Use SAGE to overcome food shortage locally, city woman says

Converting North Bay’s underground facility into a hydroponics growing operation could help stave off food shortages, city resident Val Chadbourne says.

Chadbourne addressed North Bay city council Monday night “to talk to you about a pending global food shortage and the need to start a plan for a local food supply.”

Near extinction
A “massive” amphibian die-off in one of the area lakes 15 years ago piqued Chadbourne’s curiosity, she told council.

“I was later told by the Natural Resources Ministry that this phenomenon happened on all area lakes and then a year later it was apparent that this was a global event and 200 species of frogs worldwide were wiped out or near extinction from one solar event,” Chadbourne said.

She decided to track the damage from the event up the food chain “and sure enough in the years that followed the ripple effect was felt throughout the chain.”

Global warming
Wanting to help her community, Chadbourne said she tried to bring the matter to the attention of former Premier Mike Harris, Nipissing MP Bob Wood and four city councils “only to be subjected to ridicule and laughter from our paid politicians.”

Chadbourne believes the world entered an era of “rapid, accelerated global warming” as of March 2000, which, she said, has had a drastic affect on world food production.

Four consecutive years of “large scale global agricultural failures” have left food reserves very low, Chadbourne said.

Largest on record
In fact Lester Brown, founder and president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute says the grain shortfall of 105 million tons in 2003 “is easily the largest on record, amounting to 5 percent of annual world consumption of 1,930 million tons.”

Brown said the crop failures have brought carryover stocks of grain to the lowest level in 30 years, “amounting to only 59 days of consumption.”

As a result, Chadbourne said, North Bay needs an agricultural “because the price of food in the very near future will skyrocket leaving us dependent like never before on neighbouring farming communities.”

At high risk
North Bay needs a place to grow food under controlled conditions, Chadbourne told council and suggested SAGE be considered as a hydroponic facility once it’s vacated for the above-ground building now under construction.

“I realize that the mayor has a 2020 vision plan for the future, but any plan that does not consider these realities puts our community at high risk,” Chadbourne said.

If a food shortage does come to pass, Chadbourne said, and if nothing is done about it locally, “people will naturally be looking for someone to blame.”

“Locally this will be you,” Chadbourne said, “because you have been warned time and time again about this.”