Today, as program manager of EcoMentors, the environmental youth leadership program established by Earth Day Canada (EDC), I work with people between the ages of 14 and 25 who have no shortage of ideas to change the status quo.

The energy and ingenuity of young generations has carried me to peaks of optimism in the bipolar emotional terrain of the environmentalist. For now at least, it looks to me that our hopes of someday getting this right aren’t yet vanquished.

Admittedly, I’m looking out from inside an oasis. The youth I work with are outliers championing environmental and social sustainability to their peers and the community.

Their biggest limitation, contrary to popular perception, is not apathy. Rather, it’s a model of education in Canada and the United States that doesn’t empower them to take action; it’s an institutional structure that offers little guidance on how to carry a sustainability mindset into a future career. What skills are needed? What post-graduate programs are available? What kind of jobs can be pursued that allow an individual to make a positive change in the world?

As Simon Jackson, founder of the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, tells me: “If today’s youth are given a positive and tangible opportunity to take a stand for nature, major progress can be made towards sustainability.”

But without the proper institutional support, their ideas are at risk of burning out. Which is why programs like EcoMentors or Jackson’s new international campaign, CoalitionWILD, are striving to provide platforms for bringing youth-led sustainability solutions “from dream concepts to reality.”

The impetus is there. Young people are connecting in great numbers at events like EDC’s Beyond Green Youth Summit, organizing at pivotal Keystone XL and divestment rallies across the U.S., and courageously leading grassroots movements such as Canada’s Idle No More.

Still, despite this increasing engagement, sustainability is barely addressed in the formal curriculum outside of a few modules in a biology or geography course.

Jayden Rae is a high school student and founder of the Whitby Environmental Youth Alliance in Ontario. She has grown frustrated with schools’ inability to educate for sustainability.

“The curriculum is outdated and limits teachers’ ability to teach students about current issues,” she says. “Most lesson plans are based on events or issues of the past when it’s more important to be considering the future.”

Her recommendations on how it could be improved are noteworthy.

“We need to get outside of the classroom to learn about sustainability,” Rae says. “Teachers need to make real life connections to what it’s all about so we can understand how it impacts us now and how it will in the future.”

The non-profit organization Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) seeks to accomplish exactly this, working with students, educators and administrators to create a model of education that uses experiential learning across subjects.

“The current method of education has prevented students from exploring and understanding the interconnectedness of these complex issues,” says Angela Kielbowski, project coordinator at LSF. “Sustainability, by its nature, is interdisciplinary – so it requires interdisciplinary education to understand it.”

In the U.S., the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, is leading the way on embedding sustainability into the classroom within the K-12 range through active consulting, complementary resources and a national food reform program in schools. Its guiding principles reflect a need for what it refers to as a “systems perspective” in the classroom. To deal with what it calls a “host of pressing and often escalating issues” the center stresses that students need to understand “the patterns of relationship that connect them.” Until schools deal seriously with sustainability in such a way, they are relying on students to make the necessary connections.

Of course this is not unique to high schools. As students enter the post-secondary system it’s also common to encounter a lack of dialogue or research across academic borders.

Blair Feltmate, associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) and chair of Climate Change Adaptation Project Canada, echoes Kielbowski when he tells me an interdisciplinary approach is our best hope at adapting to climate change.

Unfortunately, he says, that kind of skill set is “virtually non-existent” in corporations and most research.

“We’re lacking broad-based generalists who can look at climate change from multiple angles and perspectives,” says Feltmate. “We still need a specialized depth of analysis – but we’ve unfortunately got a system that favours the specialist at the expense of the generalist.”

Tyler Hunt, project coordinator at the University of Toronto St. George campus sustainability office, tells me that in addition to an interdisciplinary effort by the institution, many collaborations and initiatives are happening at the student level.

