06-08-2022, 01:41 PM
I think that's missing the point. Yes, it's all sold as a commodity and the food we eat is by definition a cash crop in developed Western nations because we live in a capitalist society, but a lot of it is grown for things like bio-diesel, soy supplements, animal fodder and so on rather than actual food for human beings. As pointed out, there is a lot of stuff like corn and soy that we grow in Southern Ontario that never gets used as food unless it's put into processed foods or used as animal fodder.
In contrast, you go to any grocery store and half the stuff is imported from other countries because it's often cheaper for us to buy produce and grains that are grown and picked by migrant workers who don't get paid a lot even though we have large swaths of perfectly good farmland across Canada.
So, to the points made on page 62 - we protected a lot of our farmland in Southern Ontario, but a lot of that agriculture is just for cash crop using Joedelay Highhoe's point: that it's often just used for animal feed and other industrial uses. And then clasher made a good point that we could instead be using this farmland to grow crops to eat rather than feeding it to animals/selling it for industrial uses...and then we wouldn't have to import produce from Mexico and the USA to eat. But unfortunately, since we built this neoliberal, globalized capitalist society we pretty much can't do that anymore.
Whether we pave all the farmland here doesn't really matter, since we'd still buy what we need from elsewhere which is a bit crazy. We live in a region of Canada with self-sufficient Mennonites/Amish families and communities so you'd think we'd take a hint from them that self-sufficiency is good haha.
In contrast, you go to any grocery store and half the stuff is imported from other countries because it's often cheaper for us to buy produce and grains that are grown and picked by migrant workers who don't get paid a lot even though we have large swaths of perfectly good farmland across Canada.
So, to the points made on page 62 - we protected a lot of our farmland in Southern Ontario, but a lot of that agriculture is just for cash crop using Joedelay Highhoe's point: that it's often just used for animal feed and other industrial uses. And then clasher made a good point that we could instead be using this farmland to grow crops to eat rather than feeding it to animals/selling it for industrial uses...and then we wouldn't have to import produce from Mexico and the USA to eat. But unfortunately, since we built this neoliberal, globalized capitalist society we pretty much can't do that anymore.
Whether we pave all the farmland here doesn't really matter, since we'd still buy what we need from elsewhere which is a bit crazy. We live in a region of Canada with self-sufficient Mennonites/Amish families and communities so you'd think we'd take a hint from them that self-sufficiency is good haha.