Oil, climate change threaten food supply: B.C. report

[jpak]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=ab7a0613-7ca4-4104-896e-5f31a2eda914&k=91721

Climate change and rising oil prices are a threat to B.C.'s ability to feed itself in the future, scientists and planners say.

B.C. farmers produce only 48 per cent of the meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables that we consume, according to a report prepared by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture. The report, titled B.C.'s Food Self-Reliance, says that the area of farmland with access to irrigation in B.C. would have to increase by nearly 50 per cent by 2025 to provide a healthy diet for all British Columbians.

Maintaining our current level of food self-reliance in 2025 would require a 30-per-cent increase in agricultural production, the report says.

The total amount of land being farmed in B.C. has gone up by less than one per cent since 1986, according to census data. In the Greater Vancouver Regional District, only 223 hectares of farmland came under irrigation between 1996 and 2001, for a total of 6,375 hectares.

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[jilln]

1. Or, people could go vegetarian and we'd already be sustainable.