The Road to Local Food Systems With Richie Bloomfield

In the first episode ever of Vistas & Voices, I sit down with Richie Bloomfield, an assistant professor and PhD student focusing on agro-food systems and farm policy. We engage in a profound discussion about the complexities of small-scale farming, agricultural policies, urban farming, and the importance of developing local food systems. Richie shares his work with Urban Roots and discusses his journey in agriculture, as well as the challenges of navigating the complexities of soil contamination and land usage policies. This episode explores how Urban Roots makes fresh produce more accessible to all and improves the quality of life for local communities. Richie also delves into the importance of exploring farm policy and promoting change within the agricultural industry, touching on topics including corporate dominance, the scarcity of young farmers, and the potential for urban farming to encourage greater diversity in farming. 

 

I am so excited to be releasing my first podcast episode and I hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it. I appreciate you listening, enjoy the conversation...

 

01:30 The Journey into Agriculture

04:27 The Birth of Urban Roots

07:22 Challenges and Successes of Urban Farming

10:08 Expanding Urban Agriculture

15:44 Future of Urban Farming

27:32 Predominant Trend in Agriculture

28:00 Struggles of Modern Farmers

28:34 Resilience of Small Scale Farms

29:30 Role of Technology in Agriculture

30:20 Impact of Industrial Farming

32:28 Future of Hydroponic Growing

33:13 Challenges of Scaling in Agriculture

33:33 Future of Urban Farming

34:01 Focus of PhD Research in Agriculture

34:40 Importance of Land Use Policies

35:00 Future of Young Farmers

39:56 Impact of Globalization on Agriculture

46:47 Challenges of Defining Regenerative Practices

57:13 Importance of Local Governance in Agriculture

01:01:17 The Hope for a More Resilient Agriculture Industry

01:06:20 Conclusion: The Future of Agriculture

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
In the first episode ever of vistas and voices, I sit down with Richie Bloomfield.
An assistant professor and PhD student focusing on AgriFood systems and foreign policy.
We engage in profound discussion about the complexities of small-scale farming, agricultural policies, urban farming, and the importance of developing local food systems.

(00:22):
Richie shares has worked with urban roots and discussing his journey in agriculture, as well as the challenges of navigating the complexities of soil contamination and land use policies.
This episode explores how urban roots makes fresh produce more accessible to all and improves the quality of life for local communities.
Richie also delves into the importance of exploring foreign policy and promoting change within the agricultural industry.

(00:46):
Touching on topics, including corporate dominance, the scarcity of young farmers and the potential for urban farming to encourage greater diversity in farming.
I'm so excited to be releasing my first podcast episode.
And I hope that you enjoy listening to it as much as I did making it.
I appreciate you listening enjoy the conversation.

(01:08):
Thank you, Richie, for being my first guest here.
I'm very excited.
I'm glad we were able to meet on this awfully cold day.
First of all, I'd just like to say thank you for taking the leap to be my first guest.
My pleasure.
It's hard to get people to Kind of join in on the train when you don't have any reputation.
So I really appreciate it.

(01:29):
And our conversation earlier as well.
So getting right into it, you have an extensive education and background.
You're doing your PhD and agro food systems, farm policy and ownership dynamics. 21 00:01:41,774.999 --> 00:01:45,835 You also have an incredible professional background as well.
.999Having taught at three post secondary institutions and currently are teaching at one, you're the founding director of Urban Roots. 23 00:01:53,515.099 --> 00:01:53,689.9 Urban Roots.

(01:53):
And you've also co own a cafe as well as have numerous national memberships.
So you're obviously very driven.
You've gotten London's 20 under 40.
.999Is that what it is? Yeah.
.99920 under 40. 29 00:02:08,639.999 --> 00:02:09,49.999 Okay.
Yeah. 31 00:02:09,439.999 --> 00:02:13,269.9995 So you've, you're incredibly driven from my research. 32 00:02:13,269.9995 --> 00:02:14,810 Like you're doing good in the world.

(02:15):
It's awesome.
How did you channel this energy into agriculture? Thank you for the very generous introduction.
I think, you know, for me, agriculture is a journey that that does start at home.
.999My parents farm still and a lot of my extended family also farms and my previous generations before that.
.9995My family have been farming for quite some time. 38 00:02:38,84.9995 --> 00:02:47,754.999 So I had that connection as a child, but I will say that I wasn't as engaged with it until later in my life. 39 00:02:48,34.999 --> 00:02:51,215 So I sort of Maybe without realizing it, I took it for granted.

(02:51):
I never complained about living on a farm or growing up on a farm.
.999I always enjoyed it, but it really sort of synthesized for me its importance in university when I started taking courses in the globalization program that I took in my undergrad, and a lot of the big problems of the world that we talked about did include it.

(03:11):
Agriculture and peasant struggles against land control and so on.
And that really sparked sort of awareness for me.
And I think also around that time, you know, I was always bringing home books to my parents, you know, Hey, read this, read this.
And my dad in particular was very, I would say, bothered by some of the trends.
That had been going on over his lifetime, and he was actively seeking out his own books to read and and reading other farmers who were trying to get away from what the true trajectory was.

(03:43):
.999Um, so the combination of basically my own growing passion and watching some of that happen in my own family, you know, just sort of escalated from there. 48 00:03:51,124.999 --> 00:03:52,215 So what it is today.
Okay, so family roots into it.
.999That means a lot for obviously creating a drive when your family is involved.
So I'm assuming this was in Southwest Ontario.
Yes.

(04:03):
Localish.
That's right.
Yeah.
Very much rooted here.
Um, and most of my family on my father's side is sort of 20 to 25 minutes outside of the city of London.
.999So that's where I grew up and then I've lived my professional life in this area as well.
Cool. 60 00:04:20,885.1 --> 00:04:26,835 And so that explains why you're putting so much work into the city of London or improving the quality of life for several people here.

(04:27):
Let's talk about urban roots.
So you're the founding director of urban roots.
Which I'll let you explain what it is, what you've done, and then I'll try and ask you some questions after that.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, Urban Roots started in 2017, um, as a not for profit urban farm, east side of London, is where we actually Are located, but you know, when we first started, we obviously didn't have any land to begin with.

(04:52):
So it's just an idea.
And the idea was there seems to be a decent amount of vacant space in London.
We know that this region of Southwestern Ontario is historically speaking, and today a sort of breadbasket, so called in terms of soil. 69 00:05:07,364.999 --> 00:05:08,365 So we could grow food.
We thought.
And there's a need for making fresh produce more accessible to more people, given its cost in most cases, especially things that are, say, organic, which tend to come with an even higher premium. 72 00:05:22,294.999 --> 00:05:34,365 We'd seen a bunch of antidotes, analogs, or in other cities like Detroit, and they're doing amazing work, sort of after the fallout of the 07 08 financial crisis.

(05:34):
These amazing vegetable farms are popping up right in the city because there's so much vacant land.
But one of the real challenges that they had was they were funded through one source only, and that was the municipal government.
So a lot of people that we had spoke to were pretty nervous about.
Political change, and they might lose all their funding and they were giving away all their produce for free.

