Category Archives: Guest Blogs

The Good Food Fight in Guelph-Wellington

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Guest Blog:  Erin Nelson, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Guelph
Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship / Research Shop

On Monday, June 24th, Nick Saul – co-author of The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement – came to Guelph for the official launch of his book. The event was held at Lakeside Hope House, and was sponsored by the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, the Guelph & Wellington Task Force for Poverty Elimination, the Guelph-Wellington Food Round Table, The Bookshelf, Community Food Centres Canada, and Random House.

It was a steamy evening, but more than 150 people braved the heat to come hear Nick tell the story of The Stop. He spoke passionately about shifting from a charity-based model of fighting hunger to one that recognizes the dignity of all people, and the empowering, healing, and unifying potential of food. He explained how the Community Food Centre movement can help turn that ideal into reality, by creating physical spaces for people to connect over food, by growing it, learning about it, sharing and celebrating it. He also encouraged the audience to politicize food, and advocate for food system change not just as consumers, but as citizens. Using the history of labour rights – such as the weekend – that were fought for and won as an example, he argued that we need to become “food fighters” in order to make change happen in our communities.

The message sparked an engaging Q&A session that probably could have continued all night long had it been allowed to (and had Nick not needed to get home to Toronto). The discussion was moderated by Brendan Johnson, Executive Director of the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition. Brendan is also a member of The Seed Community Food Hub Committee – a Poverty Task Force working group aiming to build a community food hub in Guelph-Wellington. The night served as an opportunity to share some of the work that The Seed has been doing over the past two years to support changes to the local emergency food system, and to introduce the group – and its vision – to the wider community.

After the formal part of the evening was over, people gathered in the Hope House café to continue the conversation (and buy signed copies of Nick’s book). Even without air conditioning the room buzzed with energy until well after 9pm, as people chatted with Nick and with each other about a wide range of topics, including what a community food hub might look like in Guelph-Wellington. Members of The Seed – including the Poverty Task Force, the Food Round Table, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, the Guelph Community Health Centre, and the University of Guelph’s Research Shop – were on hand with information about their work, and with a sign up sheet for people interested in getting involved with the initiative.  Of course there was also excellent food for everyone to enjoy, provided by local businesses Green Table Foods and With the Grain.

By the end of the evening there was no doubt that people had been inspired and energized by the talk, and by the discussions and exchange that happened afterwards. At one point during the night, Nick mentioned that he saw no reason why there couldn’t be a community food centre one day in Guelph-Wellington. Surely many of those who were in the room left thinking about the role they could play in making that happen.

If you’re interested in receiving updates about The Seed Community Food Hub Committee and getting involved in its work, please contact info@gwpoverty.ca.

Nourishing Ontario travels to Corner Brook, NL and East Lansing, MI

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Irena Knezevic, Postdoctoral Fellow, FoodARC
Mount Saint Vincent University
and
Erin Nelson, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Guelph
Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship / Research Shop


 CUExpoThe 2013 Community-University Expo, an international gathering of people committed to collaborative research  partnerships, was held in Corner Brook, NL in the second week of June. Some 400 attendees from 12 countries brought with them fascinating stories of successes, obstacles, challenges, and rewards of community-based research. For the entire four days the event overflowed with an almost feverish brand of enthusiasm that proved contagious and impossible to contain. The conference was well-planned and well-executed – with credit being equally shared by CU Expo organizers and volunteers, the City of Corner Brook, the Grenfell Campus of Memorial University, and the province’s Office of Public Engagement.

Whether it was the opening event (with a keynote address by Canada’s Governor General, the Right Honourable David Johnston) or the Friday night “kitchen party” at the local Legion, the conference was marked by a fine balance of remarkable professionalism and relaxed hospitality that is the trademark of Newfoundland and Labrador.

If there was a complaint to be had, it must have been the difficulty of choosing a session to attend. With several concurrent sessions in various time slots, the program was packed with excellent content ranging from hands-on opportunities to make art (or even butter!), to tours of local community centres and projects, to more traditional sessions that focused on such topics as institutional frameworks for community-university partnerships, using social media effectively, and ethical challenges in community-based research.

Erin and Irena

Erin and Irena

Both of us (Erin and Irena) were at CU Expo wearing two hats –  we travelled with partners from our respective postdoc placements, and we also participated in the conference’s Engagement Fair on behalf of Nourishing Ontario.

2013-06-13 16.26.25

The fair was a two-hour event featuring an incredible array of booths, displays, and posters. While the 4-6pm time slot might have seemed like an opportune moment for people to steal some down time, the place was buzzing for the full two hours, with connections being made, stories being shared, and snacks being enjoyed.

