The symposium happened in the context of the first BC Agriculture and Food Co-op Conference & Trade Show, which gathered farmers, researchers, and co-op representatives at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, on Secwépemc ****territory.
The conference opened with a welcome from Uncle Mike Arnouse, a prominent Secwépemc ****elder, who began his comments by speaking in Secwépemctsin, and then transitioned to English as he explained the damage done to his nation’s environment since colonization, especially the pollution of the Thompson rivers. Chris Bodnar, a co-operative farmer from Abbotsford, introduced himself as master of ceremonies and added further historical context - he spoke about the early successes of Indigenous farmers, until the Canadian government imposed the 1887 Peasant Farming Act and drastically limited the size of their farms, the crops they were allowed to grow, and the technologies they were allowed to employ.
“Indigenous farmers were to reduce their acreages dramatically and to grow root crops, not wheat. They were to use the most rudimentary implements: to broadcast seed by hand, harvest with scythes, bind by hand with straw, thresh with flails, and grind their grain with hand mills. They were to manufacture at home any items they required.” (
Over a century later, the people who farm the land are still struggling over similar foundational issues but this time in an era where data is the tool and access to that tool can mean the difference between a viable farm and one that is not, between practices that help steward the natural environment and those that erode its capacity, and between sustainable use of water resources and those that dry up river beds, empty aquifers, and leave the land parched.
Big Data in Ag Symposium Retrospective