Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World: Essays in Honour of Roger C. Hutchinson

9. Beyond “Survival of the Fittest”: Pastoral Resources for Rebuilding Rural Community

BEYOND “SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST” Pastoral Resources for Rebuilding Rural Community As a parish pastor and a theologian, I have struggled to understand and to cope with a painful discrepancy in rural Canada. Roger Hutchinson has helped me find the tools to begin this task. Here is the incongruity. On the one hand, rural Canadians long for a vibrant future for their communities. A survey of 7,000 rural Canadians undertaken by the federal government in 1997 and a series of eighty-seven rural community round table discussions held in Manitoba in the 1990s yielded a common vision. Participants said they hoped for self-sustaining communities with ample opportunities for employment; public recognition of the value of rural Canada to the identity and well-being of the nation; the opportunity to make informed decisions about their own future; improvements in the quality of life; access to health care and education at a reasonable cost; communities rich in culture and supporting family living; services and employment to retain and attract people; and educational opportunities and community services to sustain steady growth.1 On the other hand, this vision of a lively rural community seems far off the path of present demographic trends. Except for urban hinterlands , the rural population has been declining steadily for decades. The absolute number of people living on farms in 1996 was one quarter of Notes to chapter 9 are on pp. 195-202. 167 9 CAMERON R. HARDER what it had been in 1931. The percentage of Canadians living on farms had dropped during that period from 32 percent to less than 3 percent.2 This population decline was accompanied by a savage dismantling of the rural institutions that sustain healthy human life. Churches, schools, grain elevators, hospitals, recreational facilities, hotels, agribusinesses, stores, post offices, even coffee shops closed down or were forced to move into larger centres. What makes it so difficult for most rural communities to implement the vision described above? In Something’s Wrong Somewhere: Globalization, Community and the Moral Economy of the Farm Crisis, Christopher Lind exposes the process by which globalization of agricultural markets and agribusiness rips decision-making power from the hands of local communities. That loss of self-determination is largely reflected, he says, in the dismantling of the rural institutions that have provided a structure for communal conversation and processes for common action. It takes a community to implement a vision. Community, in Lind’s eyes, is defined by relationships of trust, interdependence , caring and commitment. However, the agricultural practices and structures that have developed in Canada over the last century have fostered competitiveness, domination and indifference.3 They reflect an ideology that I will refer to as “survival of the fittest.” The deep fissures it has created are obvious. Growing farms swallow struggling neighbours in order to expand their own operations. Farmers who could profitably cooperate in their operations cannot find the courage to open their books to each other. Small hog farmers and acreage owners protest the development of mammoth hog facilities, while others welcome the promise of jobs.4 Town businesses struggle under the weight of unpaid farm debts, while farmers resent the rising prices for inputs charged by local dealers. Organic farmers battle neighbours whose chemicals or genetically modified seeds drift onto their fields. Members of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers battle for a freer market with members of the National Farmers Union, who support the Canadian Wheat Board’s marketing monopoly. Non-Natives resent Natives who have purchased farmland through the settlement of Aboriginal treaties and then taken the land out of production. In other words, it is not enough that many individuals share broad values about community revitalization. Rural communities need a place, a process and a philosophy, which will support the rebuilding of Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World 168 trust, clear analysis of rural problems and construction of effective plans for action. As far as place is concerned, the church is one of the few institutions remaining in many rural towns that has a mandate for building community. Rural congregations are uniquely positioned to foster the relations of trust and the depth of conversation necessary to help a community grapple effectively with its future. This essay is an effort to offer some assistance. It leads the reader into an analysis and theological challenge of the survival of the fittest philosophy which supports divisiveness; in so doing, it also...