Chris addresses the crowd at the Nanaimo Climate March, November 2015

Good afternoon everyone!

Thank you all for mobilizing on this chilly autumn day to demand climate justice!

My name is Christopher Brown. I’m an organic farmer, and an agricultural activist and entrepreneur here in Nanaimo. I’ve chosen to be a farmer because it’s a profession of hope and living as locally as possible is a solution to climate change.

Did you know that globally, agricultural is responsible for upwards of one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions? It’s a sector that we all depend on, but has become increasingly fossil fuel dependent, unsustainable, and environmentally destructive. I worry that much of the focus of concern is on emissions leading to greenhouse warning. But also consider that industrial agriculture is leading to deforestation and soil erosion, is contaminating and exhausting remaining ground water reserves, and is destroying biodiversity with chemical usage. Big agro business has negative effects on the environment, public health, workers and animal welfare. Transportation of food has become a farce as consumers demand out of season and tropical foods year round. And corporations work to control the food and seed supply to suppress farmers and consumers. In short, the global agricultural system is greatly flawed.

I would like to share with you some solutions. Step one, BOYCOTT THE CORPORATE EVIL DOERS! We all know the injustices Coca Cola, Monsanto, Nestle, Walmart, MacDonalds and others are committing. Never give them your money! Become a conscious and informed consumer. Know where your money is going and vote with your dollars. Choose to NOT support companies who use chemicals and GMOS, who are cutting down the Borneo Rain forests to produce palm oil, who deceive and mislabel their foods, who use slave labor and exploit local populations, who import out of season foods from China, and so on.

Become a conscious shopper. The information is out there and we need to change our shopping behavior. We must insist to our government that we want better food options!

Here’s the solution: Choose locally and ethically grown food. Right now we need to rebuild our food growing and processing capacity to meet local needs.

We have an amazing opportunity to rebuild the local economy around food production. This is what I am most inspired and excited about right now. Currently 95% of the food we eat on Vancouver Island is imported. To me, I see this as a 95% market potential. Imagine if we met the demand for local food on the Island by growing it ourselves. A food resilient local economy could meet most of our food, and material needs while creating hundreds of jobs. Why are we importing wool and apples from New Zealand? We can grow that here very well! Imagine if in our year round growing climate we met our own food need and created prosperity. Our current bottleneck in growing the local food economy is a year round, marketplace and value adding and food storage facilities. We are working towards creating these spaces.

Some say that local, small scale and family farming is humanities only chance at survival and prosperity!   We need to transition into more sustainable systems and quickly. Small-scale farming promotes individual rather than corporate ownership and sovereignty of food. Farmers also care about the health of their land more than the bottom line of maximizing profits. Doctor Vandana Shiva always comes back to promoting biodiversity as the most important aspect of farming. Healthy land will grow healthy food and small-scale farming has the ability to promote and regenerate biodiversity.

I feel that we need to reconsider what we value in life. As it stands, for many, healthy food is less valued than cheaper food or other material wants. I would like to invite everyone to choose to value food, water, air, soil, nature, and community above other material wants.