Fruits and vegetables fresh from the farmer鈥檚 field are a delicious part of life in Greater Victoria. Picking up tomatoes or carrots from a roadside stand on the Saanich Peninsula or the Westshore adds to the pleasure of an excursion into the countryside.
We would all lose something valuable if those stands disappear because a few people are picking up without paying.
Central Saanich farmer Jack Mar shut down his roadside stand after a series of thefts. He put out rhubarb, kale, swiss chard and other produce, relying on customers to drop their payment into a box.
But half a dozen thefts since January have wiped out his belief in the honour system. Other Central Saanich farmers tell the same tale: vegetables gone or cash boxes broken open and looted.
鈥淓ventually, you just get tired of it,鈥� said farmer Kirk Mitchelmore, who loses berries or money from his stand about once a week in the summer.
Part of the thrill of living in Greater Victoria is the level of trust and civility we show our neighbours.
New arrivals from other parts of the country remark on it.
Farm stands with the honour system are part of that; they are a sign of civilization 鈥� like grocery stores that leave bedding plants out overnight without locking them up, trusting that no one will take advantage.
It鈥檚 hard to tell a farmer who grows food for a living to suck up the losses so the rest of us can feel warm and fuzzy about the place we live. Every dollar counts when you consider that of 1,093 farms reported to Statistics Canada in the capital region in 2011, 966 had revenue of $50,000 a year or less.
However, we hope that farmers will find a way to keep the stands open.
It is said that life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you react to it. Too often, our reactions are out of proportion to what has happened.
When terrorism struck North America in 2001, governments reacted with full-body scans and cavity searches at airports and draconian surveillance laws. In the hunt for the Boston Marathon suspects, authorities shut down the entire city, telling more than a million people to stay inside and lock their doors.
The farm-stand thefts are a far cry from terrorism, but the thieves undermine something valuable 鈥� just as terrorists do.
Terrorists eat away at our sense of safety. The thieves rob us of trust in each other.
For farmers like Bryce Rashleigh, thieves also steal something more.
鈥淵ou feel you weren鈥檛 worthy of producing something for society,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ecause at the end of the day, they pay you for what you do and that鈥檚 how you feed your family. And when that happens, it鈥檚 like, man, they just don鈥檛 think I鈥檓 worth it. So you want to give up.鈥�
We hope they don鈥檛 give up.
The rest of us can help by showing farmers we do think they are worth it. We can pay for their produce, whether someone is watching the cash box or not. We can take down the licence-plate number of anyone we see stealing from a stand, and report it.
We are fortunate to have some of the best farmland in the world within a few minutes鈥� drive of most front doors, and we value the farmers who work that land. The handful of thieves speak the language of dishonesty and untrustworthiness, but they don鈥檛 speak for the rest of us.