(05:59):
.999So that insight is what led to what Urban Roots is kind of most known for at this point, which is our model of thirds.
.9Yeah, and which is? Yeah, which is a, uh, a model which says that we'll donate no less than a third of what we grow.
And then we will sell another third at what we consider affordable, which is basically, um, I think half the price of what you pay at a no frills.

(06:23):
For vegetables, so help cost recovery.
.999And then another third we'd sell to make a profit through restaurant channels and other sort of normal wholesale selling. 82 00:06:34,524.999 --> 00:06:45,995 To give away a third of your produce is very irregular in this economy, I would say, and be able to do that and still continue your business is pretty special.

(06:46):
From our conversation earlier, you produced.
500 pounds of vegetables your first year.
Mm-Hmm.
And now you're up to 25,000 pounds.
2,500 pounds, a little less, about 20, 22,000, uh, pounds of food in a year on that piece of land.
And yet, you're right, it did start at 500, uh, in the first year when we, we really had no idea what we were doing.

(07:08):
And I think that first year we planted our first seed.
June 30th, which for any gardener that's very late.
Um, and that's because we didn't get the land until then.
Yeah, since then it's been a lot of learning and a lot of systems put in place and so on. 93 00:07:22,204.999 --> 00:07:27,055 But, uh, yeah, it's about a little more than an acre, um, in production.
.999That's, that's producing that much food.

(07:30):
That seems really unfathomable to produce 22, 000 pounds of food on one acre.
Do you know the typical production of one acre of? corn per se, or one acre of soy.
That's a good question.
Um, certainly something we could look up.
I don't have at the top of my head.
Um, and part of the challenge here too would be You know, weight isn't maybe the best measurement to compare those two things.

(07:53):
Um, of course, 20, 000 pounds of vegetables.
And I should say it's not just squash, right? We have, you know, 30 different vegetables and multiple varieties of each.
So it's everything from lettuce and kale to your, you know, happy feeders and squash, potatoes and so on.
But these have very different nutritional values.
True.
Um, and of course, corn in particular, the kind that we grow.

(08:15):
In this region is, is often not even used for food.
It may be used for a feed for animals, but, uh, it's sometimes not even used for that, right? Shipped for biofuel and other things like that, which is I think a symptom of some of the larger problems that we face. 109 00:08:33,19.999 --> 00:08:41,990 Thinking about it now, the food grown around here is grown for quantity over quality where urban roots is quite the opposite quality over quantity.

(08:42):
Even though you do produce large amounts of quantity as well.
Your remediated urban land that was previously used for something.
.999Yeah, so in our case, it actually was a horse pasture years ago, which is really helpful for us because the land was quite rich.

(09:03):
And then, and then there's, there's a house on the property that was being rented out by the landowners at the time.
And then there's this really large backyard, if you will, that was just sort of.
A pastor that was being not used when we showed up, you know, I should say that, you know, we sort of learned early on that, you know, we were a little naive in terms of what was possible to grow a lot of land in the city, unfortunately, and I'm sure this is.

(09:29):
I don't have a comprehensive study in front of me to say how many cities are like this, but in London, at least a lot of land is contaminated with heavy metals, things like lead and so on, and to a level that you could not grow in the land, at least without very expensive remediation first, and then compounding that when we started, there was no such thing as an urban agriculture policy in London or strategy.

(09:51):
So, you know, that's what actually drove us to eventually start.
More or less knocking on doors of privately owned land and saying, Hey, what do you think about this idea? Could we use this land to, to, to grow? So yeah, it was, it was really just an open field of grass when we showed up.
That's better than I thought it would be.
Yeah.
Was there like a particularly high organic matter at that point? Or like, where did you face any challenges trying to turn that land into a garden essentially? So like I said, fortunately for us, the organic matter was It's good.

(10:23):
It's quite high, really.
.999And it's been our job to make sure that we maintain that and continue to build that, which is a, um, not an easy thing necessarily in that process, but many farmers and, and stewards of the land have shown how you can do that. 124 00:10:37,664.999 --> 00:10:41,164.999 So our challenge is really just not knowing what we were doing at the start. 125 00:10:41,164.999 --> 00:10:42,49.9 So, you know, we were.
We, for example, we tried to turn this side originally, and we had the wrong tools to even do it.

(10:46):
So, you know, took us 12 hours to tell a plot of a small section of the land on rotation.
.899Like, every everybody would take an hour or 2 and we'd rotate in and out. 129 00:10:57,629.999 --> 00:11:01,900 And then some other gentleman took pity on us and said, I think you might need.
Attractor and he came in actually tilled it properly.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah.

(11:06):
So that's how it started.
Uh, we now have, you know, much more sophisticated, uh, set up, but, um, yeah, I really, for us, at least we were, let's try it.
And, and we assumed that there would be people who would be able to help us and that turned out to be very true.
That's pretty amazing.
It is fun to think about that.
Like it's, it's, it's, it's just putting a part of my memory, but you know, you don't.

(11:30):
necessarily see that memory when you're in it now, because it's a very different, yeah.
Um, it's organization very well established, I would say.
Yeah.
Has a growing presence as well.
Um, so like facing challenges like that, did you find that there was a lot of support from the community? Did you also find that there was a lot of people who did not want a garden or like large garden in the city or in their area perhaps? That's a good question.

(11:59):
I think so.
Support from the city was, I think, quite strong in that first day that we planted was actually all volunteers that we just put a call on Facebook and said, Hey, are these new people that are going to try to do this thing? Does anyone have seeds and knowledge of? Gardening and I think it was like 15 volunteers or something that showed up on that first day.

(12:19):
.999And so, you know, and that wasn't just, you know, our friends, like it was people we'd never met before, um, which is pretty amazing.
.999So all the seats were donated and then, you know, things like that.
We ran a go fund me to start and we have a couple thousand dollars if that was our initial to start this organization and there's much larger examples of that.
I don't know.
We might go get into this later, but, you know, ultimately the.

(12:41):
The community helped us buy that land.
So, um, that's a pretty substantial vote of confidence in, in terms of wanting something like this to exist.
Um, now, we certainly were aware, and this is part of the challenges of the policies that.
You know, community gardens are well established.
People know what these are, but you know, to say an urban farm and still to this day, they can get sort of just mushed together.

(13:03):
People say like, oh, you mean a community garden and a bunch of people coming to it.
It's like, well, no, not exactly. 158 00:13:09,989.999 --> 00:13:15,939.999 We're more production oriented and, um, and it's not for individual use per se. 159 00:13:16,709.999 --> 00:13:18,79.999 So there's some barriers there. 160 00:13:18,169.999 --> 00:13:21,040 And then, like I said, a lot of the we did look at a number of other. 161 00:13:21,40.1 --> 00:13:21,59.9 Okay.
.001Areas and vacant properties, even privately owned, but contamination, um, even the density, um, I think of some of the neighborhoods would have posed more challenges to some of the things that we're now doing a fairly large couple of heated high tunnels, which would not likely be possible in, say, a very small, dense.

