It’s not sustainable

Vincent J. Curtis

20 June 22

RE: Loss of farmland in Ontario not sustainable.  Op-ed by Peggy Brekveld, President of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and operates her family dairy farm near. Thunder Bay, ON.  The Hamilton Spectator 20 June 22.  Also “Ontario rapidly losing farmland amid urban sprawl, group says.”  A Canadian Press story by Tyler Griffin, a story about the same group, the same person, saying the same thing as the op-ed.   The Spectator is part of the campaign to stop the expansion of Hamilton’s urban boundary.  Surprised?  Curiously, dairy farming isn’t technically speaking “agriculture” because it doesn’t involve the growing of crops.

Whenever you hear the word ‘sustainable’ being thrown around, the people using it have no idea what they’re talking about.  Digging coal out of the ground hasn’t been sustainable since the first coal mine, but we’ll still be doing it a thousand years from now.

Have you ever driven to Thunder Bay from Hamilton?  You have to drive north of Superior through some of the most picturesque country east of the Rockies.  It’s all granite and water and pine.  Lousy for agriculture, but great for mining and forestry.  West of Thunder Bay, Highway 17 meanders through hilly country and around thousands of little lakes left behind by the disappearance of Lake Agassiz.  Terrain and soil not great for agriculture.  In a couple of hours, you hit the Ontario-Manitoba border.

There, the forests fall away and before lies lie the great prairies of the west.  Agricultural land of unimaginable scale.  Okay, you’re not going to grow tender fruit on it, or raise sweet Ontario corn, but that’s a matter of diet.  There’s more agricultural land in Canada than the benighted can fathom.

Stop worrying about Canada’s food supply.  The only thing that can mess it up is misguided central planning.  If you’re a Freedmanite or a von Misesite, nearly all central planning is misguided.

-30-

People who use the word “sustainable” mean “steady state.”  There’s nothing “sustainable” about any phase in the life-cycle of an insect, yet insects have survived on earth for hundreds of millions of years.  And insects don’t rely on central planners.