Greener Pastures, a book by Elizabeth Brubaker, documents the ways in which the
regulation of agriculture has resulted in environmental harm. The book focuses
on the so-called "right-to-farm" laws that every province has passed in recent
decades. The laws vary from province to province, but generally they exempt
farmers from legal liability for the nuisances they create.
Right-to-farm laws have created a new standard by which to measure pollution:
the standard of "normal." If a farming practice is "normal," it is deemed
acceptable. The director of conflict resolution for British Columbia's Farm
Industry Review Board explains what this means: "it's basically up to the
industry to determine what the standard is ... If a farmer is doing what other
farmers do, he or she is okay."
Equating what is "normal" with what is acceptable has had an insidious effect
on our thinking about farming. Many environmental protection laws and planning
laws have been re-written to protect "normal" farming practices - even if they
are polluting. This must change. We must start holding farmers accountable for
the harm they do, whether or not their practices are "normal."
In Greener Pastures, she argues that the best way to do this is to empower the
people who are most directly affected by farms - their neighbours and their
communities. Before the passage of right-to-farm laws, those harmed by farms
had the legal means to protect themselves. We must restore to these people the
means to control agriculture's adverse impacts, in effect making each one a
potential regulator.
We must also strengthen communities, so that they can control damaging land
uses through zoning and planning. Local environmental impacts should be
addressed locally, and broader impacts should be regulated at higher levels.
Elizabeth Brubaker of Environment Probe has been working to control
agricultural pollution for the last seven years - ever since bacteria from cow
manure contaminated Walkerton's water, killing seven people and sickening more
than 2,300 others. With the release of Greener Pastures, Environment Probe have an
opportunity to spread the message far and wide: A new approach to regulation is
required in order to create a new agricultural industry - one meeting standards
that are not merely "normal" but are truly sustainable.
To learn more about Environment Probe, please visit their
website.