“There has been a significant growth in environmentally-focused student clubs and groups organized across disciplines,” says Hunt. “There is a strong beekeeping group who produces honey, a campus agriculture group that uses vacant spaces on campus to grow produce, a student-run food co-op cafe that sells local and organic food – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

He is eager to illustrate the student-driven initiatives on campus, and I completely identify. When looking for hope in this space, I’ve also seen it most prominently in the hearts and minds of groups he is describing. But Hunt’s final metaphor has me thinking, because it may be more apt than he intended. Icebergs melt. They calve off from receding ice-sheets and take shape as dynamic marvels. While they impress and inspire onlookers, they are heading into waters they can’t possibly endure alone.

What we need, it strikes me, is an amassing of glaciers – an accumulation of energies that if supported by a solid base will eventually reshape the lay of the land.

If our schools could commit to dealing with sustainability as an interdisciplinary and deeply embedded subject right from the start, it might just provide that platform youth need to carve out a new course.

The post Teaching sustainability appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The pursuit of profit is responsible for capitalism’s uncanny ability to adapt, for better or for worse. If the means of obtaining it are not regulated, profit can lead to corporate self-destruction, as the world witnessed in 2008, when short-termism and greed led to the downturn of the global economy and the shedding of a few multibillion-dollar corporate tendrils (such as Lehman Brothers). It has also resulted in longer-lasting and ultimately more significant external degradation, such as the poisoning of the atmosphere, freshwater and ecosystems. Moreover, the collective emissions of a global economy have brought CO2 levels to a point where climate change is an inevitable part of our long-term future.

While the economy is often perceived and discussed as something separate from nature, it has never been clearer that economic survival is inherently linked to environmental well-being. By necessity, decades of destructive profiteering have ended in a capitalism whose only means of survival is to evolve into a more compassionate and responsible economic model. But is it possible?

“First, we have to recognize that the past 20 years have not been a victory for capitalism at all. Second, to realize capitalism allows for growth in the power of the citizenry. Companies are not ethical or moral, nor are governments. People are ethical; the people create the standards. People need to be educated in an ethical context, and the market needs to be set up in such a way that the people who work in corporations are able exercise their ethics.”

—John Ralston Saul, Canadian author and essayist

“In the climate era, we need all hands on deck. We need innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership from all sectors. In order to ensure that we don’t run from disaster to disaster, as we have from the Gulf oil spill to Fukushima, our society needs to chart a fast course to clean, safe renewable energy systems that ensure climate stability, economic stability and healthy communities. This challenge requires innovation and leadership from all sectors. Most importantly, it requires strong laws from government to change the rules of the game.”

—Tzeporah Berman, co-director, Greenpeace International Global Climate and Energy Program

“We need to make markets work for a better world. Companies must move away from this obsession with short-termism; the financial crisis showed us how poorly resources are allocated when that occurs. The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, while increasing disclosure requirements, has not addressed this fatal flaw in the system. Investors and governments must demand long-term planning be integrated into corporate culture.”

—David Runnalls, senior fellow, Sustainable Prosperity

“Capitalism will only work in symbiosis with humankind and the environment if its rules incorporate the full and true costs of pollution. If we don’t sufficiently put a price on pollution, capitalism will ultimately fail humankind.

–Marlo Raynolds, senior advisor, Pembina Institute

“As we look at more disasters happening like the BP spill, and now the major oil spill in Alberta, companies have to start looking seriously at risk management. With that, it becomes about looking to social responsibility, working with the public and with First Nations, using traditional indigenous wisdom and ecological knowledge of the spaces we do business in. We have to look at the long-term use of resources we have, not at short-term profits. I believe we are changing towards more long-term vision as we go forward.”

—Judith Sayers, Hupacasath First Nation, associate professor of law, University of Victoria

“It largely depends on the humans who are running the companies. It comes down to attitudes, and if people are greedy or think they need bonuses and salaries that amount to 500 times of the base employees are making, then you aren’t going to change it. You need to get the narcissists out of the executive suite; they aren’t healthy for the companies, let alone the ecosystems and everything else. My view is that it is their phony leadership that is destroying companies. What we have is a management crisis, with people in management focused on personal and short-term gains.”