2013-06-13 16.26.42

Our contribution to the fair was a poster presenting the conceptual mapping work done by Phil Mount for our Models and Best Practices Report. The maps seemed to catch people’s attention, and roughly 60 attendees stopped to chat with us and ask questions about Nourishing Ontario’s work. We received lots of positive feedback, and a few people took advantage of the laptop on hand to test the open access software used for the mapping.

AFHVS2013

Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society Conference, 2013

One week later, the poster was in Michigan for another conference, where Nourishing Ontario regional teams presented on current and upcoming work. At the same conference, Mount discussed the food systems mapping with an engaged room of artists, academics and practitioners, in a well-attended, thought-provoking workshop on visualization. However, you don’t have to travel to see our poster!

Just click here!

New report: Municipal Food Policy Entrepreneurs in Canada

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Guest blog from Lauren Baker, Coordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council

Over 64 municipal and regional governments across Canada are using a food systems approach to improve health, generate economic development, address environmental sustainability, and engage communities.

The report “Municipal Food Policy Entrepreneurs: A preliminary analysis of how Canadian cities and regional districts are involved in food systems change,” is the first scan of municipal and regional food policy development in Canada. It reveals that a growing number of communities right across the country have launched food charters, food strategies and action plans, and created food policy councils.

“We were surprised by the number of municipal governments involved in food policy work,” states Lauren Baker, food policy coordinator with the Toronto Food Policy Council at Toronto Public Health. “Municipalities are finding creative ways to improve people’s lives through the way they manage a broad array of food priorities.”

While municipal and regional governments have limited jurisdictional authority over the food system, many are springing into action on the food front. They are bringing together diverse sectors to stimulate the local food economy and generate more jobs, but also to address significant food issues such as agricultural land loss, climate change, food poverty, food affordability, and public health problems associated with inadequate or poor quality diets.

“The activity of food policy councils is clearly visible in almost every major city in Canada”, states Vancouver Food Policy Council member Joanne Bays. “Gardens and urban farms are sprouting in backyards, boulevards, rooftops and parking lots. Farmers markets, food vending carts, and food hubs are bustling businesses. And increasingly foods from nearby farms and oceans are found on the retail shelf and on our plates in restaurants, schools and hospitals.”

The research shows that Canada’s municipal food initiatives have varied governance structures. Some are formally linked to municipal departments; others have less formal structures and funding mechanisms, and some are largely volunteer-driven. The rate of growth of this food policy work has increased exponentially since 2005 and the most significant nodes of food policy activity exist in the provinces of British Columbia, and Ontario.

Given the increasing number and diversity of food policy initiatives, and the potential economic, environmental, social and cultural impact of these initiatives, the report recommends that the time is ripe to take a more systematic approach to documenting and evaluating their role and success. Further, it recommends the establishment of a national network to share best practices across municipalities, and to further efforts to clarify how governments at various jurisdictional levels can best support these efforts.

”With some 80% of Canadians living in urban communities, we need to understand how cities are creating change through food initiatives,” notes David McInnes at the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute. “Clearly municipalities are embracing food as a catalyst – to spur economic activity across supply chains, to improve the health of its residents and to respond to sustainability objectives, among other priorities.”

The report was prepared by researchers at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, Rod MacRae and Kendal Donahue, and involved a diverse array of food policy organizations and advisors from across the country.

The information collected through this research will be available on this webpage shortly. You can find more information at our website: http://tfpc.to/canadian-food-policy-initiatives
Cet rapport et le communiqué de presse sont également disponibles en français.

Rural Land Use Conference

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Guest blog: Joel Fridman, University of Toronto

On May 14, three hundred people packed the Royal City Ballroom at the Delta Hotel in Guelph, Ontario for the Exploring Rural Land Use Conference. The conference, presented by the University of Guelph’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Food and Agricultural Policy based out of their Department of Food, Agriculture, and Resource Economics (FARE), sought to engage “the historic discussion about the role of individuals and hand of government” in enduring issues of rural land use. Members of Ontario’s agriculture, business, planning, civil society, academic and government sectors attended to take part in this discussion. The guiding questions for the day included the price of farmland in Ontario, the dominant trends in farmland use, and farmland ownership.

The day was divided into three sessions. The first morning session explored land prices, and the dominant factors affecting the farmland market. Among three speakers in this session, Marleen Van Ham, a real estate appraiser, gave “the dirt road perspective” on trends in the land market based on sales.  Among some insightful conclusions, Van Ham shared what she called “wild cards” in the land market, noting the uncertainties with respect to how wind turbines, solar farms, the greenbelt, urban sprawl, and the growing hunger of urban investment firms for rural land, will affect the land market going forward.

The second morning session focused on rural land governance, concentrating on provincial policy framework for severances, land subdivision and a core planning issue of surplus residences on rural land parcels. Sarah Willhelm, a planner in the development department of the County of Wellington, evocatively put the question to the audience: will new residential lots affect what farmers can do on the land in the future?

