The Union Farmer Quarterly/Summer 2001
The Promise - Resistance and Renewal
Where, then, can we see any hope? Amazingly, there is cause for quite a lot. But you won't find it by talking to the research establishment or checking out their materials. For reasons that will be obvious by now, you have to look elsewhere.
Once you start looking, though, you come across quite a few examples of solid, exciting research work being done in a context of social and environmental responsibility. Ranging from very small scale to quite ambitious, the depth, variety and practical value of that research is impressive.
This formal and informal alternative research often involves NFU members. Among them is New Brunswick potato farmer Darrell McLaughlin, who over the past several years has been a "participant observer" gathering and analyzing an impressive collection of data on the factors influencing Maritime farmers' adoption and subsequent rejection of genetically modified Bt potatoes. Thousands of kilometers away, NFU member Dale Fankhanel and local residents in Bell Hills Lake, Alberta, have taken samples of water near a hog barn, found high levels of fecal coliform bacteria and publicly called for DNA testing to verify the source and check for antibiotic resistance.
Ken and Joan Marisett's farm in eastern Ontario is one of sixteen farms where Ann Clark and Karen Maitland of Guelph University are gathering information for a new course in organic agriculture. "They come here and go carefully over two of our fields, spelt and spring wheat," Marisett explained, "checking the stand, noting any weeds. We have to keep a record of everything we do with those fields. At harvest time they'll come with a weigh wagon, check the yields, see what's worked and what hasn't."
This collaborative, farm-based research model reminds Marisett of what he saw last winter in Cuba, where government research stations and farmers work closely together on problems the farmers have identified. In Cuba's organic agri-culture, he says, the bottom line for research is that "it has to be sustainable and environmentally friendly, and you have to learn to do it yourself." In North America, groups like the Sea Spray Cooperative in PEI and Iowa State University's Leopold Centre are developing elements of such an approach, but this kind of agricultural research is still far too rare.
There is probably more research of an alternative nature happening in the social and economic realms, where organizations like the NFU or PEI's Cooper Institute are producing radical and well-documented analyses of agricultural policies and trends. In this we are joined by like-minded organizations such as the Toronto Food Policy Council and the Cana-dian Health Coalition, by independent researchers like Brewster and Cathleen Kneen of The Ram's Horn, and by many colleagues in other countries.
We are also proud to claim as our friends and allies those brave souls inside establishment institutions - scientists, academics, politicians, journalists, office workers and others - who insist on bucking the trend and defending the principles of truth, creativity and respect for life. Grounded in those principles, farmers and other citizens are creating a research of resistance and renewal.
Note: Space limits the amount of information we can provide here on research alternatives. For more
specifics and contacts, please contact us.
Good Research - A Prescription
(adapted from the Durban Declaration on International Agricultural Research, May, 2001,
endorsed by Via Campesina)