Writer and committed citizen, the author is president of the governing board of an elementary school. She taught literature at college, is a member of the editorial board of Quebec letters and co-directed the collaborative trial Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
“There are 60 years of arable land left. This affirmation, which opens the luminous film Humus by Carole Poliquin, strikes right in the plexus — like the rest. Changing current agricultural practices is necessary to ensure our survival… Without Mother Earth, which is still too often mistreated with synthetic pesticides and monocultures, we are nothing. It is the conclusion that inhabits us at the end of the viewing. However, “the more I take care of nature, the more it costs me”, confides to the camera François D’Aoust, protagonist and co-owner of the farm Les bontés de la Vallée. Houston (and New Dehli and Canberra and Chicoutimi), don’t we have a problem?
I live in the city, I struggle to keep my plants alive (I’m working on that). I subscribed to the organic basket of a family farmer for a long time, but with two children and the obligations that come with it, I once got tired of drowning in pattypan squash. Yes, I would have to rode, marinate, redistribute my overflows, channel my inner Stefano, and perform seasonal chores in the tent, with a big boiler and a few friends. Most often, I therefore fall back on the local fruit shop, which gets its supplies (at least!) from Quebec farms in season.
Rarely has a documentary transported me so much — and struck me. Because through his images magnifying a living land of great beauty are sown facts that bring out, like a crocus in spring, an inescapable evidence. Impossible to look away from it: agriculture is political. Despite the less militant angle than expected, according to the filmmaker, this is what strikes us in the face when François D’Aoust and Mélina Plante confide in having revised their cultivation model to “leave more to the earth than what we takes”, reaping in a few words the great principle of capitalism and its modes of reproduction based on the domination of nature, infinite growth, ever greater yield.
One could even say that of “wild” capitalism, only the “wild” aspect interests the couple: they struggle to rewild the earth, little by little, so that all the players in this complex ecosystem can play their role. Mycobacteria, insects, green manure, trees, birds, stream, beaver: some of the keys to a living earth, rich in organic matter that sequesters carbon emissions and which, if increased by four per thousand per year, would allow us to reach the carbon neutrality put forward by the IPCC by 2050. The wish of these workers practicing regenerative agriculture? Create a grassroots movement that spreads among the population; so many roots that become rhizomes, seek the sun, flower and nourish. But (and the question has constantly arisen in my mind) is this possible if politics does not water these noble roots?
Without politics, which promotes this model and educates the population, which renders obsolete the system which means that we send our shellfish to the end of the world to import, here, shrimp contaminated with heavy metals raised in Asia, which subsidizes artisanal producers at the height of the important mission that they embrace, without all this (and more), will we have other choices than to tell our children, as François D’Aoust puts it between laughter, tears and absurdity: “Sorry for the climate, it was not profitable”?
In early May, the Resilience Manifesto was also launched. Initiative of the Cooperative for Ecological Local Agriculture and the Network of Family Farmers (which once provided me with patissons), it highlights what local agricultural initiatives on a human scale bring to our communities. and our savings. As Humus, it calls for expansion. “But to support the multiplication of these initiatives, you also need real government participation, a real agri-food revolution,” emphasizes Équiterre.
Some longstanding claims of artisanal farmers have recently been heard. Dominic Lamontagne, author of the book The impossible farm and which campaigns to save small farms, welcomes in particular the MAPAQ pilot project which aims to allow the use of raw milk produced by a farm in the preparation of cooked products, sold on site or in the public market.
But are such steps enough? What kind of message do we send to small producers when the Ministry of Agriculture gives 3 million to PepsiCo, the world’s second largest food group, for the establishment of a Frito-Lays factory in the name of food autonomy? ? At a time when, in the midst of the climate crisis, Quebec is choosing to tear itself apart over language issues, could we not draw inspiration from farmers, who work hand in hand with seasonal workers from elsewhere, who are essential to our crops?
On the website of the Institut jardinier-maraicher, of Jean-Martin Fortier and Suleyka Montpetit, we are greeted as follows: “Create a future where humans live in harmony with nature and with each other. For many, the link with the earth and with humans appears to be a more promising social project than the other link, the third, which will induce traffic while ravaging ecosystems… As citizens, let’s cultivate our curiosity for agricultural things and regenerative approaches, let’s re-subscribe to an organic basket, grow in containers on our balconies (even if our first attempts end in failure).
It’s up to us to think about the kind of society we want, to bring to order those who openly embrace wild capitalism and climate denial. The late Zapartists used to say: “The problem is not the eco-anxious. The problem is that there aren’t enough. Together, let’s do what is necessary, politically and individually, so that we don’t have to say to our children: “Sorry for the climate, it was not profitable”.