The final session focused on property rights. Speakers presented on the history of the Property Rights Movement in Ontario, providing a staunch reminder of the historic tensions associated with balancing private property rights with public interest in land use.

In a keynote address, Chief Robert Louie of the Westbank First Nation and Chairman of the First Nations Land Advisory Committee shared the latest news on the Framework Agreement (FA) on First Nations Land Management. The FA is a government-to-government arrangement committed to in 1996 and passed in the Federal Parliament in 1999. Through the development of Land Codes, the FA recognizes a First Nation as the legitimate Government over their lands and resources, assuming jurisdiction to make, administer, and enforce their laws. Each First Nation is responsible for developing their Land Codes. 39 First Nations are in the operational stages of the FA, while 30 are in the development stage. Daniel Millete, a strategic planner of the First Nation Lands Management Resource Centre also spoke of opportunities to meld western planning methods with indigenous land values for the betterment of planning practices and resource management in First Nation Reserves.

Overall, the conference provided a healthy discussion of pertinent issues demanding attention, and participatory engagement. With this in mind, however, sometimes absent from such discussions of trends and pressures on rural land use is the opportunity to step back and provide important context to the conversation. What kind of food system do we want, and more importantly, what kind of food system do we need? Rural lands are where our farmers grow our food, and the policies surrounding farmland use structure the kind of food system that is possible. This context for decision making will be neglected at our peril.

 

Presentations and slides from the conference can be accessed here (http://www.uoguelph.ca/fare/institute/presentations.html)

 

 

Is CFIA’s local your local?

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Last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced its intent to review the term local in relation to food. Calling this undertaking “an initiative to modernize its food labelling approach” the agency promises to soon seek input that will help it better define the meaning of local. Its old definition deemed local food to mean that:

  • the food originated within a 50 km radius of the place where it was sold, or
  • the food sold originated within the same local government unit (e.g. municipality) or adjacent government unit

It turns out that somewhere along the way the CFIA decided to do away with that policy and replace it (for now) with

  • food produced in the province or territory in which it is sold, or
  • food sold across provincial borders within 50 km of the originating province or territory

That interim policy is apparently considered less “outdated” and better suited to the “current food production practices” and “consumer needs and expectations”.

I am currently living in Nova Scotia, where many of us do indeed consider anything that comes from this province to be local. But this is a province of roughly 55 thousand square kilometers and fewer than one million people. In contrast, Ontario boasts 20 times the area and more than 10 times the population. Some Ontarians who live in the North would not accept that Southern Ontario food is “local”, as was made clear in a recent province-wide report Models and Best Practices for Building Sustainable Food Systems in Ontario and Beyond. Moreover, our report highlights the need to recognize the unique needs and circumstances of each food region and even each community. Many of our research participants were particularly dismayed by one-size-fits-all approaches, and would be concerned that such disparate food regions would even be thought of as one locality. Local can mean different things in different places. The diversity of geography, demography, and scale in Ontario’s food system could not be overstated and to fail to recognize that is to disconnect policy from reality.

The Canadian Association for Food Studies listserv saw a flurry of exchange on the issue this week. Many of the discussion participants see the CFIA’s interim definition as inadequate and really missing the point of the increasingly popular turn to local – a turn that, in most general terms, aims to address multiple ills of the current food system and not just the simple mileage issues. As one post suggested, the attempts to “operationalize” local result in an “artificial geo-political boundary” that, according to another post, ”does not begin to address all that we need to do in rebuilding healthy citizens and foodsheds.”

In my work, I have criticized food labels as shortcuts meant to stand in for informed consumption. They are easily manipulated, and yet they reassure us that we don’t need to know our food beyond the messages on the packaging. Such shortcuts quell our curiosities and lull us further into food oblivion. They make us ask fewer questions and justify our convenient choices. And they also shape our perceptions of the world making us think that there is a definitive authority on such things as local, and that someone, in this case the CFIA, is being accountable for the well-being and honesty of our food system.

Local is diverse. It is at the same time vague and meaningful, and no one geographical definition can quite encompass all the different things that local embodies. A province-based definition can hardly begin to reflect that. The upcoming CFIA’s consultation must include considerations of regional foodsheds, layers of diversity, and the multiple goals that are embedded in local. This may possibly mean no policy at all, and it certainly means that a policy that relies on the “province or territory” as the foundation of its definition completely misses the mark. To that end, I invite you to keep an eye on the CFIA’s website and have a say in the consultation in any way you can. Perhaps the diversity of local can be reflected in the diversity of our submissions.

Irena Knezevic is a Nourishing Ontario research associate and a postdoctoral fellow at FoodARC. The views expressed in this post are her own and do not necessarily represent either of those organizations. Irena can be reached at irena.knezevic@msvu.ca