(13:48):
So those high tunnels allow you to produce longer on each end of the season.
So how, how many months of the year do you guys produce vegetables? We're officially at 12 now.
Are you really? Yeah.
.999That's so cool.
Yeah.
.999There's spinach right now.
.999I think it's minus 18, but yeah, it's slow growing. 170 00:14:02,884.999 --> 00:14:17,295 Um, but both, both, uh, high tunnels this year are running basically some greens, uh, throughout this, throughout the winter, but otherwise like primary production still remains around the nine months Nine to 10 month range depending on what kind of crops you're talking about.

(14:17):
And we have a number of other sort of tunnel structures that help extend both on the front and the back end of the growing season.
Okay.
So January, February are the slow months more or less? I would say the slowest.
Of course, you know, if you talk to the farm manager, he would tell you that it's, it's slow visibly but eagerly and, and spending lots of time planning and uh, and starting our seedlings.

(14:40):
So starting all the, uh, crops needed for this coming year, it needs to happen pretty early in the year.
So, okay.
And does that happen on site as well? You guys all on site? Unfortunately, that isn't yet what we can do.
So over the years, we've had different locations.
.999Last few years, we've rented a space in the basement of Reforest London, which is another nonprofit organization here, uh, fairly well known for their work planting trees.

(15:06):
.999Um, so they have a space, um, in their basement that we rent out to grow this, to start all of our, our seedlings right now. 181 00:15:13,644.999 --> 00:15:18,725 And they're relatively close to us, but it is still a little bit of a challenge to be shipping.
Even between those two sites to our home site.
We do hope that with now the high tunnels that there's a possibility we can bring at least some or all of that to the same site. 184 00:15:30,759.999 --> 00:15:32,180 That would be super cool.

(15:32):
Yeah, it will do everything on site.
.999And just to think that 7 years ago now, that was dilapidated pasture or abandoned pasture more or less. 187 00:15:42,759.999 --> 00:15:43,779.999 Yeah, that's amazing. 188 00:15:44,129.999 --> 00:15:48,279.999 And do you think that urban roots, the model that you've conceived now is.
.9Replicable and able, like, if someone in their city wanted to have an urban farm, are they able to take what you guys have done and replicate it? Is it pretty easy to replicate? So I think it can be replicated and, and certainly Urban Roots, actually, the organization always said that.

(16:07):
You know, we're not here to start a franchise model and like go to other cities necessarily and start doing exactly what we're doing here, but we do hope that like we took inspiration from others in other cities that others will do the same with us and then apply it to their specific context, because besides policy context, which is huge, right? So how supportive is a city about? Things like urban agriculture is going to change the viability of a model like this.

(16:36):
.999Um, how big is the center? Um, how much land is truly available? And these are all really place specific questions, I think. 192 00:16:45,449.999 --> 00:16:51,499.999 And, you know, we are, you know, a model that helps generate, but not fully generate.
Like, we do not pay for Every operating expense through our model of thirds, it certainly helps pay for what we do, but we still are dependent upon.

(17:02):
You know, grant writing and, you know, raising money through sort of typical donations, and that's not an easy balance.
So I think it's a possibility of a possible solution that can work with amendments in each different location.
And I mean, I've been encouraged, I guess, to see that even in London, we've seen more urban agriculture activities since we started different iterations of what we're doing.

(17:27):
.999And there's a couple of other sites that we now help support.
That are, you know, not our home location.
Those other sites are those other entities or those, is that urban roots as well? There's both.
.999Um, sort of quasi consulted for starting up a couple of gardens.
Um, and then there's Parkwood Hospital site, which we run with, you know, the hospital and all that food actually just goes right into their food program.

(17:50):
So it never leaves the site. 203 00:17:52,804.999 --> 00:17:58,604.9995 Um, and that's been a really, uh, a really interesting and rewarding relationship in the last couple of years. 204 00:17:58,604.9995 --> 00:18:00,274.999 And it's not a high production site yet. 205 00:18:00,274.999 --> 00:18:01,095 It's very new. 206 00:18:01,684.999 --> 00:18:04,634.999 It has its own host of challenges because we had to grow above ground.
The, it was very low grade subsoil basically that we were starting with, but the, um, the veterans that live there have been very adamant and appreciative of the type of quality of produce that comes out of that garden.

(18:18):
.999So it's been pretty cool.
And the other side is another partnership that.
.9995I was on a church property in the northeast end of the city, and they actually had proposed a garden and were told no by the city originally, and then they proposed a partnership with us, and they were able to sort of get past some of those hurdles, which is, I don't think that's a good thing. 211 00:18:41,529.9995 --> 00:18:51,930 I think part of that is a symptom of the policies that can restrict a lot of this from happening, but it has now been a 3 year, 3 years in operation.

(18:51):
Chairman.
It's a, it's not nearly as large as our home site, but still producing, you know, a couple of thousand pounds of food every year.
I mean, that's substantial.
I don't know how much a human eats per year, but I imagine 2000 pounds is a pretty large chunk of it.
.001If not, I'm sure we could Google that. 217 00:19:09,894.999 --> 00:19:11,495 Yeah, I think we could.

(19:11):
There's been a lot of gardens slash farms starting to pop up in and around the city.
How do you think that will affect? Expansion of the city.
Do you think that now that they're becoming more, um, recognized or popularized that the city will consider like maintaining pieces of land when they are going to expand? I mean, I can certainly hope and dream.

(19:37):
.999I, I don't know that it seems likely yet. 222 00:19:41,339.999 --> 00:20:01,230 There certainly is some momentum, although I know people in, in my world are also sort of nervous that we're Urban agriculture is a thing that is sort of exciting and, uh, you know, getting a lot of attention, but then, of course, something else comes along and then that becomes less exciting.

(20:01):
Um, this is the nature of really any, um, anyone in the particular, the nonprofit sector.
.999So, um, whether that momentum will be sustained long enough with other bigger challenges that we're facing environmentally and so on. 225 00:20:15,719.999 --> 00:20:16,749.999 Again, I hope so. 226 00:20:16,859.999 --> 00:20:19,199.998 Uh, there certainly are politicians who are.
Pushing for, you know, real different thinking around how we develop and expand cities.

(20:25):
But yeah, I don't know if at this point I could say I feel super confident in that, in that happening.
Okay, but that would be good to have essentially like for going forward for the resilience of a city and reducing supply chains and just especially like here in southwest Ontario.
The soil is so like, as you said, like a bread basket.
So why would why would we cover that with pavement? And not preserve any for actually growing, which I can't say it's an intended purpose, but it sure is a very good purpose to have for the soil here.

(20:59):
Right.
So I certainly agree.
And I think You know, to me, at least, it does seem beneficial to imagine a sort of robust food ecosystem, which London already has, you know, a lot of really good things to say about that.
.999We talk a lot about being a food city because we're surrounded by agriculture and there are a number of even larger scale food manufacturers and all this kind of thing, which is fine. 236 00:21:23,669.999 --> 00:21:30,020 But yeah, could we maybe think more about how do we supply the city with food that actually is.

