Agriculture and Resilience

June's article in The Equity turned to agriculture and asked readers to comment on how changes on local farms have affected the community in the past 25 or so years. The ‘agriculture file’ in the Shawville archives is full of clippings about mini-courses and information sessions for farmers, many of them responding to changes in technology and government regulations. A local farmer I spoke to confirmed that while regulation is not new, the amount of regulation and the centralization of policy making are increasing, and the quantity of regulation does represent a significant change that farmers have had to accommodate, in terms of both the cost of licenses and the time it takes to deal with paper work. The ‘agriculture file’ also reflects a good deal of experimenting with potential new enterprises: sheep, millet, grapes, hemp, hops, rice… I find myself wondering how much of the impetus for experimentation comes from inside the local farming community, and how much is driven by the structure and assumptions of rural development projects and agencies. To what extent are Pontiac farms tied to provincial and national policy agendas? How much autonomy do local farmers have? How much room to maneuver do individual farms have while they try to balance costs and opportunities, and manage risk?