The following excerpt is from an article written by Ian Moul and published in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of the Watershed Sentinel

Recently, on the radio, someone from the University of Victoria reported that Vancouver Island produces less than five percent of the food needed to support its population. In the Comox Valley we may be slightly better, but not much. We know that our electricity and natural gas and fuel for cars is shipped in from hundreds of miles away. We know that every day, dozens of truckloads of food arrive from all over the world. We know that more people are arriving every day.

The difference between the way we live today and how we lived within the carrying capacity of our natural landscape is a matter of decisions. Within this community over the past fifty years we have made perhaps a million decisions, some large some small, on how we treat the landscape. We have built stores and houses on farmland. We have mined resources and released toxins that threatened the salmon in whole river systems. We have attempted to grow more food by adding chemicals to the soil. Most of these decisions were made in innocence and for good intent, some were made for greed and self-gain. With the gift of hindsight we can look back on our choices and understand the costs.

Complete article HERE.