they are doing that - I am finding better sources for food, even out here in the hinterlands of BC.

Profitability is certainly a big issue in farming, and it needs to be addressed too. People do pay more for better food...i.e., so-called organic things usually cost more than non-organic...which is an indication that people will pay more if they understand more about their food. Again, it's still a small part of the overall picture but it is growing.

And of course, not all farming is the same. A fruit grower runs a much different operation than a pork producer. Even grain farmers grow different crops - oilseeds, cereals, specialty crops (e.g., hemp), and they come in all different sizes. So, it is difficult to lump them all into one category called "farming."

It's a really big subject without a lot of clear answers, but the fact that changes are happening is very encouraging and positive, in my opinion...

 

[countryboy]

I think there are other possibilities not involving farmers. I was thinking small. Like you have a couple of hundred sq. feet in your back yard. It could be a little ma and pa operation, planting a few spuds and carrots or lettuce and selling what they can't use at farmer's market. Maybe ma & pa contribute to World Vision or something similar anyway, so maybe half the proceeds from the spuds would go there. Multiply that by ten thousand and maybe a difference is made in the world. Just one scenario.

It's not a crazy thought. Hell, Cuba is ahead of us on the local growing idea. On that tiny little island, they have turn little patches of ground in Havana into gardens to produce more/better food. Mind you, they had to - when the Soviet Union collapsed, they found themselves without sufficient food (they had begun to rely on the USSR to ship a lot of food to them as part of the communist family) - and hunger motivated them to get creative in order to feed themselves.

They have lots of little ma and pa "farmers markets" right there in the city and it works quite well.

We have some examples of community gardens in Canada, but it could become larger and better, or at least, it has the potential to do so. We're not exactly "land starved" in Canada but we might be a bit "land spoiled"...we just take it for granted and don't really make as much use of it as we could.

So when does the "JLM Market Garden" open for business? :canada:

 

[taxslave]

I think there are other possibilities not involving farmers. I was thinking small. Like you have a couple of hundred sq. feet in your back yard. It could be a little ma and pa operation, planting a few spuds and carrots or lettuce and selling what they can't use at farmer's market. Maybe ma & pa contribute to World Vision or something similar anyway, so maybe half the proceeds from the spuds would go there. Multiply that by ten thousand and maybe a difference is made in the world. Just one scenario.

Ever deal with all the bureaucracies involved with selling food? Between marketing boards that protect Agricorp and health boards that are run by socialists that know so much better than you do what is good for you and a tax system that is a disincentive to enterprise there is not much hope.
The same is true in most industries. Twenty years ago I ran a logging company, spending most of my time on the job, a part time bookkeeper and perhaps 5% of my time in the office. Now even a two man operation requires a half time office person just to deal with all the paper work demanded by various government agencies. This is what is killing all small business, and when dealing with food there are just so many more of them in your face. Fix this problem and there is a small chance that you will see the return of the family farm.

 

[petros]

Where do you think you are going to find people dumb enough to be farmers?

You should learn about today's farming and ask "Where are you going to find someone rich enough to start farming?

If you think you don't need an education to farm then you shall forever be the taxslave that you are.

No clue at all about today's agribiz. Terrible considering it is what you eat.