—Henry Mintzberg, Canadian author and professor of management studies, McGill University

“Some organizations will wait until their bottom lines are negatively affected by their lack of action related to environmental and social responsibility. Others will act when they realize their employees, current and future, consider it a requirement of engagement. Still others will wait until they are mandated to act via regulatory or legislative pressures. But the leaders of their industries are already illustrating how a commitment to a healthy world responds to the ever increasing expectations of all stakeholders by engaging their staff in driving innovation, improving performance, and ensuring long-term health for all.”

—Kathy Bardswick, CEO, The Co-operators Group, 2011 Best Corporate Citizen

“Today the Arctic, while fully immersed in the modern system of capitalism, must continue to retain the sharing philosophy of our ancestors. Inuit have always lived symbiotically with their environment. Capitalism has taken on a human face here in the North. Nunavut is a society with a rich tradition of sharing and respect for the land, and a ‘cleaner capitalism’ is the natural progression.”

—Eva Aariak, premier of Nunavut

The post Oh, the humanity! appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Bananas belong in important conversations—in boardrooms, behind closed doors, in city halls.

In fact, your mayor should be thinking about bananas right now. Not because His or Her Worship doesn’t have more important things to consider, or because they might be particularly peckish, but because bananas are a symbol for something greater. Their existence north of the 49th parallel is a testament to globalization. They are beacons of the pre-apocalyptic marketplace, emblems of cheap fossil fuel economies.

In 2030, something as common as the contents of your morning smoothie will be determined by the economic, social, and environmental health of our planet. And the way our cities respond to the complex issues of today will affect the simple joys of its citizens for tomorrow.

Bananas are a thought experiment for the future of the sustainable city.

We asked the mayors of some major cities in Canada a few out-of-the-box questions to get them thinking about their broader visions for the sustainability of their city in the future. In addition to bananas, we asked mayors to think about tree-forts and transit.

Many Canadians take some things for granted—available food, green space, and accessible transportation. In many ways, these issues are influenced by municipal level decision-making. As the climate continues to change and the global population increases, Canadian cities are due for some major adjustments. Over the next few decades, municipal investment in sustainability will carry a lot of weight when it comes to securing something as plain and simple as the fruit on your cereal.

In the year 2030 …

Will you be able to eat bananas in your city?

“Yes. They are greatly appreciated and enjoyed, because they are a treat, much like oranges in the Christmas stocking during WWII. Prices for tropical fruits have increased significantly, but because of Whitehorse’s proximity to the Pacific, we are still able to get tropical fruits like bananas for a reasonable cost more often than other communities. However, Yukon agriculture has grown considerably in 20 years time, so while we may not be growing local bananas, we are growing a wide variety of fruits and vegetables and have a number of vibrant markets providing a diversity of locally-grown products year-round.”

—Mayor Bev Buckway, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

“Of course. Not only will they be available from around the world, but having completed our Community Energy project in 2017 (drawing geothermal heat from a long-abandoned mine and supplementing it with biomass boilers from a newly established local wood pellet industry) locally produced bananas will be available from the recently established farms and orchards underground at another local abandoned mine*. The community, by 2030, will benefit immensely from the new community garden focusing on efforts toward sustaining our 100-mile diet opportunity.”

—Mayor Gordon Van Tighem, Yellowknife, Northwest Territory

*Mayor Van Tighem notes that the idea of a subterranean garden is, at this stage, purely an interesting concept in Yellowknife, but at least one is in operation in Tokyo, Japan.

Will the city’s children have tree-forts?

“I believe they will. The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) is so committed to the environment that we plant several thousand trees each year in our own right. As well, we require developers of subdivisions to deed green spaces over for public use and to plant at least one tree per new lot. And it doesn’t end there. We are preparing an Urban Forest Master Plan, which will be a blueprint for the conservation and promotion of a healthy urban forest on both public and private land in (HRM). We pride ourselves on being among the greenest communities in Canada and, somewhere in all that greenery, I’m confident you will always find youngsters busy playing.”

—Mayor Peter Kelley, Halifax, Nova Scotia

What will be the best way to get around the city?