(21:30):
Closer to us.
So yeah, that insulates you from supply chain shocks and gives an opportunity for access to land for particularly young people.
Who are eager to farm a year to get, um, you know, access to land and work the land.
.9995Um, and we know that that's really challenging in a rural setting. 241 00:21:50,269.9995 --> 00:22:04,260 So we have a Perry urban line that could be used in a way that has smaller scale land for agriculture, maybe held in a trust model that I think would be incredibly beneficial for a lot of reasons.

(22:04):
to complete the math that we did earlier for how many pounds a person eats per year and then how much you can produce per acre, how many acres would London need to, um, subsidize even like 20 percent of the city's diet on local, like hyper local farms. 243 00:22:23,959.999 --> 00:22:31,597.0712857 You know, I can't imagine it would be so big, but that it would maybe seem manageable, but maybe I'm also way wrong. 244 00:22:31,597.0712857 --> 00:22:34,530 It's 500, 000 people, just about.

(22:35):
Yeah, I don't know the math exactly, but I, I think it wouldn't be, uh, impossible to have a, let's say, significant.
Um, chunk.
.999And to be clear, there's also, you know, a number of vegetable farms in the surrounding area outside of the center that are also part of that ecosystem currently supplying London in the way that they can, but there's certainly a long, it's still a very small percentage of the total produce that's eaten.

(23:05):
Go to the market on Saturdays and Western fair and we get our vegetables from Patricia's farm market, which they grow a lot of.
They don't sell, I believe they don't sell any vegetables that they don't grow or that aren't locally grown. 250 00:23:19,760.1 --> 00:23:30,000 And they, I think, I believe we looked it up how far they are cause we wanted to do a 100 kilometer diet for May because that's probably like one of the better months to do that.

(23:30):
But there are 170 kilometers away.
.999Oh wow. 253 00:23:32,890.099 --> 00:23:37,680 So, but they're one of the, I would consider them a local producer because they're every, they're there every weekend. 254 00:23:37,680.1 --> 00:23:43,400 It's like, what, what is, I don't, I mean, I guess at a point of 170 kilometers.
Your area of supply is quite large or can be because I'm we're also similar distance away from Toronto, I would say.

(23:53):
.999So like anywhere between London and Toronto, if there's producers, they obviously have no shortage of buyers.
.9995Yeah. 258 00:24:01,224.9995 --> 00:24:07,445 So would that mean that there's an opportunity for more producers at that point, essentially? Yeah.
One of my, um.
One of the people I look up to is, um, Chris at Common Ground Farm and, and they have really expanded their production and service London and St.

(24:19):
Thomas, but now are starting to move into the GTA market because they have surplus to do that. 262 00:24:26,574.999 --> 00:24:27,525 And of course.
The GTA is a massive consumer market.
.9995I mean, this sort of urban, you know, we've gone from a very agrarian society to a very urban society. 265 00:24:38,59.9995 --> 00:24:45,610 And so the, the amount of flows that need to go into the city, the city certainly can't sustain itself without this is quite large. 266 00:24:45,729.999 --> 00:24:47,450 Um, and I think I could.

(24:48):
We can comfortably see a lot more demand for sourcing locally, even if that means, you know, within Southwestern Ontario, for example, I mean, it's still far more local than California or France or wherever else we, we pull from the other week.
We, they didn't have any bell peppers, and so we bought them elsewhere and they had stickers on them from Spain.

(25:10):
Yeah, well, peppers from Spain and in January, I was like, man, this is.
Traveled halfway across the world and it's like still fresh, right? So I don't know, I would imagine that has to be transported via plane.
A lot.
Yep.
A lot of stuff is by plane with cargo planes, which is a wild concept, but super wild concept.

(25:30):
Modern technology has made us believe really that we were really removed from this.
How? I mean, how many times in a day do I think about an airplane flying with peppers? I mean, zero, right? And I mean, in this world, right? Um, and so I would suggest that most of us aren't thinking about that because it's out of sight.
.9And that's I think that's the one of the best examples of the yeah.

(25:52):
The modern economy is things are out of sight and therefore they just exist and, and, um, we don't inherently see problems that may be underpinning.
Those practices, um, so I think that's 1 of the challenges really with. 279 00:26:08,924.999 --> 00:26:13,985 With mobilizing people to to care and and want to do things differently is.

(26:14):
.999Is why would they need to the peppers from Spain are there, right? They're sitting on the shelf.
You buy them.
That's it.
Yeah.
So we have a long way to go.
And I think, I mean, I hope certainly that we, um, as a society, as a community, you can think about these problems before they become acute. 286 00:26:38,214.999 --> 00:26:40,94.999 And, you know, the airplane doesn't fly. 287 00:26:40,154.999 --> 00:26:42,645 And all of a sudden we don't have the vegetables and we're.

(26:42):
You know, in a panic.
Um, I think, and I think there's, there is lots of little nodes of hope that show that people are thinking about that and hopefully more and more people can. 290 00:26:54,879.999 --> 00:26:55,179.999 Yeah.
A lot of what I've read and researched, this seems like there's two very distinct directions that agriculture is going right now.

(27:04):
It's a return to more like regenerative, natural, holistic practices, or to a very technological front.
Which is, you know, like hydroponics and indoor growing, what are your perspectives on that? Like, I don't think There's a right or wrong answer.
I think that having both is good in my mind What what are your perspectives on that? It's a big question for sure. 295 00:27:31,99.999 --> 00:27:32,470 It's a few different directions.

(27:32):
I could go I think first of all like the the trend the predominant trend in agriculture production certainly North America But not only there has been That we need less farmers and we and that's okay because the farmers who remain are big and therefore they are efficient because they are big.
.999Unfortunately, I think that there's a lot missing from that story and particularly the lives of.

(27:56):
People in rural settings have been decimated in real, real bad ways.
And even those who are currently sort of elevated as successful and doing all the right things, if you talk to them, they, they will very often admit how much pressure they're under, how much debt they have to carry and how much capital they have to lay out just to.

(28:18):
To sustain what they're doing at such low margins.
And so, so for me, that continued trajectory is ends in one place and that's ruin to be very pessimistic, I guess.
.999And then on the other side there, you know, and this is more from a global perspective, you know, the peasant movement of farm, um, agrarian workers has.

(28:46):
Been quite resilient in the face of all these challenges.
And the reality is that most small scale farms are still the primary producers of food in the world.
Now, there's a lot of nuance, a lot of different, you know, context there.
And I always get uncomfortable with universalized statements because there's also real challenges of poverty and so on in some of these places.

(29:12):
.999But again, the poverty may not be because they are.
Peasant farmers, and in many cases, it might be because of the systems placed on top of them from other, uh, more globally powerful, uh, for corporations and governments and so on that have undermined their entire market and so on.
But that's 1 train of thought that I can go down, but the other, you know, I think thread in your question is now, I think, more and more, we hear that, well, we have technological solutions.

(29:46):
That can alleviate maybe some of my concerns about the large scale chemical company problems that we see in industrial ag.
.999And so far, I guess one of the challenges that I see is that a lot of these solutions require significant privilege and access to do them. 312 00:30:10,79.999 --> 00:30:12,22.275 So it doesn't mean that.

