Raymond Loo at the market

One of the media specialists working for writer Nino Ricci was quoted recently in The National Post as saying, “If you work that hard on something, you want to talk about it.” So, I was at a literary reading recently and the musician who had just finished singing his own songs sat at my table. I commented on the lyrics of his last number that were inspired by a police shooting. It was immediate and real, I said. Then he asked me about my book. I had just begun to answer him explaining that, in part, it was about organic food, when he interrupted me. 

“Isn’t it funny the way people are afraid of technology,” he said. 

This is a common misconception about organic food. People have this image in their minds of hard labour, rusty tools, no amenities—just a swaybacked horse and a long-haired hippie guiding an antiquated plow. Even a lawyer I talked with once about Intellectual Property Law defended his profession by saying that no one wants to go back to the time of the sabre-toothed tiger.

To the musician, I said that if he actually spoke to an organic farmer, he’d be hard pressed to find one that was completely against technology. All of the ones I’ve spoken to are interested in technology that is safe for the environment, crops and people. Raymond Loo, an organic farmer from Prince Edward Island, is one of those farmers.

“I’d like to say that we’re not actually going backwards,” said Raymond.  “We’re going forward in a different direction, and we’re using the knowledge from the past to help us move forward, and I think it’s important to keep it in perspective because it’s real easy for the conventional industry, if you will, to pooh-pooh the idea of going back.  ‘Well, you can’t go back.’  And I’ve heard that more times than – well, that’s fine, but I don’t think it’s going back.  I think it’s going ahead using the knowledge of the past AND the knowledge of now.” 

It’s easy to argue your point by characterizing the other as a Luddite, but those kinds of broad strokes messily cover the nuances and deny the sophistication of what organic farmers are trying to do: balance healthy, ethical living with respect for the environment, which their children will inherit.

Making blanket statements about sabre-tooth tigers and technophobes is also an easy way to stop the dialogue about how to share the earth’s abundance fairly and sustainably. Those are hard questions to answer because they don’t come with pre-fabricated answers. Yet, I’m sure Mother Nature would agree with Nino Ricci’s media specialist: the environment, the planet, and our role in it are worth talking about.

Windmill Point Organic Farm

Yesterday I went to Ile Perrot, a little island 30 minutes outside of Montreal, to visit an organic farmers’ market, Windmill Point. I had found out about it when I attended the Sustainable Business Conference at Concordia University last winter. The owner of the farm, Ken Taylor, was one of the speakers, and he told us about the amazing feats of growing walnuts and lemons right here in our chilly climate, as well as many other vegetables, fruits and heritage seeds. At the conference, Ken brought some nuts for us to try and that was enough for me to visit his farm.

In the works is converting the barn where the store is to reduce the environmental footprint to zero. People everywhere are doing amazing things that are also respectful of the environment and our health. Ken & Lorraine are one inspiring example.