“In 20 years, my hope is that we have an efficient, sustainable transportation network that combines excellent transit, safe cycling and pedestrian routes, and zero-emission cars and trucks. Our 2020 goal is to exceed 50 per cent of commutes by walk/bike/transit and we’re on track. We need ongoing investment in all green options: rapid transit, buses, separated bike lanes, pedestrian corridors, and electric vehicle infrastructure.”

—Mayor Gregor Robertson, Vancouver, British Columbia

“Public transit will play a vital role in Calgary 20 years from now. Better transit is the answer to much of what ails the modern city including issues of pollution, congestion, and a lack of social inclusion.”

—Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Calgary, Alberta

“The year 2030 will no doubt call for significant change from current and past practices in terms of existing transportation habits such as the role of private cars. There will also be changes in design of our landscapes and transportation funding. In 20 years the fastest way to travel around our city will be a combination of existing and improved infrastructure that promotes inter-modal connections in Charlottetown and our neighboring municipalities.”

—Mayor Clifford Lee, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

The post The city’s gone bananas appeared first on Corporate Knights.

CK: How is Canada’s energy potential unique?

DOER: We start with so many natural advantages in energy. In terms of renewable energy— something that doesn’t get a lot of attention— we have one of the highest percentages of electricity produced. That’s something I think we take for granted. We’re close to 70 per cent renewable energy for electricity production and if you compare that to most other countries, including the U.S., we’re way beyond them. The public wants clean air and clean water, and by having renewable energy in such abundance, particularly hydropower, it’s a tremendous advantage for the country.

And then, of course, we have all the natural resources for traditional fossil fuels. Most Americans believe that the majority of oil that’s exported to the U.S. comes from Saudi Arabia. That’s not true: it’s from Canada. We’re also the largest exporter of natural gas.

CK: Accepting that there aren’t any silver bullets, what is one thing the federal government can do to help Canada deliver on its energy potential?

DOER: The decision the [federal] government made to implement new coal regulations provides a tremendous opportunity for Canadian energy providers, particularly in renewable energy. The fact that in 10 to 15 years there will probably be only two coal plants left in Canada—both of which have come on stream recently, and old coal plants will not be refurbished, but replaced—provides a tremendous opportunity for natural gas which emits 50 per cent less than coal, provides a tremendous opportunity for hydro, a debate on the opportunity for nuclear, and, of course, a complimentary energy source for wind. I believe coal-fired plants are the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), which I think represents 17 to 19 per cent. [This decision] gives opportunity for more renewable energy policy in Canada.

CK: What is your vision on the development of a Canadian east-west grid?

DOER: When I was Premier I promoted the idea of an east-west grid. It remains to be seen whether that will happen. I never thought it would happen as a grand grid, but rather as pieces that would be put together to allow for greater energy integration east and west as well as north and south. And, since I made that speech in Toronto in 2006, there have been some modest improvements on east-west transmission—particularly when you look at the sale from Hydro-Québec to Ontario. There are negotiations going on in Western Canada. Those are long-term negotiations, but these decisions are longterm capital investments. Any time you connect or sell east and west I think it’s good for the country and it’s good for meeting our renewable energy targets.

CK: And how would an east-west grid fit into the coming U.S. energy crunch?

DOER: The U.S. and Canada have similar challenges in terms of the regulatory approval of transmission lines. And we just got a new line approved from Quebec through New Hampshire. Part of what we need is much more appreciation of hydropower here in the U.S. as renewable energy. But what’s absent in Washington (hydropower) is starting to be considered in [other] states which I think is useful for a) supplying energy, b) our capability in Canada to produce it, and c) every time you displace coal in either one of our countries you clean up the air in both.

CK: What is standing in the way of such a development becoming reality?

DOER: Getting predictability about coal. You can’t have an east-west grid without having customers, and the decision on coal can lead to more discussion on where the coal is going to be replaced and with what. A federal act on clean air and [regulating] coal will provide greater incentives, I think, for connections both east and west.

