Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - July/84

Contributor - Elbert Donkersgoed

Title - The Land Cannot Speak for Itself

Topic - Environment

I cannot keep up with the numerous volumes being produced to document that a part of God's creation is in deep trouble. Our modem, technological society is not a steward of our food land. The volumes come from municipal governments, provincial governments and increasingly from national governments and international agencies.

Sometimes the information is startling. A review of agricultural trends in one Canadian regional municipality shocked me recently with the information that owner-operated foodland had dropped from 85 % in 1966 to 47% just ten years later in 1976. Farmers are fast losing control over food land in Canada- The leases are invariably short-term, resulting in fanning practices that deplete and abuse soils.

Sometimes the reports provide a good analysis of the changes taking place around us. The province of Ontario, tor example, has documented the growing dependence of our agriculture on nonrenewable energy. Free energy from the sun is no longer enough to meet our production targets.

Sometimes the focus is on dollars and cents. A report on erosion in Ontario states that water and wind damage to food land costs us $68 million per year.

Sometimes the data is beyond the grasp of our immediate understanding. The World Watch Institute, in its study on the loss of crop land has concluded that the world's expanding cities will cover another 25 million hectares of crop land between now and the end of the century. That's almost as much as all the crop land in Canada.

This vast quantity of information on our pattern of food land abuse is available to everyone. But the pattern does not appear to be changing.

In the province of Ontario, which encompasses over half of Canada's best farmland, our high quality, energy-efficient soils are falling prey to urban growth Some 85% of our urban development is consistently taking place on food land even though food land, precious commodity that it is, makes up only a little more than I 0% of our land base. About 35% of urban development is taking place on land which is rated Class One Agricultural despite the sobering knowledge that Class One land occupies a paltry 2% of our total land base!

Why? When the information is so overwhelming, why do we not change!

The land cannot speak for itself.

The rush and flashing change of our technological society pays no attention to the stack of information about our deteriorating and disappearing food land. Right at this moment we in Canada have an abundance of food. We can ignore the long-term destruction taking place around us without causing hunger for ourselves. And we do. We concern ourselves only with the here and now. We have our eyes on ourselves rather than on the creation of which God has made us stewards.

Here lies a major task for all Christians who recognize our environment as a gift from God and who accept stewardship as a sacred calling.

We need to speak for the land.

We need to give voice to the land. We, as the keepers of creation, must learn to be its voice:

- to resist the speculating grasp of urban development

- to educate those farmers who do not recognize the tons of topsoil being swept down our streams; and

- to prod our governments to provide long term leases so that farmers can again gam control over food land

I see about me a society unwilling to accept any restrictions on its immediate self-fulfilment - on its need for instantaneous gratification. We dare to be a law unto ourselves and care only for our environment when it is convenient We live as if growth in our opportunities to consume were a divine right.

The people of Israel too, though that the care of the land could be ignored. They received a very specific mandate in Moses' day for the stewardship of their patrimony-

"But the seventh year is to be a year of complete rest for the land, a year dedicated to the Lord. Do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not even harvest the grain that grows by itself without being planted, and do not gather the grapes from your unpruned vines: it is a year of complete rest for the land." Lev. 25:4, 5

For the most part the Israelites thought it didn't matter. They too adopted lifestyles that focussed on self and immediate needs. But a day of judgement came. Jerusalem was razed and its people were enslaved:

"And so what the Lord had foretold through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled. 'The land will lie desolate for seventy years, to makeup for the Sabbath rest that has not been observed." II Chron. 36:21

The land does not speak for itself in this society's headlong rush for self-gratification. The land will let us flush it into our streams and lakes, destroy its natural fertility or bury it under concrete and asphalt - until it is too late.

Christians in Canada must learn to speak for it now or the land will one day need to take a 70-year rest from us as well.

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