EKOS Communications, Inc.

Urban sprawl is destroying our farmlands. More and more of what we eat comes from distant places such as Mexico and California - destinations we plan to visit on this trip. But there are alternative initiatives, bucking the trend and growing a little colour in the urban jungle. The first day of our trip, and we are riding from Vancouver out to the Tswassen Ferry, then over to Victoria to stay with friends. A warm sunny day - Mount Baker gleams brightly as the North Shore mountains recede in the haze. We pedalled on through Vancouver and down into Richmond, past maple and cherry trees turning yellow and brown in the Autumn day. It felt auspicious to be launching on a bike tour with a sustainability theme. Gas is pushing $1.20 a litre and hurricane Rita (climate-change induced?) set to batter the US gulf coast. What better time for a self-propelled adventure! Richmond, like New Orleans, is largely below sea level. It is dyked all around, with pumps operating night and day to keep the water table low enough. Once, this was some of the richest farmland in Canada, but today it is a gray sprawling mess of malls, tract housing, and wide fast drag-racing streets. While cycling, my mind tends to fixate on food. Constant activity all day long requires major calories; one of the great joys of bicycle touring is the huge meals and frequent snacks throughout the day. In another time most of the food we consume could have been grown right here, under these streets we are riding over. These days, however, with suburbs creeping steadily up the Fraser Valley, more and more of it is brought in from far-off California and Mexico. It is phenomenal that this is possible - somehow it is less expensive to transport lettuce and carrots thousands of miles to a distant supermarket than to grow it here at home. The complex answer, I understand, involves "free" trade, cheap energy, and major agricultural subsidies. Well if a competitive advantage doesn't exist, why not create one? There are local bright spots within the global marketplace though. In Vancouver, check out Aphrodite's Cafe on 4th Avenue, where delicious meals are constructed from whatever fresh local produce is available, and cruise past the colourful urban agriculture plots on 6th Avenue in Kitsilano. And in Victoria, our good friends Ian Snyder and Tove Olafson, who, apart from being wonderful hosts, are building a local, sustainable, organic farming operation out of their West Vic home. When it comes to urban sprawl, Victoria is no different from Vancouver. What was once a huge Garry Oak forest is today the laid back island city of Victoria. As a result, Ian has had to decentralize his farm. He rents someone's front yard to grow strawberries; salad greens and tomatoes come from his own backyard, and cattle are kept at yet another location. The produce is collected and delivered to happy restaraunts and consumers around the city. It takes ingenuity and an entrepreneurial spirit to make a living in this business, and Ian is giving it a good shot. But finding arable land and competing with cheap imported goods ain't easy - additional burdens on an already hardworking farmer.