November 29 2006 by The Systemic Analyst.

Originally published in The Walsingham Papers

by The Walsingham Institute.

The changing landscape of Canadian agriculture seldom captures the media spotlight. That is, not unless a catastrophe befalls a rural community, farmers block traffic in a city center or a family farmer under siege has friends in high places.

Unfortunately, unless the news story directly touches our lives we are quick to turn our attentions elsewhere when the headlines move on to something else. Seldom asking further questions about what lay behind the issue.In the Michael Schmidt case what is perhaps most interesting is exactly what the media outlets aren’t telling us – if Schmidt’s operation is intolerable what is an acceptable farming operation in Canada?

There have been many changes to agriculture in Canada over the last couple decades – much of it has happened far away from urban eyes and as a result has failed to muster much ire beyond those who have lost livelihoods or live next to these “changes”.The biggest change is the continued move away from small, family run farming operations to large, industrial ones widely referred to as factory farms. Industrial farming poses serious risks to our environment and health – yet it enjoys wide support from government and big business. But just what sorts of risks are we dealing with?

Hundreds and hundreds of animals are raised and confined to large barns – ingesting antibiotics daily. The manure intentionally liquefied can contain among other things ammonia and antibiotic resistant materials. Run off from these barns easily contaminates our watersheds. It only takes the natural waste of a couple of animals to contaminate water sources and food supplies - never mind hundreds of head of livestock.

Consuming the meat produced by factory farms is essentially like taking tiny doses of antibiotics as well as other chemicals with every meal. In an age with super-bugs and viruses - further jeopardizing the effects of antibiotics through over exposure could be disastrous. Many consumers are completely unaware that this is the case – unlike the awareness Schmidt’s customers enjoy.

The continued centralization of food production poses unique problems too. In fact, centralization – whereby foodstuffs are gathered at central plants for processing, packaging and distribution - can actually increase the number of people at risk of eating contaminated foods, spreading distribution of tainted products even farther.

Thinking in terms of emergency preparedness – the direction Canadian agriculture is heading is concerning. It isn’t a matter of if – but when, factory farms contaminate a major watershed in at least one Canadian province – what would be the impact of this on the population? Certainly, far more catastrophic than the tragedy of Walkerton. Is this sort of farming really sustainable? What if a crisis prevents wide distribution of produce – how will cities be fed given that all nearby farmland has long been absorbed into suburbia?

Unfortunately, as long as the food continues to arrive in supermarkets and corner stores – few ask about the long and short term effects such changes to our agricultural system have on the environment, on us and our state of security.

Clearly, we have more serious issues than raw milk.

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November 27 2006 by The Systemic Analyst.

Based on a presentation made at the annual CACR Conference and published as is here originally in The Walsingham Papers by The Walsingham Institute.

The entire world around is essentially a matter of how we view it. Our perspective is only a series of lenses – the filters of education, of culture, of religion, of sex, of language – that all color our outlook of the outside world and our reality.

These same lenses and perspectives color not just our view of the world but also of ourselves – and in essence our identity. If identity is so vulnerable to circumstances – is it really a viable base for security measures?Let’s take the concept of identity - Identity is itself a very fluid concept. We create it and feed it by our affirmations and the reflections of other people.

When existence was only about survival – getting though the day with enough food, water, finding shelter, identity was most likely not paramount. Even in Elizabethan times children were dressed the same until at least the age of 5 when they had survived the most precarious period of infancy in order to minamalize the sense of loss of an individual – they were in essence merely a child or being, and not yet a person.

The more leisure time was gained and movement away from subsistence living, identity became a much larger issue. Indeed – with increased travel after the industrial revolution– people started to pick up and migrate. Our communities began to form, reform and fragment. We live in a transient world. This not necessarily negative but it does mean we have altered the notion of how we construct our identity. This feeds our need to identify people – that urge to pinpoint people, to label and identify and categorize.

Before this – when minimal travel had occurred – it was sufficient to identify individuals based on what someone else we knew could verify about the person in question.But what is identity now? Identity is really only a set of attributes – our hair color, eye color, height, profession, ethnicity, mother tongue, gender, education etc. – they are a set of constructs and lenses. And easily fabricated – anyone can invent a good degree of these attributes to generate a persona or identity. We can even go so far as to alter physical attributes with plastic surgery – making identity not an entirely permanent standard for authentication.

We also make the mistake of presuming that our western lenses are the same as other cultures - we think Africa views identity as we do – we think that Asia views identity as we do. We are under the illusion that all other societies view identity as being on par with our interpretation of identity. An interesting example can be found in Nigeria. Facial scarring became a prevalent way to identify a member of a particular tribe or community. The purpose of the facial disfigurement was to offer a tangible way to prove where someone came from in the event of death in battle or if someone was taken as a slave.And with our 20th century and beyond lenses we turn to identity, this fragile concept, as some sort of tangible method to build security systems and initiatives around.

Sometimes, this isn’t necessarily a bad way to go about things. Indeed, identity management systems in a corporate environment are a helpful tool in increasing security. They allow firms and organizations to track who has access to what information and resources at what time – in this example the individuals in question are already somewhat identifiable and tangible, or at least we hope so if they were working for a company.

But we tend to believe that in tying security to something what we consider to be so personal or private – such as identity – that we can keep people safe from what they really fear – themselves and each other. After all, identity management systems have only been created to do just that – not to protect us from outside intruders, but other humans.

That’s just the problem – we want so badly to rely on technology to answer our problems. If technology could just take the burden off of us – then we would no longer have to assess whether a person really was of the character they claim to be.

The real issue we face is ourselves – it’s our nature. And all of the best technological security systems will continue to prove it as humans (and likewise government and corporate systems) fall victim to human nature. The best attacks and scams have prayed on greed, laziness – endemics of our species, regardless of lenses.

Until we begin to address the root issues – the causes that have led to the increase in crime and terror or the reasons why humans are so susceptible to resorting to such acts – and begin to develop tangible measures to change humankind’s current course no amount of technology should be expected to save us. Indeed, we might first consider changing our perspective to see technology as a tool to protect us from ourselves.

Clearly we need to think in depth about the measures we often come to rely upon – and ultimately are disappointed by when they fail. It is paramount that we consider measures from many different perspectives – understanding as much as possible the lenses that we looked through when conceiving every measure we consider implementing to protect our society, understanding at every point the human element that touches everything we create and embark upon.

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