(30:12):
Growing hydroponically is, is inherently bad or not a good environmental choice in some cases, but to do that.
It requires a certain amount of privilege and access to capital, for example, and often I think those at a larger scale lead to some of the same problems that I was just mentioning in our traditional large scale industrial farming that we've seen in the last 50 years.

(30:43):
Now, technology again is something that is used every day by every farmer across the world, but we just don't see it in the same way.
Perhaps as we do the shiny new toys.
I like the big new vertical farm with lights from first floor to floor 50, whatever it is, seems amazing.

(31:05):
And it's a feat of human engineering, which is impressive, but we don't consider the micro scale, we'll say, uh, multi use hand tools.
.999That dramatically reduced time in the field for someone who say doing small scale vegetable production, but that's that's technological innovation, but it's not going to be celebrated on dragon stand or something.

(31:28):
Right? So, yeah, there's kind of these competing forces, I'll say, and.
I guess I'm a little bit on the skeptical side of, of technology, big tech fixes being any different than what they were when they said, Hey, we've, we've brought out these wonderful new chemicals that were used for weapons into now controlling your pests and boosting your yields.

(31:55):
And that led us down not a great path and all these other things at a large scale require intense amounts of resources from where that's a really, I think.
Hard question to answer.
Yeah.
So they have a responsibility to, I guess, direct their growth and hopefully learn from the lessons of fertilizer and chemicals and not follow the same trajectory and be able to be unconsolidated perhaps would be the word.

(32:28):
Yeah.
I mean, certainly if there was, I'd be happy to see, you know, locally controlled pockets of.
Say, vertical and hydroponic growing, that's, you know, down in a street from a whole bunch of restaurants and supplying them instead of.
You know, shipping microgreens from, you know, across the country, but that does make sense to me, right? And maybe it's using an abandoned office building that isn't going to be otherwise utilized, right? That makes even, again, even more sense. 330 00:32:57,969.999 --> 00:33:08,665 But yeah, I don't know that, you know, that's necessarily the first, the way it's approached because it, like I said, to start this, you usually need a lot of Access to capital.

(33:08):
So that requires a certain subset of people with access to say, venture capital.
And now we're talking about what matters is return. 333 00:33:16,124.999 --> 00:33:31,260 How fast can you get a return on investment? How big do you have to scale? How quickly can you do that? And none of that aligns with what I was just was talking about would be nice and ideal for, you know, making a more robust community that has control and say over their food production. 334 00:33:31,549.999 --> 00:33:32,269.999 Slippery slope.

(33:32):
Indeed. 336 00:33:33,679.999 --> 00:33:38,600.001 Just to think of that, you know, when you mentioned putting it in a abandoned building.
That in another sense is like hyper urban roots, you know, like to be to consider, like, I couldn't even imagine that or never even thought of that before to look at a building and say, that's where all our vegetables are grown for the city.

(33:53):
What it's a very futuristic approach. 339 00:33:57,954.999 --> 00:34:01,99.9 So, since we've talked about consolidation a little bit.
Would you like to talk some more about your PhD and what you're researching there? Sure.
Yeah.
I'm trying to go on too long here, but, um, I am, as you can probably tell, particularly interested in not just understanding in more detail how and why this consolidation has come to pass.

(34:21):
.999And that's been, I think, fairly well documented by many scholars and farmers over the, over the many decades, but.
You know, and for my case, I'm most interested in Ontario because it's where I'm from, and there's 444 municipalities here, about half of those are rural.
And I think understanding what land use policies exist, and they're not the same across different townships and counties is a good place to start in some of this understanding.

(34:52):
And then I'm most interested in how do we find real ways that we can.
Change policy and allow for young people to farm in the future.
And it's clear to me, at least that, um, a lot of those young people are interested in, in vegetable, uh, market garden style farming, it's not the only way, but one of the reasons that's so attractive is because the direct to consumer.

(35:21):
.999Gives the possibility for the farmer to take back so much of the margin that's been stolen by the other models of commodity production, where there's basically zero control for the farmer to take any cut if they get it, it's because commodity markets were in their favor that year, so it's rolling the dice.
So, even still, you can have a higher margin production of farming, but if you can't access land.

(35:52):
It's irrelevant.
All right.
And so right now, you know, most farm land is, is 100 acres.
Occasionally there's 50 acre farms and more and more of those get merged and, and there's larger scale players that would like to see that increase further to closer to 200 acres per farmland plot.
So at current land prices, you're not talking about, excuse me, millions of dollars, which is not feasible for, for even someone who may be coming from a farm family.

(36:22):
To move into that industry, so that that's what I'm concerned with.
And what my research will be really focused on understanding in in more detail.
So starting with the sort of historical lens of how we got here, understand the policy landscape as it exists, and then get a clear sense from those who are on living farming in these communities today, you know what it is that Allow them to do that and how they're doing or, or what things, what barriers they're facing so that, like I said, hopefully there can be more clear pathways for future folks to, to farm this all goes back to sort of the census data that I find quite alarming, which is that, you know, in, in Canada, at least we now have just north of 260, 000 farmers.

(37:15):
Across the entire country and obviously represents a very small percentage of, you know, 40 plus million people and that has been clearly in decline for basically every census since the 1930s and the average age is now 56 years old for a farmer and.

(37:40):
That's alarming enough on its own, but the number of farmers under the age of 35 presumably is our next generation of farmers is less than eight or 9 percent of that farm population.
Oh, so this trend is continuing and about to continue at a quite alarming rate in my opinion.

(38:03):
Yeah, that's what that data says to me and why I'm so concerned with it.
To do some not so accurate quick math for simplicity's sake, we'll say 250, 000 farmers and there's, we'll say 40 million people in Canada.
So if there was half a million, that would be 80. 365 00:38:22,874.999 --> 00:38:23,994.999 Let's see, let's do some quick math.

(38:24):
Yeah, you're talking about, you know, like 25, 000 or so young farmers.
That's a huge burden.
.999That's crazy to think about.
Is there.
Can you think of any other comparable industry in Canada or the world in which such a small portion of people support the entire country? Um, I'm, I don't want to say that doesn't exist because I, I'm not an expert in other industries.

(38:56):
I'm sure there probably are some other industries where you see some kind of.
Trend like this, but I think this one is of pretty significant importance.
And you say, interestingly, like. 374 00:39:07,560.1 --> 00:39:26,109.999 And this is the narrative that we still use today, which is that Canadian farmers feed Canadian people, but that's of course not really the case, right? Like in some examples, yes, but for the most part, that consolidated industrial ag has led to.

(39:27):
And if you go on agro Canada's website, it's all about bigger, more expert, excuse me, more export, um, how to find more global markets.
And this has just been the line that's been given us.
It's the only way. 378 00:39:43,394.999 --> 00:39:43,644.999 Right. 379 00:39:43,724.999 --> 00:39:47,125 And, uh, again, assuming all those supply chains.

(39:47):
Continue to exist the way that they do now.
.999And I'm not sure why we think that's such an obvious conclusion, right? I think a lot.
Sometimes these conversations people say, well, we've globalized and it'll never be different.
I mean, we have a lot of history where we weren't globalized.
1st of all, 2nd of all, this globalization has happened primarily on the backs of very specific.

