By now most people in Canada’s broader ag community have heard about the Canola Council of Canada’s ambitious goal to produce 52 bushels an acre by 2025. There’s a good article by Lisa Guenther on the Grainews web site about a major roadblock to this goal: transportation infrastructure. If infrastructure isn’t sufficient to move such large amounts of product from supply to demand, the efforts of Canada’s canola growers will be for nought.
“Infrastructure’s become more contentious in many communities,” said Dr. Stephen Blank, a leading thinker in North American transportation infrastructure, in the article. “ The not-in-my-backyard attitude towards projects has morphed into BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.”
Ag producers have been all too aware of this attitude for longer than most of us. Consumers want cheap food, but don’t put an ILO anywhere near us. They (meaning “us” ultimately) want organic food, but don’t expect people to tolerate an organic operation near their doorsteps any more than their intensive cousins.
That’s not to say that new demands haven’t driven better practices among farmers; certainly, growers are exercising greater social and environmental responsibility than any other time in recent history. The demands are growing and becoming more rigid, however, and the public appetite for tradeoffs in which all parties internalize responsibility for the desired outcome is dropping.
The difficulties surrounding transportation infrastructure is an interesting topic, one covered quite well by the story linked above. There’s a larger discussion here in our society’s never ending desire for cheap goods and infinite choices versus our willingness to offer a fair tradeoff. I offered a couple of ag-centric examples above, but the symptoms are pervasive throughout society.
Let’s take music, for example. In my view, many of the driving forces of the 21st century had their genesis when, enabled by technology, we decided we no longer had to pay for music. The result has been a crumbling infrastructure in the major music industry. Some people think this is a good thing; because artists are bypassing the major labels and distributing music themselves there are now more choices targeting their particular favourite subgenres of music. However, it’s a splintering of community. It means we will never again have one big shared musical experience such as the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
We want news, but we don’t want it in the form that kept mass news dissemination economically sustainable for decades: printed media, radio and television paid for with plentiful ad space. Instead we want it for free from a new medium -- the Internet – which by its very nature makes it difficult to monetize content in any substantial way. To make matters worse, people are increasingly eschewing traditional mass media which – for all its faults – offers a wide, general world view in favour of blogs that merely reinforce the positions of the reader. Again, community splinters. Do you sense a trend here?
Obviously, this is all very general and there are positives and negatives to society becoming more tailored to the individual. But it seems clear to me that there is a strong correlation between technology, entitlement, splintering of community and rigidity in accepting tradeoffs such as Dr. Blank’s BANANA concept.
So what does that mean for agriculture going forward? Consumer expectations are only increasing, and we’re already seeing the end of cheap food. Perhaps part of this can be pinned on consumers’ unwillingness to concede in terms of farmer practices, location and, pertaining to the quoted article, required infrastructure. Again, all very general, but food for thought.
“Infrastructure’s become more contentious in many communities,” said Dr. Stephen Blank, a leading thinker in North American transportation infrastructure, in the article. “ The not-in-my-backyard attitude towards projects has morphed into BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.”
Ag producers have been all too aware of this attitude for longer than most of us. Consumers want cheap food, but don’t put an ILO anywhere near us. They (meaning “us” ultimately) want organic food, but don’t expect people to tolerate an organic operation near their doorsteps any more than their intensive cousins.
That’s not to say that new demands haven’t driven better practices among farmers; certainly, growers are exercising greater social and environmental responsibility than any other time in recent history. The demands are growing and becoming more rigid, however, and the public appetite for tradeoffs in which all parties internalize responsibility for the desired outcome is dropping.
The difficulties surrounding transportation infrastructure is an interesting topic, one covered quite well by the story linked above. There’s a larger discussion here in our society’s never ending desire for cheap goods and infinite choices versus our willingness to offer a fair tradeoff. I offered a couple of ag-centric examples above, but the symptoms are pervasive throughout society.
Let’s take music, for example. In my view, many of the driving forces of the 21st century had their genesis when, enabled by technology, we decided we no longer had to pay for music. The result has been a crumbling infrastructure in the major music industry. Some people think this is a good thing; because artists are bypassing the major labels and distributing music themselves there are now more choices targeting their particular favourite subgenres of music. However, it’s a splintering of community. It means we will never again have one big shared musical experience such as the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
We want news, but we don’t want it in the form that kept mass news dissemination economically sustainable for decades: printed media, radio and television paid for with plentiful ad space. Instead we want it for free from a new medium -- the Internet – which by its very nature makes it difficult to monetize content in any substantial way. To make matters worse, people are increasingly eschewing traditional mass media which – for all its faults – offers a wide, general world view in favour of blogs that merely reinforce the positions of the reader. Again, community splinters. Do you sense a trend here?
Obviously, this is all very general and there are positives and negatives to society becoming more tailored to the individual. But it seems clear to me that there is a strong correlation between technology, entitlement, splintering of community and rigidity in accepting tradeoffs such as Dr. Blank’s BANANA concept.
So what does that mean for agriculture going forward? Consumer expectations are only increasing, and we’re already seeing the end of cheap food. Perhaps part of this can be pinned on consumers’ unwillingness to concede in terms of farmer practices, location and, pertaining to the quoted article, required infrastructure. Again, all very general, but food for thought.