The post Gridlocked appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Over 300,000 citizens over the age of 65 call the City of Toronto home. Five per cent of these seniors live in collective dwellings, including nursing, or long-term care homes—a demographic many of us will someday occupy.

Like their city of choice, these seniors are multicultural. A 2006 City of Toronto Roundtable on Seniors report found that in 2001, two out of three were immigrants, predominantly from Europe, China, and South Asia.

But a sampling of menus from ten downtown homes revealed predominantly western-centric menus. Chicken, pork, beef, or fish paired with beans, potatoes, or creamed corn might meet the nutrition requirements, but they lack cultural diversity. With a provincial budget of $7.00 for three meals per person per day, it’s no wonder the menus aren’t exactly mosaics of choice.

Below are some photos of food prepared in various Toronto long-term care facilities. For the purposes of the article, it was clear that the kitchens brought their “A” game. These meals might be straight from the menu, but their presentation doesn’t necessarily reflect the day-to-day reality. Given more time, funding, and staff, mealtime at the nursing home could look like this every day.

This meal, or some variation, is among the most prevalent meals served across the board in long term care facilities. This comes from a home in Toronto with a large Portuguese population.

A strong staple of nursing homes, the European “meat and potatoes” food group dominates the daily dinner menu.

This particular meal was crafted by Corporate Knights based on daily menus. Oats tend to saturate the breakfast fare across the board – of course you can always substitute them for an enticing portion of cream of wheat. Bacon and eggs are generally given as an option once a week.

The above three selected meals are from a long-term care facility in Chinatown. Reflecting the Chinese majority, this particular home serves traditional Chinese fare for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This selection was a part of Kensington Gardens Nursing Home’s signature program “Passport Week” where staff and residents sample foods from around the globe, including Ecuador, Japan, Russia, China and Austria. The meal pictured above was the featured item on Ecuador Day. One woman asked, “Why isn’t this on the menu for the whole year?” An excellent question.

The post Food for thought appeared first on Corporate Knights.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, arable land on Earth will diminish by 30 to 50 per cent over the next century. That’s a lot when you consider that a mere 11 percent of total land area is arable. Even more daunting when pitted against a global population that is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050.

This year in Saskatchewan, a corporation called One Earth Farms emerged with plans to lease upwards of one million acres of First Nations’ land for agricultural use. If successful, it will become the largest farm on the continent, and potentially the world, giving First Nations communities a definitive role in the management of one of our planet’s largest swaths of arable land.

Globally, the increasing scarcity of arable land has prompted companies from China, South Korea, and many of the OPEC nations to buy up land in breadbasket regions of Africa and Southeast Asia to secure a financial future in food. These acquisitions have often been accompanied by conflict. In Madagascar, for example, Daewoo’s negotiations for 1.3 million hectares of palm oil plantations reportedly fueled political conflicts that led to the overthrow of the government in March of 2009.

Unlike many foreign investors in large-scale agriculture projects in the developing world, One Earth has set up an inclusive board of directors with strong First Nations representation in management. In addition, it offers company equity to landowners involved in the project. For many, One Earth Farms marks the First Nations community’s reclamation of agricultural land in North America. For others, it is viewed as another step in the corporatization of Canadian farmland.

Soil tycoons

In the spring of 2009, Eric Sprott, billionaire, financier, and CEO of Sprott Inc., shifted his investments into agriculture. Sprott Resource Corporation, headed by Sprott’s protégé Kevin Bambrough, is the sole financial backer of One Earth Farms and has invested $27.5 million in the company. I sat down with Bambrough at the Sprott headquarters to talk about the project. For Bambrough, wealth preservation is only achievable through investment in resources.

“We are coming into a time in history where paper money is at an incredible risk of being devalued,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “You have to forget about the novel value of things, and you have to start looking at the relationship that real things have to each other.”

Appropriately, our conversation is taking place in Sprott’s “Money Room”, where framed paper money – including a Zimbabwean 100 trillion dollar bill – adorns the walls, and a coffee table full of antique coins supports our glasses of sparkling water. In here, money serves a purely decorative purpose.