(40:12):
Things like access to cheap energy and exploitation of cheap labor.
I mean, at some point, those things may not always exist in the way that they exist now.
And I think that it's worth considering that you might not have a shipping container coming across the entire ocean for a bunch of gidgets and gadgets on a, you know, whatever, minute by minute basis that we have now in the future.

(40:41):
And if so, then we do care about how many.
People with knowledge of growing food we, we have in our society.
And so it's, it's hard again, may not see that immediately because things continue to go as they have for the last number of decades.
But that's a very small timeline, right? In the grand scheme of history from 1930 to now, less than 100 years.

(41:05):
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
.9And do you think that.
.999The population of, we'll say, practicing farmers is inverse to the diversity of farmable landowners.
Would that make sense? The, which is, sorry, to say that there's, the fewer farmers there are, the less diversity.

(41:28):
In land ownership.
In land ownership.
I think.
Yes, that tends to be the case.
Canada maybe has less visible examples of this, but I mean, the United States is, you know, pretty clear.
I forget the exact data on this, but the number of black farmers that own land is sadly low from what it was, um, for, you know, in the last sort of same timeframe.

(41:57):
Yeah.
Um, and I, Um, there's no signs of that may be changing unless policy has changed dramatically.
Um, yeah, there's been a lot of talk about U.
S.
foreign policy.
.9995How much does the USDA or foreign policy within the U. 410 00:42:16,119.9995 --> 00:42:16,569.999 S.
influence Canada or is there any reverse influence? Does Canada influence the states at all? And then what makes Canada's foreign policies stand out or like, what are some of the policies that are unique to Canada? So I think there's no question that the U.

(42:34):
S.
farm bill, which is coming up has a pretty direct impact on Canadian farmers, in part, because it can have things like domestic buying priorities and certain commodities.
Another thing that just came to mind is not necessarily directly related to that farm bill.
But, you know, when the mad cab disease happened, you know, this is.
Basically, immediate no to any Canadian beef crossing the border, which had huge impact on how Canadian beef production looked after that.

(43:06):
.999And we know that the U.
.9995S. 419 00:43:07,439.9995 --> 00:43:13,969.999 market is, of course, 10x what Canada is, so they have just power in that alone. 420 00:43:15,599.999 --> 00:43:21,730 It's a little harder to draw lines on how Canadian policy may influence The U.
S.
Although again that there is, they are an export partner.
So I think again, if you dig through Canadian, Agra, Canada, agri food policy priorities, a lot of it does center around deepening partnerships with exporters who are often U.

(43:38):
S.
based, but now increasingly also.
All over the world and you don't see too much talked about, although there's some hope now with the upcoming U.
S.
.9bill that there will be some more conversation about what regenerative agriculture looks like and could be supported more directly than it has been, because the other well known fact is that industrial agriculture has been subsidized heavily by government for a number of years by farmers.

(44:11):
But it's, it's just, it's lifting up a, a system and who's getting the support is actually the corporations that are just exploiting these farmers and then getting the benefits of these subsidies. 430 00:44:22,924.999 --> 00:44:33,295 So, in effect, you have a government is paying people like cargo billions of dollars to continue exploiting farmers indirectly.

(44:33):
Yes.
Yeah, that's crazy.
From my understanding of subsidies is we'll say farmer a grows corn.
And to meet your, I guess, to meet your return, we'll say it's like a thousand units if they get 800 units.
Then they get the subsidy to replace those 200 units.

(44:53):
If they get over a thousand units, good for them.
Right.
And then they just like, that's perpetuates the cycle.
.999As long as they grow corn, it doesn't matter how much they grow, they're going to get their units essentially. 440 00:45:04,194.999 --> 00:45:04,694.999 Often.
.999I mean, there's some variants, but a lot of the subsidy programs are sort of yield protection type programs. 442 00:45:10,275.099 --> 00:45:17,325 And like you said, they're often oriented around certain commodity crops in particular, and corn is a good example of that.

(45:19):
.999It's diving into agriculture for me has been like, if you would have asked me probably five years ago, six years ago about agriculture, I'd be like, so what they grow things, you know, but now that I'm like looking at it from an ecological lens and being able to look at it and also learning about policy, I think learning about policy was the thing that has really opened my eyes to it. 444 00:45:41,154.999 --> 00:45:47,654.999 And then also how it's just such an interesting topic because the current practice, like conventional agriculture has been practiced.

(45:47):
Thank you.
For 80 years or so, you know, like since conventional, but like, you know, agriculture, you know, long, long history and much of it.
.999Some, some people draw the line of conventional many hundreds of years before, but industrial agriculture industrial is certainly much a more modern invention. 448 00:46:10,769.999 --> 00:46:13,830 It's crazy to think that we've latched onto it so tightly.

(46:14):
.999That to shift away from industrial agriculture now.
.999It almost seems like we need a leap of faith, you know, like how many units of food can be produced per acre on a industrial farm, which is grown for quantity over quality versus like an acre, say, like at urban roots or at farm practicing regenerative agriculture, can they have the same yields and what are the profit margins because you like practicing regenerative agriculture, you definitely don't need all of the chemicals that you would need for industrial agriculture.

(46:47):
.999Do you have any insight on regenerative practices? Also with the farm bill, what defines a regenerative practice and who will it exclude if they come up with a definition? Yeah. 452 00:46:58,569.999 --> 00:46:59,220 It's a tricky one.
.9995I've heard of this. 454 00:46:59,819.9995 --> 00:47:00,189.999 Yeah. 455 00:47:00,189.999 --> 00:47:00,589.999 Yeah.
This is a good question.
.999Um, So I, I, I think inevitably when these kinds of debates or questions come up about, you know, can small scale farm farms feed the world so called, uh, you know, and it's usually a calorie count, which I think is just really misguided. 458 00:47:19,164.999 --> 00:47:31,305 Um, you know, the amount of land that we use now for, like I said, things that are biofuel production was absolutely nothing to do with feeding anybody in any location.

(47:31):
If you eliminate all that land tomorrow and turn that into vegetable production or other food crops, you know, that alone would be a massive shift in what's available.
And then there's the, and this gets into lots of other debates, but you know, whether animals should be in production at all and so on.
But again, even if you eliminated.

(47:55):
.999Uh, feed for cattle, which are in concentrated feed lots, which very few people will defend as a good practice for a number of very clear reasons, environmentally and otherwise. 463 00:48:09,284.999 --> 00:48:20,795 And, and that's not saying you can't have, let's say cattle on pasture, you have far less than we do now because of the lack of concentration, but that would also have huge environmental impact.

(48:21):
.9995And, uh, social consequences, I think positively, but anyway, so, so there's, there's that, but the regenerative conversation is an, is a tricky one because that word in particular has become the word of the day for a lot of people. 465 00:48:36,839.9995 --> 00:48:39,419.999 And as we see, you know, it was not that long ago. 466 00:48:39,419.999 --> 00:48:42,269.999 Sustainability was the word of the day.

