Author Archives: Phil

About Phil

Research Associate, Nourishing Ontario

Food for Health Research Forum

SAVE THE DATE!

April 9, 2015
Conference Centre, 1 Stone Road, Guelph, ON
8:30 AM — 3:30 PM

OMAFRA — UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH
Food for Health Research Forum

  • Learn about Food for Health research
  • Discuss links between research, industry applications and improving the health of Ontarians
  • Connect with researchers, industry and government
  • View grad student posters in the Food for Health Student Poster Competition

Food for Health is a research theme under the OMAFRA – University of Guelph Partnership. This event will be free. Further details about in-person and webex registration will be sent out soon.

Jen Weston
jen.weston at ontario.ca or
Sara Fisher
sfishe01 at uoguelph.ca

UPDATE: Ontario Regional Food Hub Survey

(Feb. 9, 2015) Those who visited the Ontario Regional Food Hub survey before today—from a link sent via email or on our food hubs survey page—might have landed on a page containing the message ”Thank you for taking the survey”. This error has been corrected. Please revisit the survey using the links below, and thank you for your patience!

_________________________________________
For Ontario’s local and regional food producers, processors, distributors, and food service procurers: This is your chance to make your needs clear!

OMAFRA-sponsored Ontario Regional Food Hub Survey

This survey will help us to report on the current capacity of food hubs in Ontario, and recommend improvements for farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and restaurants. The ultimate goal is to help funding agencies to understand community and business needs, where funding/resource gaps exist, and how to effectively support operations such as yours. We very much appreciate the time you will take filling out the survey and hope that we can receive your input by Family Day February 17.

For technical issues or questions about filling out the survey please reply to Mike Nagy nagym@uoguelph.ca. For questions about this project, please contact Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer: ablaypalmer@wlu.ca.   Thank you!

Follow this link to the Survey:
New Directions Food Hub Survey

Or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bP1JYQMeBNU8iDH

 

Public Consultation on Chicken Allocation and Northern Ontario

From Sustain Ontario’s Flocking Options campaign:

All interested parties, farmer, processors and consumer are invited to join a consultation about the chicken quota allocation in Ontario. The purpose of this consultation is to solicit input, feedback and advice on how future growth should be distributed to farmers and processors (farmer-member allotment and processor supply distribution) so as to position the chicken industry for economic growth and success. The Chicken Farmers of Ontario (CFO) and the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission are hosting a special pan-northern consultation to hear the unique challenges and opportunities that exist in Northern Ontario.

This is your opportunity to give voice to your vision of the future of the chicken industry in Northern Ontario.

10:00 a.m. Tuesday, February 10, 2015

See the list of locations and local contact information across Northern Ontario

 See the background information provided by the CFO 

Building a Wellington-Guelph Food Strategy: Movie Screening and Discussion

The Guelph-Wellington Food Round Table invites you to the second in a series of events focusing on farming, the regional food system, and a Food Strategy for Wellington County and Guelph. Join us for this free event*, to help determine our regional food policy, investment and development priorities with a diverse group of stakeholders—including public officials, community organizations, farmers, restaurateurs and engaged citizens—as we begin the process of developing a community-led Food Strategy for Wellington County and Guelph.

This event will take place at the Erin Legion, 12 Dundas St E, Erin, ON 

Friday, February 13, 2015 from 6:45 PM to 9:45 PM (EST)

In a rapid-fire format, a handful of presenters will answer the challenge question “Why do we need a regional food strategy?” — including speakers from Everdale Environmental Learning CentreFriendly Chef AdventuresOntario Farmland Trust; and Zócalo Organics.

This will be followed by the Erin premiere of the year’s hottest new documentary The Family Farm, in conjunction with Transition Erin’s Environmental Film Series. See the trailer for the documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60xMswH9n0

Refreshments will be provided.

The next event in the GWFRT Food Strategy Engagement Series will be in Centre Wellington (3rd week of March).

Please visit the link below to register, to read a food strategy description, and for more information about the event.

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/building-a-wellington-guelph-food-strategy-movie-screening-and-discussion-tickets-15623073032

*Thanks to sponsors GWFRT, OPIRG Guelph, and Foodland Ontario

FAO presents plan for eradicating hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean

FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva presented a new regional Plan for Food Security, Nutrition and Hunger Eradication by 2025 during a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)…

The plan… is based on four broad pillars: strategy coordination at the national and regional levels, with a special focus on gender issues; sustainably ensuring access to safe and nutritious foods; widening school feeding programmes with a priority on addressing all forms of malnutrition, from undernutrition to obesity, and; tackling the challenges posed to food security by climate change. Read more

Trends in U.S. Local and Regional Food Systems

The latest (2012) USDA numbers show that almost 8% of all US farmers are selling ‘local food’, with 70% of those selling direct-to-consumer (DTC). ERS census data analysis shows that 85% of these ‘local food farms’ have gross sales below $75,000 (US). The number of farms joining these ranks is slowing, as are the direct sales, which totalled an estimated $6.1 billion in 2012. However, farms with DTC sales are more likely to stay in operation than all farms not using DTC sales.