Resource investments have driven the economic success of Sprott Resource Corp., which reported net profit of $134.2 million in fiscal 2008. In the past, Sprott has focused on energy and mineral resources, investing in Waseca Energy, PBS Coals, and Stonegate Agricom.

Bambrough’s quest for resources led him to Blaine Favel, an MBA graduate of Harvard’s School of Business, and former Grand Chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN). Favel was intent on creating a responsible business model for resource development on First Nations land that would include First Nations stakeholders every step of the way.

“I tried to design a company, with the strong support of Sprott Corporation, that would be respectful of Indian people,” Favel says. “The whole mandate was designed on improving their quality of life over the long term.”

Favel came up with the idea to start One Earth Resources, an investment company that would look specifically at resource development and capacity building in First Nations communities across Canada. He took the idea to Dale Awasis, Chief of the Thunderchild First Nation in Turtleford, Saskatchewan, who agreed to discuss a joint venture with Bambrough.

“We had a really good meeting with Kevin, who gave the directive to Blaine to come up with the ultimate deal for First Nations people,” Awasis recalls. “Basically, they were trying to cut out the middleman in negotiations with these investment companies, so I was sold on it right away.”

Bambrough and Favel went out to assess various reserves’ resource value, expecting to find opportunities in potash, or maybe oil and gas. Instead, they found an abundance of land that had been historically undervalued and environmentally degraded.

Seeing an opportunity where they could feasibly acquire the land and restore it to health while employing First Nations people, they decided to start One Earth Farms.

Landing a deal

Most opposition to the project has come from non-native farmers who had been leasing the land from First Nations landowners before One Earth came into the picture. Darrin Qualman, of the National Farmer’s Union, is against a corporate entity like One Earth moving in on the family-farm model that he feels defines Canadian agriculture.

In this case, the company is offering First Nations landowners more money to farm on their land and providing them the opportunity to work for the company. For Favel, it is a significant improvement from the system that was previously in place.

“In some cases, the communities were being paid only a third of the market prices. Typically, the leases were on one year terms, so the farmer had no incentive to put a lot of nutrients back into the soil,” Favel explains. “The First Nations land was basically being mined for its resource, for its yields. It was an extractive and exploitive process.”

One Earth Farms has proposed a project that would allow First Nations communities to collectively lease their land over five- to ten-year terms at fair market value. In addition, the company offers stock equity as a bonus and is developing training and education programs to further Aboriginal careers in business and agriculture. To ensure that the land is healthy and viable over the long term, the company has committed to self-declared sustainable farming methods and is hiring third-party agronomists to produce annual reports on the environmental health of the land.

The model proposed by One Earth Farms is not only unique in the sheer size of the potential land it could unlock, but also in its mandate for sustainability, and the inclusive nature of the board. Favel is Chairman of the board, and Garan Rewerts of the Poundmaker First Nation is the company’s Farm Director.

Clint Davis, President of the Canadian Council of Aboriginal Business (CCAB), views the project as promising in this regard.

“We’re talking about a partnership where First Nations people are utilizing their own land as a significant asset for economic benefit in a sustainable and responsible way,” he says. “The fact that Aboriginal people are equity owners and are integrated in the operation is significant.”

Responsibly farming one million acres of First Nations land in an environmentally sustainable manner is a tall order for any company. And for One Earth Farms to be successful, any commitment to sustainability will have to consider both the social and environmental implications of running what could become the world’s largest farm.

Value-added agriculture

Chief Awasis sees One Earth Farms as a prime opportunity to utilize Thunderchild’s 120 thousand acres of reserve-status land for the band’s long term economic gain.

“We have the land, but it is the capacity that we are lacking,” he stresses. “We entered into a deal where they bring the investment dollars for building agricultural capacity, and eventually…we would manage and maintain our own lands.”

For Chief Clarence Bellegarde of the Little Black Bear First Nation in Goodeve, Saskatchewan, the appeal of One Earth Farms lies in the company’s training program – a viable solution to the community’s unemployment problem.