(48:42):
.9And every corporation everywhere has a sustainability disability.
Officer executive.
Uh, and, you know, it can be a lot of different things.
Uh, and sort of be greenwashed.
And so we can see that happen in regenerative, uh, agriculture as well. 472 00:49:02,964.999 --> 00:49:07,545 And the other reality is, and many people have pointed this out, like.

(49:07):
.999Regenerative is often sort of just referring to known practices that have been used for centuries.
You know, primarily by an indigenous groups, but, um.
But even by farms that, you know, used to be more mixed farms, not that long ago before the industrialization of agriculture.

(49:29):
And so it's almost a rebrand of something, and that can also come with sort of colonial undertones of, hey, we suddenly magically discovered this, you know, thing.
Of course, no, we didn't, right? It's already been knowledge, uh, for a long time.
So, uh, that can definitely be, uh, exclusionary.

(49:50):
And it's implementation.
.999Another point that I've heard is that, you know, agriculture is so unique to the piece of land that it's on.
Yeah.
So regenerative practice may be suitable for one area, but not another. 483 00:50:03,349.999 --> 00:50:12,440 And if you define regenerative agriculture as including that practice and this farm excludes it because it's not the best for them, then they're not regenerative.

(50:12):
And then all of a sudden they aren't able to use that regenerative label.
Right.
And then it just creates a whole mess, obviously.
.07085Yeah, and if it becomes a labeling system, much like organic, then yeah, 100 percent you see this kind of, um, the fact that Costco and Walmart are, are stocked top to bottom with organic tells you there's probably some flexibility in, in what that actually means at a standardized level. 488 00:50:40,383.07085 --> 00:50:46,434.9 So what I mean by flexible is not that it's place based, but that it's met bended.

(50:46):
Enough to allow for basically status quo to continue and us to call something else, call it something else.
.999And that's very different from what you just said, which I think is the most important thing, like, I, I've always said that, um, Adam, whether you agree with all of the different things, uh, there's lots of nuances and all of these conversations we've had. 491 00:51:11,964.999 --> 00:51:18,244.998 Ultimately, I think more eyes on acres, more people that know the land intimately.

(51:18):
Uh, and this is kind of what my favorite writer, Wendell Bear, has been writing about for 50 years, you know, that is, in my opinion, the only true hope we have in keeping land healthy and restored.
Um, and I just don't have the faith that some kind of universalized, one size fits all, even environmentally positive policy is going to come anywhere close.

(51:44):
To doing that because ecology is complicated and we are a part of that as a human and we have to find a way to work within that and we have so far I'll go back to my word abstracted ourselves from it that we assume we can sort of from the outside say how do we better manage this ecology without putting ourselves in it and I think that's a mistake that's a really interesting point to bring up it made me think that um, We are trying to define the natural world within a set of bounds.

(52:18):
And by doing that, we create limits for what we see as a natural world and what we recognize as perhaps a natural process. 496 00:52:28,599.999 --> 00:52:38,840 So I think we're almost putting on the blinders by putting on, by defining what the practice would be, especially when it comes to the regenerative agriculture. 497 00:52:38,915.1 --> 00:53:06,404.999 Um, do you think that a policy that would rather than identify what practices are, but instead monitor a certain criteria of metrics would be better, like say like organic matter and then like, um, we'll say mycorrhiza per cubic foot of soil and like, you know, factors like that, that measure the, then.

(53:07):
Are able to put a number on the ecology.
Do you think that a system like that, like it doesn't matter essentially how you regenerate those, but as long as you're able to prove that you're consistently producing equal or more to be regenerative per year, do you think that would be a better suited system if they had to label it? I'm torn on this one. 500 00:53:30,895.1 --> 00:53:32,265 I hear you.

(53:32):
.999And I, and, and part of me wants to say, Certainly, yes, I think that's maybe better than some of the other blanket style regenerative labels that, that may come to be, but I think what I'm having a hard time with is that we, we, we continue to sort of think through the, the reductionist scientific lens, which is, we just have to measure label say, like, and assume really, um, That we know because I think one of the things in soil biology science in the last couple of decades has been we know so little like the amount of the amount of diversity that's in, you know, the handful of soil and there's been lots of, you know, sort of viral things about talking about that, you know, it's the amount of life in there is almost hard to wrap your head around period and we know a very small subset of that and how these, you know, These relationships of living organisms work, um, that to say, you know, increase X number of, you know, these different things probably good.

(54:42):
.999We seem to know that that makes the land more productive and it seems to capture carbon.
.9995And these are all great things, but it ends up getting us into a single focus. 504 00:54:51,184.9995 --> 00:54:53,075 And then we might find out 20 years from now.
Oh, you know, this is leading, you know, run off into the water that has super high levels of whatever.
.9995Right? And so, and this is this is the challenge with policy. 507 00:55:04,814.9995 --> 00:55:08,665 Right? And I started when you asked me about my research. 508 00:55:08,665.1 --> 00:55:12,979.9 I am interested in policy and I do think it matters a great deal.

(55:14):
But I, I don't think any policies are going to solve our problems.
I think ultimately we have some human problems, which is why they're so hard.
Uh, because it requires, uh, individuals to change and it requires communities to change. 512 00:55:29,329.999 --> 00:55:35,070 And, um, we're not super open to that, I think.

(55:35):
And for lots of reasons, but yeah, I know it's maybe a, a downer answer, but it's hard because.
Yeah, you want, you want enforcement from policy to be pushing us in a positive way.
And I would argue that honestly, that's what every policy is intended to do.

(55:57):
And we think someone thinks, right.
And then we're not all agreed, but so yeah, I think it's maybe a, probably a yes.
.9995And, and, and in some ways I don't want to get labeled a libertarian, but I get, I get, An understanding or sympathy towards these ideas in in this context, right? That is, is it necessary for a, a bureaucrat in Ottawa or Washington, D. 519 00:56:26,924.9995 --> 00:56:27,414.999 C.

(56:27):
to tell somebody in the middle of Iowa or Ontario how to manage their land? And, and, and do they actually know? Any better than that farmer would right now, again, and I'm not saying we should abolish all policies, right? I'm just expressing that I can have a thread of sympathy for that idea.

(56:48):
Given this example, I just talked about, but that is totally a real world.
Example to, you know, like, so, so when the capital is not going to tell me how to run my piece of land.
Sure.
You know, like you hear that's real rhetoric.
Yeah, that is real.
.999And that resentment is capitalized by lots of very divisive political figures as we know.
Yeah.
.9Um, to to great success and this is one of the big challenges of our time, I think, which is.

(57:13):
So, you know, how do we have, you know, say democratic local governance that is strong enough to, to govern it's, it's a community.
.999And right now it's sort of government is like every other corporation that we've seen.
They've sort of consolidated power, usually in the highest levels of the white house or, you know, the federal government in, in Canada too. 532 00:57:43,214.999 --> 00:57:45,305 And we've seen that sort of sucked out of.

(57:45):
You know, municipal and even provincial politics.
.999So I think we need that reversed if we have a chance of making good local decisions.
And one of the arguments that a lot of these, you know, more reactionary politicians will make is that, is that exactly this loss of control that That smaller rural communities feel, which is, which is a very true thing.

