A Thought-Provoking Letter From Better Farming (March 2001)

Those urban "double standards"

    A somewhat belated response to your excellent article on the "Sewage Double Standard" (Better Farming, August/September 2000). I feel that "we ain't seen nothing yet." I believe that with all the land and diverse agriculture which we have today, the government regulators are rubbing their hands and are just itching to get a greater part of the regulatory action to try and make us into a pristine environment to offset their failures in the urban settings.
    Your article dealt mainly with sewer overflows, but I have other concerns and questions regarding "double standards."
    What is the difference between the water quality of urban storm runoff versus agricultural storm runoff?
    Why are grassed buffer strips recommended in agricultural areas to filter this runoff, yet in the urban centres all that is done is to paint a little yellow fish on the pavement at the entrance to a storm sewer?
    Why do certain groups promote the watercourse buffer strip for wildlife habitat? Since when has wildlife manure been safer that livestock manure?
    Why is it unacceptable for livestock to enter a watercourse, yet last summer our provincial government's environmental TV ads, titled "Living Legacy," showed deer and moose in the same position. Why is the government not required to use the same animal unit standards as agriculture to control wildlife?
    With all of the concern for food safety, why is it still very acceptable to have wildlife share our crops, which are grown for human consumption?
    Since governments zone certain rural lands to protect wildlife, which then forage on our crops at the farmer's expense, why then are urban homeowners not required to provide food and shelter, at their own expense, for the homeless from city streets?
    Our road authorities spread tonnes of salt per kilometre on our roadways. What industry would be permitted to use such an environmentally damaging substance with no regulations or legal repercussions?
    The list could go on!
Helmut Rempel
Driftway Farms
Port Robinson