“It’s not just offering jobs like stone picking, or bale picking,” Bellegarde says. “There are opportunities for financial and administrative training, even management. This partnership would allow our people to fit into the corporate structure.”

Set to launch in 2010, through the University of Saskatchewan and other local institutions, One Earth Farms’ training and education programs are designed for “career progression”, according to the company’s CEO and President, Larry Ruud.

Job creation and capacity building have been promised to First Nations communities in the past, but many partners often come up short in their ability to create lasting wealth, training for niche jobs that are term limited and location-dependent, according to Chris Henderson., Executive Director of the Delphi Group and President of Lumos Energy.

“In order to have an enduring impact, you have to look at the full range of Aboriginal involvement in terms of services provision in the enterprise,” he says. “Management positions are key. That’s how you create real portability of an asset.”

Bambrough seems sincere in his commitment to the social mobility embedded in One Earth Farms’ corporate structure. “We all have a goal here of being replaced,” he says. “My greatest pride in this project will be the day I retire and am replaced by a First Nations person who has come up through the system.”

It is one thing to develop the programs, and another to attract people to them, notes Clint Davis.

“Simply because these programs exist doesn’t mean there [will be] huge waves of Aboriginal youth clamoring for the opportunity,” he says. “There has to be good marketing and outreach to the young people in these communities to ensure that agriculture is a viable industry and a viable career opportunity for them.”

In many ways, over the last few decades, agriculture has proven to be a hard sell to Canada’s youth. Glen Snoek, a Senior Policy Advisor with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, sees One Earth Farms as a welcome addition to a population of farmers with an average age of 53. “There is no one left to farm the land,” he says.

Blaine Favel believes that First Nations communities will take up the challenge. “This is the only business where the Indian people can start a company and be the biggest in the world, and that has given us a great deal of pride,” he says. “The ability to make food will be a highly valued skill.”

The sustainability of scale

When speaking about corporate farming, questions of environmental sustainability must inevitably enter the discussion. While One Earth Farms has claimed a commitment to sustainability in its mandate, only its practices will determine its sincerity over the long term.

Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn, Professor of Soil Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan, stresses that soil and water conservation methods are of key concern when speaking about sustainability in the prairies. “Here in Saskatchewan, we have large regions of the province that are prone to drought,” she explains, suggesting soil conservation methods like zero tillage, which Larry Ruud says One Earth will use. (Zero tillage leaves the “stubble” of the crop behind after the harvest, trapping moisture and soil nutrients for the following season.)

Despite the good intentions of One Earth’s mandate, operating an agricultural project of such proportions contravenes conventional notions of good environmental practice. Large farming operations risk getting caught up in checks and balances and often lose sight of their sustainable mandates, according to David B. Brooks, Senior Advisor for Fresh Water with Friends of the Earth. “The evidence is rather against it,” he says. “Not that you can’t design it that way, but that almost inevitably management gets caught up in productivity concerns.”

Ruud admits that the balance between commodity farming and ecology is not an easy on to strike. “To make a wholesale shift away from fertilizers or weed and pest control measures is a recipe for economic disaster,” he says. “But incorporating natural fertilizers and multiple species in our pastures [will] help build the economics of the business and the overall health and productivity of the land.”

Stepping up to the plate

With the stage set for arable investments worldwide, and climate change slowly pushing agricultural yields to the poles, Canada stands to play an important part in providing food to the world, with the prairies centre stage. First Nations farmers could become exemplifiers of best practice in a growing sector, if One Earth is successful.

Calvin Helin, author of Dances with Dependency, sees One Earth Farms as a noteworthy step in the right direction. “It is a very exciting time, and I think that Canada needs to do this,” he says. “I think this gives Aboriginal people the opportunity to control their own destiny and their own resources in a way that is consistent with their own environmental and social values.”

For Chief Awasis, the project will define First Nations people as providers in an essential industry. “Before, we didn’t have a face in agriculture, but in elevating ourselves in this industry we will have an impact,” he says. “I think there will be a lot of eyes opened when people start realizing what First Nations people can bring to the table.”

The post Growing capital appeared first on Corporate Knights.