One cloud on the horizon: new ‘Produce safety’ and ‘Preventive controls’ rules under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) may disproportionately affect these ‘local food’ farms. “DTC farms apply more manure than all non-DTC farms and thus could be disproportionately affected by any FSMA regulations on the application of biological soil amendments”. Read more

Designing Educational Food Landscapes: Guidelines for schools

This document outlines a set of guidelines that were developed to aid landscape architects and school garden stakeholders in designing multipurpose, inclusive, community-engaged school food gardens that meet the needs of the primary users as well as the greater community. It is the result of a University of Guelph Master of Landscape Architecture research project by Elizabeth Nowatschin, with the assistance of Drs. Karen Landman and Erin Nelson.

Download here [pdf 6 Mb]

ALUS Honored in Ontario

From Delta Waterfowl News, January 27, 2015

DELTA WATERFOWL’S Alternative Land Use Services program has earned the Minister’s Award for Environment Excellence in Ontario.

Recipients of the award are celebrated for collaborating with communities and local volunteers to restore wildlife habitat, conserve water and energy, and prevent pollutants and nutrients from entering the Great Lakes.

“We hope the examples we see today inspire others to be innovators in protecting our natural heritage,” said Glen Murray, Ontario’s minister of the environment and climate change. Read more

OMAFRA-sponsored Ontario Regional Food Hub Survey

For Ontario’s local and regional food producers, processors, distributors, and food service procurers: This is your chance to make your needs clear!

OMAFRA-sponsored Ontario Regional Food Hub Survey

This survey will help us to report on the current capacity of food hubs in Ontario, and recommend improvements for farmers, processors, distributors, retailers and restaurants. The ultimate goal is to help funding agencies to understand community and business needs, where funding/resource gaps exist, and how to effectively support operations such as yours. We very much appreciate the time you will take filling out the survey and hope that we can receive your input by Family Day February 17.

For technical issues or questions about filling out the survey please reply to Mike Nagy nagym@uoguelph.ca. For questions about this project, please contact Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer: ablaypalmer@wlu.ca.   Thank you!

Follow this link to the Survey:
New Directions Food Hub Survey

Or copy and paste the URL below into your internet browser:
https://uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/WRQualtricsSurveyEngine/?Q_SS=e2Omc92FS1HeXlz_bP1JYQMeBNU8iDH&_=1

 

Fortnightly Feast

Pan Cape Breton Local Food Hub

(Capre Breton Post) — A small group of food producers came together Wednesday to discuss how they could organize to get more of their locally grown produce, livestock and seafood on the dinner plates of Cape Bretoners. The gathering at the Cape Breton County Farmers’ Exhibition in North Sydney was the third of five meetings hosted by the Pan Cape Breton Local Food Hub, an initiative funded by the Department of Agriculture and administered by Inverness County. Read more

Vidéos: Diversité des systèmes alimentaires et changements globaux

Dans le cadre du Mastère « Innovations et politiques pour une alimentation durable » (IPAD) de Montpellier SupAgro et du Cirad, nous avons organisé un séminaire de formation ouvert à tous et accessible en streaming. Avec notamment :

Nicolas BRICAS, Cirad : “Alimentation durable : quels enjeux pour la recherche ?”
Pierre-Henri GOUYON, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle : “La diversité des plantes cultivées”
Sébastien TREYER, Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales : “L’agriculture face à l’épuisement des ressources”.
Benoît DAVIRON, Cirad : “Les enjeux des marchés internationaux de produits agricoles”.
Gilles TRYSTRAM, AgroParisTech : “Quelles innovations en technologies alimentaires ?”
Olivier DE SCHUTTER, Université de Louvain, ancien Rapporteur spécial des Nations unies pour le droit à l’alimentation de 2008 à 2014 : “Bilan et perspectives de six années de mandat aux Nations unies”.

Lire la suite

Global Sustainability and Local Foods: Call for contributions

Deadlines: Papers: 15 February 2015   |   Videos and Posters: 30 May 2015

The complexity of industrial food production, processing and distribution and the growing distance between producers and consumers are at the center of heightened attention in academia and in social movements across the globe, with the latter in particular reclaiming democratic space on how food is grown processed and commercialized. The industrial production and distribution system by transnational and national corporations has been qualified by various scholars as deterritorialized, placeless and generating foods that are standardized and homogenized. Read more

Principles of agroecology can get us out of the food crisis in simple steps

I believe the solution is a combination of modern technologies and organic systems with greater attention to agroecology and income generation from new cash crops. But we need to recognize that the biophysical and socio-economic issues are different in temperate and tropical environments. Read more

Barbarians at the farm gate

Farm gates have traditionally been closed to capital markets: nine in ten farms are held by families. But demography is forcing a shift: the average age of farmers in Europe, America and New Zealand is now in the late fifties. They often have no successor, because offspring do not want to farm or cannot afford to buy out family members. In addition, adopting new technologies and farming at ever-greater scale require the sort of capital few farmers have, even after years of bumper crop prices. Institutional investors such as pension funds see farmland as fertile ground to plough, either doing their own deals or farming them out to specialist funds. Read more