Stumble Upon

del.icio.us

Digg

Facebook

Print

Email

speakup

Dear Editor,

So much emphasis is given to export markets. New pellet factories supplying wood pellets to markets in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Why do we have our blinkered mindset always firmly in place, repeating the old dynamics, using the same tired thinking? It will be no different, encouraging outside companies to invest in setting up new factories, using the taxpayers' money to give them a sweet deal, then when the tax breaks are done and the resource dries up they move off, to new pastures. Then we have outraged communities and people out of work yet again.

What is wrong with thinking smaller? With harvesting what we need here for New Brunswick and then the Maritimes. Having pellet factories for supplying the New Brunswick markets. Why focus on exports?

Exports are the greed factor. We shall need all our renewable resources before long. We need to scale back, harvest less, find new ways of earning good livelihoods, not just using up resources in the fastest possible way to make a quick buck now and never mind the future. It will be the same old contractors, those who like to clear-cut, those who pretend to be small woodlot owners, but are actually contractors, buying and selling land that they use up as quickly as possible.

We have a culture that promotes exports above self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency means taking care of local first, then within a region of Canada; ours is the Maritimes.

Exports are for greed, selling and competing with the lowest common denominator. Selling our potatoes primarily for export means that we have no mixed vegetable farms, we are not food self-sufficient.

Potato production uses masses amounts of chemical inputs, pesticides and herbicides. In 20 years the farmers will be crying out for compensation as they ‘didn't realize' toxics would harm them, like the roadside Dioxin sprayers of a previous era.

There was an organization then "Mothers against Dioxin" who called out to protest against road-side spraying. Have we forgotten all that? In the same way now we should be demanding no more chemicals going into our waterways, into our precious soils and foods.

It is the export market mentality that throws us off track, that forces us into allowing foreign companies to pillage our land. Let's produce good food and clean fuel for New Brunswickers and Maritimers.

Jean Arnold,

Knowlesville