(58:17):
And, uh, I don't think their solutions are helpful or correct in most cases, but, um, they've addressed, they've pointed to the, I think the right problems that we, we need to build more honestly, political power at a local level to, to make these decisions.
.999And that you and I, if we're living in the same community.

(58:39):
Having a, uh, a true sense of keeping each other accountable for caring for our, our land and our, our people, which right now, that's not how our system works at all. 539 00:58:51,434.999 --> 00:59:06,354.999 I commonly hear that it doesn't really matter who the president is, or maybe the prime minister, but actually your local mayor or your local jurisdiction, whoever it may be, is the one who will have the largest effect on your life as far as policies go.

(59:07):
but I think that that is probably the least publicized position out of all of the policy positions because yeah, you can only receive so much viewership.
'cause no, like, no one really cares if you're in Saskatchewan.
Who is, uh, the mayor of London, Ontario, right? Mm-Hmm.

(59:29):
Like there's probably gonna be a very few number and nor should they need to.
Exactly.
And, and I think, and you're right that even with sort of the loss of power of local government, it still is the place where the decisions that have the most impact on you will happen.
I think that's still true.
Um, but we're, we are so concerned with the global and the, the national and, and, you know, these, again, the, the large abstractions, that's what we've learned.

(59:57):
And in our society, you know, not just our generation, but generations before us is, you know, you, you're sort of left.
Uh, to your own devices to succeed, right? The American dream, so called.
Um, and then, and then the bigger problems will be dealt with by, you know, the big people in the big governments and, uh, or corporations for that matter. 551 01:00:21,534.999 --> 01:00:27,314.999 And I think, I don't think, sorry, that that leads to very positive outcomes. 552 01:00:29,174.999 --> 01:00:35,965 It's, it's a whole, to get into policy of agriculture is, it's frightful because there is.

(01:00:36):
So much weight on it because people need to eat, but also it's, I think you're wrong no matter what, right? There's always going to be 49 percent of people who think you're wrong almost. 554 01:00:52,620.1 --> 01:01:04,109.999 I think it's, I mean, that's probably policy in general, but I think having policy related to food is maybe even at the national scale is also a very direct.

(01:01:05):
.999It's directly felt by the citizens or whoever exports, right? And so getting that right requires a lot.
.999And it's like, how do you think with your research, we could promote change within the agriculture industry to be more resilient and to be.

(01:01:29):
Less dependent on large corporations and finances and subsidies.
Yep.
.999So, setting aside that I do think there's policy changes necessary that I spoke to earlier.
You know, primarily around access to land and what you can do on that land.
.999Ultimately, I do think that the greater hope will be in the, so like, grassroots, grassroots type of movement and making sure that there is a nurturing of that in, in every possible way from, and I think this is overlooked in some ways, but, you know, in schools from kindergarten onwards, talking about farming.

(01:02:12):
In an honorable way that says this is a, this is a viable way that you can spend your life and I don't think we do that today and if that is spoken about in a positive way, just like we speak about all kinds of other professions, then I think undoubtedly, there'll be more young people interested and so then the next question is, can we have.

(01:02:36):
Not just urban roots or others, but urban examples where people can learn how to grow and learn how to farm in a, in a more beyond a community garden.
.999And if those other policies I mentioned earlier can be amended to allow for more land trust, they give access without capital for young people who have now been encouraged and trained. 565 01:03:02,224.999 --> 01:03:08,325 I think there's a real chance that you'll see, uh, maybe an uptick, right? I'm not saying we're going to have a million farmers.

(01:03:08):
.999But this decline that I spoke to earlier, we might be able to halt that and maintain at least, you know, 25, 000 farmers, uh, that are young in the future and maybe even more.
25, 000 farmers.
That's not many. 569 01:03:26,479.999 --> 01:03:26,940 Well then.
We will just get into some questions I wrote for you.

(01:03:32):
.9995Is there anything I should have asked you, but didn't actually think our conversation is quite wide ranging. 572 01:03:37,579.9995 --> 01:03:44,589.999 So, um, and yeah, last question got to the, where I hope things can go.
.999And ultimately I just, you know, hope that more people turn their eyes towards the importance of food production. 574 01:03:53,919.999 --> 01:03:59,739.999 And in particular, the people that are a part of that, because I sometimes do think that.

(01:04:01):
Some of the debates will lead to, you know, even, uh, you know, modern environmental movements will say that farmers are kind of the problem and I understand that impulse, but I think it's a little misguided and, um, in most cases, I think the farmers are suffering within a system that has been created that led to the kinds of practices that we have as normal and, um, I don't think it's a A productive way of moving forward to, to demonize the people that are producing food.

(01:04:36):
Yeah.
.999But, uh, yeah, it's tough when there's so many big challenges and yeah, a little empathy.
Yeah. 579 01:04:45,564.999 --> 01:04:46,985 A little empathy I think goes a long way.
Next, what does a successful future look like to you? I know we've kind of already touched on.
.999Is there any points you'd like to add? To say more young farmers and from different backgrounds, as soon as you say urban, this, this usually opens the door to far greater diversity than we have currently.

(01:05:06):
.9And there are great organizations, ecological farmers in Ontario, National Farmers Union and others that are.
Working really intentionally to help build access to, to folks that currently aren't part of the rural landscape.
Awesome.
Those are good resources. 586 01:05:22,909.999 --> 01:05:24,000 I'll make sure to link those. 587 01:05:24,909.999 --> 01:05:40,280 What makes you hopeful? It is those kinds of organizations, but, but meeting these people that have even in, you know, all this bleak context that, uh, you know, I've been talking about for so long that there are still.

(01:05:41):
Young new farmers that are finding a way to make it happen, um, because they believe that it's worthwhile and, and that's something that's important to them. 589 01:05:51,39.999 --> 01:06:03,960 So those are, those are always the, the people that give me the most hope anyone who, you know, treats their, their world, their land, their community, their people as, you know, sacred.

(01:06:04):
Places to me is, uh, inspiring.
Awesome.
That's gotta be inspiring having Wendell Berry on your shelf there. 593 01:06:14,734.999 --> 01:06:39,325 And last but not least, are there any resources that you'd like to share where people can learn more? Depending on what kind of learning people want to do, right? Like, I think there's no shortage of books and, um, like I said, organizations that you can, you know, seek out and, and look into if you want sort of the, I, I do think, you know, some of Wendell Berry's early work.

(01:06:39):
It gives people a good starting point on the philosophy that has led us to where we are now.
.9Um, and he was very early in, in sort of critiquing where things.
Ended up going, but uh, but then of course, you know, there's, there's plenty of, of modern writers that are echoing these same kinds of, of sentiments.

(01:07:03):
So yeah, if you just want excited, excitement from, you know, new, new farms, then I would, I would go to, you know, the EFAO, the NFU of the world and, and just look at what some of their farmers are doing, and I think you'll be probably inspired.
Awesome.

(01:07:23):
Well, that's all I have for you today, Richie.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
It's been an awesome conversation.
It's been a lot of fun.
Thank you.
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