Nigwek (a Mi’kmaq word meaning "something good is growing from the Earth, or, a new organization is expanding") will be an outdoor music festival held in downtown Charlottetown this summer 2009.
Nigwek is a day to celebrate the Island’s current organic agriculture, and a public exhibition for increased attention toward the necessity of PEI becoming more organic: In the interest of our health, our land preservation, and our Island’s prosperity.
Featuring both local and off-Island musical acts, the day-long concert/exhibition will also feature PEI organic farmers selling mini-snacks for purchase, and presenting from exhibit booths along the side of the street.
Nigwek will be a celebration of what exists now, and what is to come in the future of the organic agriculture industry on PEI. This day for families, tourists, and Islanders of all ages and walks of life, surely has the potential to become a meaningful, positive, fun and successful annual summertime event.
Proceeds from the event will go toward the PEI Certified Organic Producers Co-op, in support of organic agriculture educational bursaries.
The following is taken from the most recent issue of Panache Magazine:
The Organic Island: Could PEI ever go completely organic with its agriculture?
An entirely organic PEI.
Many people have dreamed about it for years. Some believe it’s the only way that the Island’s agriculture industry can be sustainable. Others have drafted proposals for how to bring it to fruition. And a good number believe that the potential for positive outcome (agriculturally, economically, environmentally, health-wise, tourism-wise, and more) that exists within the idea completely outweighs the short-term sacrifices and struggles it would take to achieve the end goal.
But could it ever be possible?
The interesting thing about PEI, of course, is that even though we’ve historically never really embraced change very well, we can actually summon up social change very quickly when the majority of us are on the same page about its necessity.
Take, for instance, our Waste Watch program. It took some twists of arms of the begrudging to get it into action, but as soon as the ball was set in motion, it rolled into place very quickly: And the program is now heralded as being one of the best in the country.
Because of our small population base, we have quite the advantage as a province, in that what would take years of legislation and work to bring about in a large city or province can be instituted much more easily here.
But what really plays a factor, especially on issues concerning the health of our land, is the reality that we are, of course, a small island: And we know that we have no other choice but to take care of the land we have – because it is all we’ve got.
So, as the 2009 Island growing season begins, Panache has approached an array of different individuals from various sectors of society, asking them all this one big question: “What do you think it would take for PEI to go completely organic with its agriculture?
Here are the answers we received:
If visionary people were running this Island, we would see an entirely organic PEI. It’s the biggest selling point this Island could ever have, both in terms of tourism and in terms of farming. What the government is so non-visionary about is the fact that the only reason people come this major distance here – and this will increasingly be an issue – is because it’s so unique. You can’t sell this Island as a ‘Green Island’ when there are spray trucks all over the roads. Your average tourist now is an informed person. And people will come here if it’s rural, beautiful, and non-polluted. Otherwise, they’ll go to Vermont or something. Why would they schlep all the way up here? What the government doesn’t understand is how economically this would be such a major boost for the Island. We were part of the whole beginning of this thing – but that was ten years ago, when ACORN formed. Now, conventional farmers are certainly more in the zone about how organic is the way of the future. But unless the province gets behind it, the farmers can’t turn things around on their own. It needs to be like the Superstore’s plastic bag switch. Suddenly there was a ruling about this, and now every Tom, Dick and Harry’s out there with cloth bags. All you have to do is say, ‘That’s it, we’re going organic, and the whole government is behind it,’ and it would happen.
Nan Jeffrey, an original founding member of ACORN (Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network)
It’s up to consumers, actually. Prince Edward Island producers have always responded to market opportunities and are simply looking for a fair return from the marketplace. If the market for organic products continues to increase, we will see a rise in organic production in this province.
Brian Douglas, PEI Deputy Minister of Agriculture
The main barrier to PEI going completely organic is subsidies to industrial agriculture. If those subsidies were gone, and the price that people pay at the cash register was reflective of the actual cost of the food, then things would be very different, and people would see that the organic price is actually quite a bargain. It’s very difficult for someone growing organic food to compete with food that’s grown industrially and massively subsidized.
There has to be a massive coming together of citizens to put pressure on government. You can go to the store and do your part and buy your organic veggies, but individual purchases of organic food aren’t going to push the envelope very far. We’ve got too many problems for this to ‘maybe’ happen sometime in the future. Look at the damage that’s being caused by chemical pesticides and herbicides in terms of diminished I.Q. in children, birth defects, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, all of those things. So we don’t really have time to wait around and hope that someday people will just all of a sudden decide that they’re going to start buying organic. Government has to be pushed into it. And the only way they’re going to be pushed into it is by Islanders.”
Sharon Labchuk, PEI Green Party Leader
It will take many factors for Prince Edward Island to become The Organic Island. Among them are true leadership and vision from our politicians and food production community. Business as usual is too easy. But quite simply our current global food production system is not sustainable and must change, we are losing farmers at a furious rate because the system doesn't respect or fairly compensate them. And consumers must accept that our relentless focus on finding the cheapest food possible is hurting our health, our families and here on the island, our neighbors."
