Moving back to self-sufficiency

By Russell Wangersky

There was a time when the island of Newfoundland was virtually self-sufficient in vegetables. Well, in certain particular vegetables, anyway, and not that long ago, either.

Cabbage? Lots of it. Potatoes? By the bushel, and in special varieties like Newfoundland blue potatoes that were bred to resist pests like potato blight and the insidious golden nematode. Beets? Yes, and therefore beet greens too, a spring favourite. Carrots? Turnips? Yes, and yes again.

In fact, those were pretty much the traditional vegetables of the province, and the cooking was pretty traditional, too.

Cabbage? Boiled. Potatoes? Mashed.

But try finding local Newfoundland vegetables now, and you’ll find it’s not quite that easy. Part of the problem is that some of the best farming land in the province has been used to grow something else: row upon row of subdivision housing, popping up in the straight lines of every colour in the vinyl siding rainbow.

But that’s not the only thing that has changed. Somewhere along the way, when diesel and a lot of other things were cheaper, we just plain got out of the habit of growing things here.

Why pay for Newfoundland potatoes, when dusty paper sacks of Prince Edward Island potatoes flooded the market, fresh from their longer growing season and bright-red, virtually stone-free soil?

Why keep carrots in cold storage, when Ontario carrots from the Holland Marsh showed up on trucks every week, as straight and long and orange as carrots could possibly be? It doesn’t even stop there: Last week in St. John’s, you could buy asparagus from Peru and strawberries from California, even though both were available much closer to home — from Ontario and Quebec — at the exact same time.

Sweet peppers from Israel, pears from South Africa, raspberries from Chile — we’re addicted to food that has traveled much further afield than the people who are eating it. Most of our produce has more air-miles (or at least truck-miles) than most of us could ever hope to achieve.

There are, of course, economies of scale. It will always be possible to grow spuds bigger, cheaper, and arguably better in Prince Edward Island than in the rocky, acidic soil of Newfoundland. But that doesn’t mean it’s economically a better choice. Like it or not, we’re either going to have to tighten our belts, or change just what it is we’re putting behind them.

It’s a huge issue politically, because profitable farms are used to being big business; the problem now is that agribusinesses do not necessarily produce cheaper food — not when it costs $1,000 to fill a transport truck with diesel. Eventually, bigger will not be better — not when bigger is an agricultural spread in California where artichokes grow wonderfully well as long as there’s ample fresh water on demand.

Eventually, we’re all going to have to find produce a little closer to home, or find a way to pay for all those expensive miles we expect our specialized food to travel. Some are already doing it: The New York Times recently wrote about the growing trend of ordinary citizens buying shares in small, mixed-production farms in exchange for run-of-season produce. In Newfoundland, one small farm already lets families buy “memberships” in a produce club that gives members a basket of whatever’s ready right then once a week throughout the summer and early fall.

The provincial government is noticing, too: It has increased local agricultural spending by $11.2 million this year, and while most of the money has gone into big-ticket projects, it is funding land expansion and capital loans for farmers.

Food is one of my favourite experiences, from salmon to fine beef to, believe it or not, the scarlet sweetness of a perfectly boiled beet. But you obviously can’t pick mushrooms in winter, or get fresh cod when the season is closed.

Do we really need California strawberries in the middle of winter? Do we really want them, in all their woody-tasting splendour? To all things, supposedly, there is a season. Perhaps as fuel prices continue to increase, we’ll be forced to believe that logic again. Russell Wangersky is an author and columnist from St. John’s, Newfoundland. His memoir on a career as a volunteer firefighter, Burning Down the House, was recently released.

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