Video - Food for Thought

The importance of our working landscapes and the ecological goods and services they provide must be understood.

        The Land is Everything.

        Once it is gone, it is gone forever.

The Board of Directors saw a need to provide land use decision makers (land planners and municipal councillors) with a better understanding of the value of our Natural Capital before the rest of these assets are lost from production or simply paved over.

Municipal Councillors, in particular, must shift to protecting our Natural Capital and agricultural lands, and away from development everywhere.

The Board of Directors believe that for too long we have been of the opinion that there were only two kinds of capital for development, financial and human, the latter being knowledge skills, creativity and education.

We have been living with the illusion that our environment, Natural Capital, comes free of charge. Our population increase places ever more demands for goods and services from our ecosystems and today we are near the tipping point of overspending those services.

This study can be applied to any watershed in Alberta.

We believe the next step is to establish a framework through which revenue streams could be utilized to encourage land owners to rebuild and maintain our Natural Capital.

Alberta’s sustainable future is dependent on conserving our Natural Capital.

In June 2010, Action for Agriculture (http://www.actionforagriculture.com) undertook a cumulative effects study with the help of the Alces Group (http://www.alces.ca) to understand the economic value of ecosystem services in the Upper Bow River Basin in southwestern Alberta. 

On October 1, 2012 Action for Agriculture brought together ten farmers and ranchers from across southern Alberta to hear the results of the study and to discuss what they mean to our businesses, our industry and society. 

This video was produced with the support of the Bow River Basin Council - http://www.brbc.ab.ca/

Some data used in this study was provided by the Alberta Land Institute - http://www.albertalandinstitute.ca/

For more information visit http://www.actionforagriculture.com and http://www.alces.ca

The video can be downloaded here in mp4 format.