Imagine that you are a passenger on the Titanic. Could you possibly imagine that it could sink? It was so big, so comfortable, so well run. It felt like home.
When the lookouts saw the berg they rang the bell to alert the bridge. The officer of the watch tried to miss it by reversing the engines. But the inertia of the ship was too great and she continued on a path that ripped open about 300 feet of her plates. It was 11.40 pm on April 14 1912. Hardly a shudder was felt by the passengers. It seemed that nothing had happened.
But at that moment the ship was doomed. No one felt any urgency at first. The first distress call on the radio was not sent until 35 minutes later. 150 minutes later, the bow submerged.
Even then, it still seemed unbelievable to many that the great ship would founder. Many of the men gave up their seats in the boats thinking that there was not much risk really. How could a ship of this size really sink. Many also reasonably thought that on that busy North Atlantic route that rescue would be close at hand.
They were right. Everyone could have been saved if the right message had got out in time and the right action had been taken by those who could have helped.
15 miles away the Rappannhock sailed by but had no radio. The Californian was in sight of the Titanic but her radio operator Cyril Evans had turned off his radio. Before the Titanic had struck, she had asked him to "Shut up!" because his signal was interrupting Titanic's efforts to send routine traffic. So Evans heard nothing of the Titanic's crisis.
The watch officer of the Californian saw the distress rockets but thought they were signs of a party. After all, who would expect the Titanic could be in trouble?
The Carpathia did get the message. Captain Rostron did his best. Carpathia was only designed for a flank speed of 14.5 kts, but Captain Rostron diverted all steam to the ship’s engines, locking down all auxiliary power, and achieved 17.5 kts for the run-in to Titanic’s reported position, 58 miles distant. When she arrived at 4.15 there were only 705 passengers still alive. 1,500 had died.
So why the History lesson? Because this story feels so much like what is happening to us on PEI.
On PEI it all looks so safe and lovely.
How could our agriculture sink? It all looks so safe. It is well run by hard working people who know what they are doing. Sure we have had a few tough years but good markets will come back. Won't they?
I think that Agriculture is to PEI as the Titanic was the the White Star Line. It is our jewel and it is the face of the Island. It defines us.
Like the Titanic, we have been steaming fast though dangerous waters. All aboard feel that we must in the end be safe - what could sink us?
There have been some warning messages about danger but we still feel that we can find better markets in time.
I think that we may already have struck our own ice berg. Like Titanic, we hardly felt it. The band is still playing and there is no sign of the inevitable sinking that will take us all down, not only farmers but our entire society.
Here is what the first impact of our "Berg" looks like.
The risk is our momentum. We may be moving so fast in the commodity agriculture system that we risk doing so much damage to our soil vitality, to our water quality and to our biosphere that it will be very hard to recover. Once we lose these essential aspects, there is no coming back. The ship has to founder and all on her too.
Only if we slow down and then change course can we save our farmers and save ourselves.
What does this mean? Am I blaming the farmers?
No!
Our farmers are trapped. At the moment, they have no choice. They have to continue to serve their masters - the few big players that control the inputs, the credit, the distribution and the prices in "Big Ag". If they don't, they die. Big Ag sets up the system that drives them into the Ice Field. Who makes all the money in Agriculture? It is not the farmers.
If we change how and where they get their money, they can do this. If we can make farming profitable in anew way, they can do this. If we can make farming essential for society, then they can do this.
Join me this weekend in Trusted Space Food as I talk with John MacQuarrie about an important new way of how a community can connect with its farmer that can free them from bondage and align their needs with the needs of their society. Find out how others are becoming free from the trap of Big Ag. Find out how we might miss hitting the berg and all get home safely to port.
Join us as we explore the world of ALUS
Can farmers change? Of course they can. They can change on a dime when they are given the conditions that enable them to do better.
This series will be all about how we can practically, and in a generation, shift from a model where farming now profits only a few large external companies, where it creates serfs of our farmers and where it is ruining our biosphere. Shift from this to a model where it is our farmers who make the money and where farming is the most powerful beneficial force that restores and sustains the key services that give us all life on PEI.
Can farmers change? They can and they have. All they need is the right conditions. Farmers react to changes in incentives.
Go back to the late 1960's on PEI. There were about 15,000 farms. Most were about 100 acres. All were mixed. They had animals and they also grew crops. PEI's environment was so healthy that nearly all our potatoes had seed quality.
Then came the "Plan" and in a decade everything had changed. They changed because the incentives changed.
The big idea then was specialization and export. So brothers with stars in their eyes bought out dad's farm. Some went into dairy, others focused on beef or pigs. Most went into potatoes - big time. With grants, special loans and the help of equipment manufacturers, seed and feed suppliers and of course the banks, Island farming quickly became "modern".
The core issue was capital, efficiency and export. By investing heaviliy into capital - buildings and machinery, by becoming more efficient and by selling off Island, the winners did well and this way became the way. We were successful in the larger world becuase we were very disciplined. Being an Island, we could offer the world the one thing that a larger place like Idaho could not. We could offer quality. Quality enabled us to punch well above our weight in the larger world.
By the 1980's little PEI was a force in the global potato world. We were supplying seed and even table stock around the world. We were a byword for quality.
But then a new set of incentives arrived. At first it offered farmers what they needed - more money for less risk and for less hard work. But with the easy money, came dependency. Within a decade, we had lost our ability to deliver quality and were competing head to head with the large commodity producers. What had happened?
Our success had attracted a new business to the Island. The global processors that supplied the global fast food business arrived. Now we were in a game that could only have 2 winners - the processors and the ultra large suppliers. There are farms in Idaho with more acreage than on PEI!
The easy money obscured the cancerous nature of the deal.
At first it worked well. The banks loved it. They told their clients to take the safe route and stop selling seed or table stock and get the assured return from processors. In the early years the returns were excellent. So more and more left seed and table and took the safe route. Then it became clear that, because there was so much acreage in processing, that we had lost the ability to grow quality. Our seed business collapsed. It cannot return now. There is too much contamination.
Now it was work for the processor or die.
The only way to keep your head above the water was to work the farm to the limit. Now you have to harvest the crop in two week window in October. Bad weather - you have to invest even more in equipment. You have to get the crop out. To be paid the agreed on price for your crop it has to meet the size standard. So you have to invest in more inputs. To ride out the cycle you have to be able to store. You have to invest in large and complex buildings.
You are now so over capitalized that you can't make the return on a three year rotation - so you drop to a two year rotation. Soon it will be potatoes every year. All the difference is being squeezed out from your land and the biosphere.
Everyone feels trapped. It seems that we are all locked into a dance of death.
But hope remains. Join us as we talk about a new way of seeing farming that gives the power back to our farmers. Join us as we look at an idea that is already working. Join us as we look at the future to be a farmer is once more a life that many would wish for.
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