Chef Michael Smith
The organic issue is very important. There are many permutations. My initial interest was more narrow and considered making PEI a unique production area. We would grow only non-GM crops, thus differentiating ourselves in the marketplace and potentially giving producers a niche in places like Japan and European countries which are non-GMO Regions. Canada, as you know, supports GM crops. I asked a Legislative Committee to review this matter and make a recommendation to the Legislature. There was some support but more opposition to the idea. The Federation of Agriculture was strongly opposed. Their leaders wanted the right to choose between GM and non GM seed. For example, hog growers said they received better yields with GM soybean seed and they could grow the crop cheaper. This was especially important due to low pork prices. There was also strong opposition from the bioscience sector. PEI has made major inroads with this sector and many felt that going to GMO free seed would send a negative message to firms we wanted to attract as well as make it difficult to attract new research money. Not surprising, big agri-business was generally opposed as they have been heavy promoters of the advantages of GMO crops. However, some companies, like McCains, decided not to use of GM potatoes because of consumer resistance. In the end, the Committee felt that GM and non-GM crops could co-exist.
Former Premier, Pat Binns.
I think if you polled Islanders, it would be a very high proportion who in their dreams would want this to be an organic Island. But you have to grapple with the reality of who actually owns that agricultural land. And those are not the same people, by and large. You can get into this rural-urban split of townies telling rural people what to do, and all the grief that can come with that. But the people who own and control the land, their lives, their perceived well-being, their identities are bound up in this other system. And they were always told, and were rewarded for it, that this was the right thing to do. And is it reasonable to expect those people to actually change? Maybe there literally has to be a generational change before we get to the point where we have people on the land who are not so heavily invested in the current system, and for whom it is a realistic option to admit that the system they’ve been born into is not the right kind, and that they have to change.
There’s also the physical reality that it is a seven-year process for any piece of land to be cleansed and to get to the point where it can be organic.
And so I think probably the way ahead is to pilot some particular areas where there are clusters of people in a more organic mindset, and develop that area as an organic watershed. Kevin Jeffrey at one point tried to develop a project that would take part of Central Queens, around the Wheatley River, New Glasgow, Cavendish area, and see if he could persuade the landowners to make it an organic watershed. That didn’t work. But it was a great idea. And there may well be some other areas that you could target, where you could model an organic watershed, and then walk it out from there.
The only other thing I would emphasize is the extreme importance of artists and musicians in this struggle, and their long-term engagement in the struggle.
Dr. Irené Novaczek, Director of Institute of Island Studies, UPEI
Because the potato industry is interwoven throughout much of PEI's agriculture industry either through land rentals, manure usage or equipment sharing, any large scale change toward organic production would require groups of farmers working together to identify potential markets and developing rotational plans and infrastructure that can produce the identified products. The new markets would need to provide farmers and their staff a good living and also keep our natural resources in good shape.
Susan MacKinnon, Reduced Input/Organic Development Officer, PEI Department of Agriculture and Forestry
Consumers are now more aware of where their food comes from and what process it took to get it to their table. Many more are demanding organic and I see the farmers seeing that as an opportunity and moving in that direction.
Shawn Murphy, MP Hillsborough
It came to me a while ago that a large-scale shift toward organic agriculture isn’t going to happen just because it’s ‘the right thing to do.’ Even though – as long as we’re judging success by how much money’s in the bank, not by how much good we’re doing for the environment, as a species we’re in trouble. But I think there are two main things that will make people change: If we can make people think about the next generation, and really truly think about what they’re leaving behind for their children; and if we can make people feel that it would be economically viable [to do organic agriculture] – then I think we have some chance of fairly large-scale change.
There is such a fantastic amount of money still being spent on research developing pesticides, and if we had a fraction of that money to develop varieties more suited toward organic production, we would be so much better off.
Economically, this is why I’ve been opening up our market to Japan, traveling there five times recently, and traveling to Dubai, and thinking about other countries, considering finding energy-efficient ships to transport organic food to places that don’t have the land to grow organic crops. I’m working with government right now to form a committee to develop guidelines around GMO growing, and buffer zones around organic fields. PEI is the only place in left in North America now where you can grow non-GMO canola, and we’re selling 2000 tons of that to a Japanese company, translating directly to several hundred thousand dollars to farmers here.
The thing is, we chose to go organic not to make more money, but because we felt there was an environmental need to change our agricultural practices. But many of the new people now involved in organic agriculture see it as one of their only opportunities of economic success. That’s quite a different crowd than what we had say 15 years ago. But maybe this will just entice more people to switch to organic. And at the end of the day, if we get a lot of farmers producing, yes I might get lost amid too much organic food, but at least maybe they could chisel into my headstone that I contributed to PEI becoming more organic, and I’ll be happy – even if I have to drive a bus – at least I would have helped start something that’s good for the Island.
I think we’re at a really exciting time in agriculture. It’s just that I have a hard time convincing anybody else that we are.
Raymond Loo, organic farmer, Springwillow Farms PEI