Some of these people are showing up in the National Farmers Union and we are working as a group to learn about and develop alternatives. Certainly survival is the motivator for some. Others are just tired of the pressure of doing it the way the experts say to do it without getting a share of the profits. In Ontario, over the last hundred years, we have had a lot of advice given out by government. This has been followed by universities giving advice on how to produce food.
People pick up that stuff and they try it and get locked into it.
You do it until you start to question it. Calf and mother on the Pe ter Dowling farm on Howe Island, Ontario, Canada. Photo by Nic Paget-Clarke. The NFU is involved with groups internationally, such as the National Family Farm Coalition in the United States, through an organization called Via Campesina - peasant way. It's a group of peasant, small and medium-sized family farmers organized internationally.