Land issues.....

My most recent unloading in case you are interested:)

Letter to the Editor:
In the past few weeks I've been reading the responses to the land challenges we face in Kings County. I feel it is very important for readers of this paper to understand that there are two separate issues here.

One issue is that the future of farms and farmers given the current climate (ie: low returns to the farm and a cheap food policy in Canada) is looking bleak. This situation is threatening our ability as farmers to meet our cost of production. It has happened as Mr. Caldwell referred to on October 15th issue of the Register with peas and beans, with pork and it isn't over unless something drastic occurs to shake up policy makers into implementing a way for farmers to recieve a fair share of the food dollar. The second issue, and the one that some citizens have organized themselves around is all about the agricultural land base – the resource. It is about having a resource base to grow crops on in the future.

There have been comments made on various occasions about the amount of land that is not being cropped and that until we start seeing these lands in production we ott to let farmers do what they want. I haven't seen any population models recently, but I assume that we can expect to see the popluation of this province increase in the next 100-200 years. With climate change, rising sea levels, and increasing costs for fuel we will be faced with a need to farm differently. Today we may see and hear about a decline in acres in production, but to allow our economic trends of today determine whether we have a food cropping land base for the future generations seems extremely short sighted and lacks vision.

How much land in Nova Scotia, in Atlantic Canada, in Canada, are we willing to lose before we decide we've lost enough? I do not think the answer to a farmers struggles today is to sell for development or rezone for development what needs to be reserved for food production in the future.