Nice to have some real reporting instead of political spin.
http://communities.canada.com/vancou...kes-sense.aspx
Why growing wheat in Vancouver actually makes sense
By JEFF LEE 15 JUN 2011 COMMENTS(0) CIVIC LEE SPEAKING
Filed under: Vancouver, social science, suzanne anton, Andrea Reimer, food, grants, farmers markets
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Okay, so I know it's fun to poke at things like backyard chicken coops and turning front lawns into wheat fields. With this city council, it's not hard to find things to smirk about.
And Suzanne Anton, the Non-Partisan Association mayoral candidate whose party is swinging for November's election fence on anything remotely controversial, gets funny points for offering to buy Mayor Gregor Robertson a pair of overalls and a pitchfork to aid in his pursuit of all things green in the city.
But here's the reality of a program like the unfortunately-named Lawns to Loaves wheat project: it actually makes sense. Get beyond the idea of seeing vast swaths of city lawns turned into waving fields of grain ready for threshing. That isn't going to happen, no matter how much Coun. Andrea Reimer may like to get rid of lawns. (Check out the minutes of the Greenest City Action Team report. Search "lawns". It's her No. 1 wish.)
This is more about educating inner-city kids about the history of grain and where their bread comes from.
Hartley Rosen, whose group Environmental Youth Alliance is organizing the pilot project, reminded me that the history of immigration is closely tied to agriculture. The search for fertile soils and the need to produce the basic staples of life have governed us since time immemorial. Canada is one product of that; the wheat fields of the Prairie provinces were once simply prairies and now they literally one of the bread baskets of the world.
Yet there is increasingly a disconnect between where those grains come from and the browned loaves we buy in bags at the store. Just like most urban dwellers have no idea where their meat and eggs come from - or at least don't understand the connection to farming - we seem to forget that bread comes from grains which come from wheat which comes from the labour of planting, watering and harvesting.
Why is this educational concept any different than taking our kids down to the Pacific National Exhibition to look at the Holstein show cow to show where their breakfast milk comes from or seeing the pig that is destined to become bacon? Rosen points out that nobody he knows is growing urban wheat for anything other than educational purposes. It's cheaper to simply buy the loaf. But this is about symbolism. And perhaps getting rid of some over-fertilized lawns and some pesky European Chafer beetles to boot.
What most of us don't like, of course, is the constant public handouts groups want in order to prove their point. This year the city is doling out $100,000 for 16 projects, including $5,000 to Lawns to Loaves, $7,500 for a co-operative Vancouver Tool Library, $10,000 for a food scraps diversion program for the West End Farmer's Market and other worthy causes. It's a semantic argument none of us can win as to whether that's the best use of taxpayers' money.
It irks people when they see their taxes being used as make-work or make-a-point projects. There will always be those who think the city should get out of such business. But Reimer remembers when people were aghast at the idea of giving the fledgling local farmer's market a $5,000 grant to get started. It has become de rigueur for cities and towns now to have such local weekend fairs.
This year the city could have handed out half a million dollars in its Greenest City Neighborhood Grants program. You can read the .pdf report here. It also includes a list of all the projects the staff red-circled and said no to. For now.
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The general populace doesn't seem to share this caricaturized hatred for whatever he does. There are those who are against the bike lanes but also many who support them. In general, there hasn't really been a defining issue to defeat him on. IMO.
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